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Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo Pro VGA Cooler Crossfire Review

Final ThoughtsFirstly, we want to clear things up and confirm that just because we were not able to get ‘stable’ temperatures while using a CrossFire configuration, that doesn’t mean that CrossFired Radeon HD 4870’s aren’t viable. We think that with better case airflow the temperatures may be slightly better and may be considered acceptable. We also have to remember that MSI Kombustor puts an unreal amount of stress on the graphics card and ‘real-world’ usage will never push it as much, therefore allowing for lower usage temperatures. With this cleared up, let’s move onto our verdict of the Twin Turbo Pro.

Let’s start the verdict with some of the cooler’s strong points.

Installation was a breeze. The instructions are very well documented in 4 different languages and the step-by-step guide is very clear and informative. Not only were the instruction helpful, but the cooler itself was very easy to work with. Simply prepare your graphics card, apply the RAM and VRM heatsinks, align the cooler’s mounting points and screw it on. Simple!

The GPU temperatures the Twin Turbo Pro showed were very impressive to say the least. Keeping our predominantly hot Radeon HD 4870 graphics card at under 60C shows awesome performance. Even for the short load period when the cards were used in CrossFire, the Twin Turbo Pros still didn’t allow that GPU temperature to hit more than 60 degrees Celsius.

Low noise usage is a major strength for the Twin Turbo Pro. It was difficult to hear the cooler operating past the sound of our case fans. Even when the fan speeds rose, the accompanying ‘hoover’ sound we are used to hearing didn’t follow, thankfully.

The aesthetics are very appealing. White bladed fans contrasting the pure black frame with a hint of shiny copper make a great combination. The cooler looks just as good when mounted onto a graphics card and fitted into the case. If your case has a side panel window, you will also be lucky enough to have a view of this beauty in action.

Compatibility with this cooler is brilliant. For a cooler that was released during the Radeon HD 4000 series and nVidia GTX 200 series era to still support new graphics cards such as the Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 is just phenomenal. It really does go to show that from a compatibility point of view, age is irrelevant, quality and design are what matter.

Now onto the not so good points.

VRM cooling! To put it plainly, this cooler does not like VRMs! Using what look to be heatsinks of an acceptable quality and size to cool the VRMs proved that they are anything but acceptable. Single card configuration saw the VRM temperatures hitting over 140C whereas our CrossFire configuration allowed the VRM temperatures to climb to 150C in almost the blink of an eye. During gaming the VRMs didn’t reach the daunting 140C mark, but they were soon enough hitting over 120C. We just wouldn’t feel safe letting our VRMs hit over 120C on a day-to-day basis.

This isn’t a negative point as such, just more of a general complaint about the maintenance involved with the Twin Turbo Pro. We were forced to peel off the “Twin Turbo Pro” sticker to access the screws attaching the fans to the heatsink. This is fairly annoying but it didn’t get better. Once the screws were removed, it took a decent amount of muscle and a lot of patience to actually separate the heatsink and fans. It wasn’t for the ‘faint hearted’ as we felt as if the frame was going to snap and break at any time. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and once the pair were separated, cleaning was significantly easier.

Overall, we think Arctic Cooling have done a good job with the Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo Pro VGA Cooler. At the very low retail price of under £25 we would recommend this product in the future, but we would also make sure that the person to whom we are recommending it doesn’t want to use it with a graphics card that has notoriously hot VRMs.

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