Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 and Zalman VF3000A VGA Coolers

AMD Radeon HD 58xx are excellent products in almost every aspect: they are fast, they support DirectX 11 and other hot new technologies, they overclock well, they are widely spread and even the prices have recently started going down. There are only two serious causes for concern to potential owners of Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 or HD 5830 graphics cards: they run very hot and their reference coolers generate a lot of noise in 3D applications. When a graphics card like that works in 2D mode, it runs at lower frequencies and its fan rotates only at 20-22% of its full capacity, so it is quiet enough and doesn’t heat up much. However, 1-2 minutes into the game or some 3D benchmark the fan speeds up by more than 30% and becomes acoustically uncomfortable, while the temperature quickly exceeds 80°C even inside large system cases with well-organized internal ventilation.

There are two ways of solving this problem. You can either buy a graphics accelerator equipped with an alternative cooling system, or buy a cooler separately and then install it yourself. Despite the fact that you may lose your graphics card warranty, many users will most likely go with the second option, because non-reference graphics cards are not always good, and besides, they usually come out much later than the reference ones. Moreover, it is usually cheaper to buy a graphics card and a different cooler, than a graphics card equipped with an alternative cooler by default. That is why today we are going to talk about two new graphics card coolers: Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 and Zalman VF3000A. We are going to compare their performance against one another as well as that of a reference cooler on a Radeon HD 58xx graphics card. WE will also include the results for one more alternative cooler in our article. But before we start talking numbers, let’s take a closer look at our today’s testing participants.

Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870

Having launched a super-cooler for a dual-GPU graphics card, the Swiss Arctic Cooling introduced a new product for the fastest single-chip AMD solutions – Radeon HD 5870 and 5850, as well as HD 5830.

Accelero XTREME 5870 is shipped in company’s traditional plastic blister with cardboard inserts.

You can see three fans in a plastic frame through the front of the packaging. On the back of the box there is detailed info about the cooler including the mention of 36-degree cooling efficiency advantage over the reference cooling system on Radeon HD 5870 graphics card and almost 6-fold advantage in acoustics. Very promising, isn’t it?

At the bottom of the blister on a plastic tray we found retention screws with washers, VRM heatsink, two memory chips heatsinks, back panel grid and installation manual.

Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 is made in China and is built in a very simple and even classical manner. At the same time it is fairly large (290x104x58 mm) and heavy (632 g).

It is based on six copper heatpipes 6 mm in diameter that go through the copper base. They hold two arrays of aluminum plates, each 0.25 mm thick. The plates have about 1.9 mm gaps between them. The heatsink is topped with a plastic frame holding three fans and a top cover with a company logo sticker and cooler model name.

The heatpipes pierce both heatsink arrays evenly through the entire body.

There is a massive aluminum heatsink installed above the base of Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870. Its fins are parallel to the card, which is quite strange, because the plates on the heatpipes go perpendicular to the card, not parallel to it, so in terms of efficiency it would make more sense to turn the central heatsink by 90 degrees.

Aluminum plates are simply presses firmly against the heatpipes. In the base segment the heatpipes are soldered to the base, as we can clearly see from the evident traces of alloy on the sides.

The base measures 36×36 mm. its surface is well finished and has a layer of highly efficient Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal paste applied to it.

However, in our opinion, this layer is way too thick, as you can see from the excess paste on the edges once the cooler has been installed and removed.

Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 is equipped with three 92×12 mm fans in a plastic frame.

The frame is locked on the heatsink with special clips. The fans are PWM controlled in an automatic mode and their speed varies from 900 to 2000 RPM. The total combined airflow from all three fans at their maximum speed may reach 81 CFM, and the level of generated noise shouldn’t exceed 0.5 Sone, which is 6 times less than the noise generated by the reference cooler on the Radeon HD 5870 also rotating at 2000 RPM. The fans are connected only to the default four-pin connector on Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5830 graphics cards. There are no adapters of any kind included with the bundled accessories.

The fans are built with fluid dynamic bearings with unknown MTBF. At the same time, taking into account the 6-year warranty provided by the manufacturer, we may assume that the fans bearings should last at least that long.

According to the info on the fan rotor and in the official specifications, the fan maximum power consumption shouldn’t exceed 1.8 W.

Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 compatible only with Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5830. Its installation is extremely simple. I think that most difficult part is to remove the reference graphics card cooler, because once it is done all you have to do is stick the heatsinks on the graphics card VRM components and video memory chips and then evenly tighten the four retention screws on the other side.

When you install a graphics card with Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 on it into the system case, the closest two PCI-E slots will be blocked.

Besides, it would be best if the third PCI-E slot also remained free to ensure that there is proper airflow coming towards the cooler fans. Also, do not forget about the major drawback of most cooling systems like Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 as opposed to the reference coolers: the hot air is only partially ousted from the system case, mostly staying inside the system case.

In conclusion I have to add that the recommended retail price of the new AC cooler is set at $67.95.

Zalman VF3000A

South Korean Zalman Company launched not just one, but three new graphics card coolers, although the differences between them are minimal. The first model that came out was VF3000A designed compatible only with Radeon HD 58xx. This card is going to be the hero of our today’s review. The second model that came out shortly after was VF3000N with retention and heatsinks compatible with Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 280 and GTX 285 graphics cards. And the last but not least was VR3000F modified to fit Nvidia GeForce GTX 465, GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics accelerators. This dead-set segmentation of practically the same cooler can hardly make the users happy, because it means that once you decide to replace the graphics card, you may end up replacing the separately purchased cooler, too. We hope that one day Zalman releases a fully-universal VF3000 cooler bundled with all necessary heatsinks, even though it may affect its price in the end. Nevertheless, at this point we still have to pick one our of three.

The box with the cooler is fairly large. It has a few clear windows on the front and comes with a convenient thick rope carry handle.

The box is very bright and informative. There is a plastic corset inside that holds the cooler topped with the accessories bundle.Here are the items that you get when you purchase Zalman VF3000A.

Among them are aluminum heatsinks for memory chips and VRM components, screws with washers and screw-nuts, a small plastic bag with new Zalman ZM-STG2M thermal paste, Fan Mate 2 rotation speed variator, two manuals (a separate one for Radeon HD 5830) and a Zalman logo sticker.

Zalman VF3000A is a little smaller than Accelero XTREME 5870 and measures 239x98x51 mm. it is also less heavy and weighs 430 grams, while the Arctic Cooling product weighs 632 grams. At the same time, the Korean cooler looks brighter and more appealing visually than the Swiss one.

Its design is very similar to that of the Arctic Cooling product: there are five copper heatpipes 6 mm in diameter with aluminum plates pressed against them. However, the heatpipes of Zalman VF3000A come out of the cooler base in two different directions. Three heatpipes pierce the long part of the heatsink, and the other two – the short part.

As a result, there is no additional heatsink above the cooler base. Instead, the plates of the primary heatsink continue there, increasing the effective surface size.

There is a total of 102 plates, each 0.35 mm thick. The gaps between the plates measure 1.8 mm.

Testbed and Methods

All tests were performed inside a closed system case that was built with the following components:

• Mainboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58 Express, LGA 1366, BIOS 2101);
• Processor: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition, 3.33 GHz, 1.225 V, 6 x 256 KB L2, 12 MB L3 (Gulftown, B1);
• CPU cooler: ThermoLab Baram-2010 (120 mm fan at 1000 RPM);
• Thermal interface: Arctic Cooling MX-2;
• Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 5830 1 GB GDDR5 256 bit, 930/5000 MHz;
• Memory: DDR3 3 x 2 GB OCZ Platinum Low-Voltage Triple Channel (Spec: 1600MHz / 7-7-7-24 / 1.65 V);
• Sound card: Auzen X-Fi Home Theater HD;
• System drive: OCZ Agility EX SSD (SATA-II, 60 GB, SLC, Indillinx, firmware v1.31);
• HDD for games and programs: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS (SATA-II, 300 GB storage capacity, 10,000 RPM, 16 MB cache, NCQ) inside Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5” silencer and cooler chassis;
• Backup HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS (SATA-II, 1000 GB, 5400 RPM, 32 MB, NCQ);
• System case: Antec Twelve Hundred (front panel: three Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe S-Series MF12-S1 fans at 840 RPM; back panel: two Thermalright X-Silent 120 fans at 840 RPM; top panel: standard 200 mm fan at 400 RPM);
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2;
• Power supply: Zalman ZM1000-HP 1000 W (with a default 140 mm fan).

AMD Radeon HD 5830 graphics card is designed like radeon HD 5870 and has a reference cooler that covers the entire front side of the PCB.

We ran all benchmarks at increased frequencies of 930/5000 MHz but at the nominal core voltage of 1.125 V.

The testing programs were installed under Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64. We used DirectX End-User Runtimes libraries (from June 2010) and Catalyst 10.8 graphics card drivers. We used 15 runs of FireFly Forest test from the semi-synthetic 3DMark 2006 suite in 2560×1600 resolution to warm up the graphics cards. We enabled anisotropic filtering 16x.

Besides, we additionally used FurMark version 1.8.2 burn test that was launched with a renamed EXE-file for about 20 minutes in stability test mode in 2560×1600 resolution.

We used MSI Afterburner utility version 1.6.1 to monitor graphics card temperatures and frequencies and GPU-Z version 0.4.5 utility.

The tests were run at least twice for each type of load. The temperature stabilization period between the two test cycles was about 10-12 minutes. The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer with 0.1°C precision that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature stayed around 21.5-21.8°C.

The noise level of each cooler was measured after 1:00 AM in a closed room about 20 m2 big using CENTER-321 electronic noise meter. The noise level for each cooler was tested outside the system case when the only noise sources in the lab were the cooler and its fan(s). The noise meter was installed on a tripod and was always at a 150 mm distance from the cooler fan rotor. The mainboard with the graphics card equipped with the tested cooler was placed at the edge of the desk on a sheet of polyurethane foam. The lowest noise reading our noise meter device can register is 29.8 dBA and the subjectively comfortable noise level in these testing conditions was around 36 dBA (do not confuse with low noise level). The fan(s) rotation speed was adjusted in the entire supported range using the new controller revision by changing the voltage with 0.5 V increment.

Besides the Radeon HD 5830 reference cooler, both new products competed against very efficient Thermaltake DuOrb Extreme cooler.

This solution as tested in two modes: at quiet 1000 RPM and at maximum rotation speed of 2500 RPM. The reference cooler of the AMD Radeon HD 5830 graphics card was tested in automatic fan speed control mode, at manually set 30% capacity (about 1830 RPM) and at the maximum fan speed of 4580 RPM.

Performance Test

Cooling Efficiency

First of all I have to say that the VRM heatsink from Zalman turned out more efficient than the alternative heatsink from Arctic Cooling. The one from Zalman VF3000A kit demonstrated 3°C advantage in the hottest VRM component temperature over the heatsink for Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870. That is why we used only Zalman VRM heatsink during our primary tests (except for the Radeon HD 5830 reference cooler).

Obviously, both heroes of our today’s review boast leading cooling efficiency. Moreover, the difference between the Zalman and the Arctic Cooling solutions is insignificant and unstable. For example, Zalman VF3000A turns out 1°C more efficient at the lowest fan speed in terms of GPU and VRM temperatures. At the same time, at maximum fan speed Accelero XTREME 5870 takes about 1-3°C lead in GPU temperature, but still falls 7°C behind in VRM temperature (even though the VRM heatsink is the same one from Zalman, as we explained above).

However, most importantly both new coolers are more efficient than the default reference cooler on our Radeon HD 5830 even though it can work at the wildest 4580 RPM. This cooler failed to cool our graphics card loaded by FurMark at subjectively acoustically comfortable 30% speed level (stricken-through temperature values on the diagram). Moreover, they outperformed an effective solution like Thermaltake DuOrb Extreme, which cooling efficiency at maximum 2500 RPM is still lower than that of Zalman VF3000A or Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 at their minimal fan speed. Obviously, two radial heatsinks of the DuOrb cooler lack effective cooling surface compared with the massive heatsinks from Arctic Cooling and Zalman. Besides, the fans on the two new coolers are used more optimally.

Acoustic Performance

The noisiest cooling solution in our today’s test session is quite expectedly the default cooler of the AMD Radeon HD 5830 graphics card. At 25% its noise stands out clearly against the background of our quiet system case, and at 30% fan speed the graphics card becomes unbearable in terms of acoustics. I don’t even want to talk about the noise at higher speeds. Thermaltake DuOrb Extreme works quieter than the graphics card reference cooler at up to 1400-1500 RPM, but at higher speeds of its two fans it generates even more noise than the original AMD Radeon HD 5830 cooler.

Both new VGA coolers tested today are acoustically more appealing than the other two participants of our today’s session. So, if you really value quiet operation of your system, then you will definitely go with an Arctic Cooling product, which remains extremely quiet up to 1100 RPM. Even extreme silence lovers will be quite happy with Accelero XTREME 5870 at 900 RPM. As for Zalman VF3000A, this cooler remains acoustically comfortable up to 1350 RPM, although it will hardly be the right cooler for true silent system lovers. Here I have to say that overall Zalman cooling system is louder than Arctic Cooling one (primarily because of the higher-speed fans).

Conclusion

Both new cooling systems – Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 5870 and Zalman VF3000A – are an excellent alternative to the default coolers of AMD Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5830 graphics cards. They are much more efficient than the default graphics card coolers while producing incomparably less noise. At low fan rotation speeds Arctic Cooling product really stands out due to extremely quiet fans. At the same time, Zalman VF3000A costs considerably less and comes with a more efficient VRM heatsink than the one bundled with Accelero XTREME 5870.

However, both these new coolers have one serious drawback: they are compatible only with three AMD graphics card models, while ideally we would love to have a universal solution that would fit most contemporary graphics accelerators on AMD and Nvidia GPUs. To be fair I have to say that the Swiss company already has a model like that called Accelero XTREME Plus, but the Korean engineers still have to come up with something similar.