I recently snagged a Radeon HD 7870 off ebay, to replace my old video card. This particular one is made by XFX, and has their trademark "Double Dissipation" cooling system on it. I was hoping the big video cooler would give me the combination of good cooling and low noise that I like. But unfortunately, it fell just a bit short. The fans have temperature based speed control. They're quiet when the video card is idle, but get loud enough to be annoying when it's working hard. And due to some shortcomings in the video cooler design, it gets a little hot when running at full tilt.

Here's a photo of the video card, before I started modifying it.



At first, the plan was to disassemble the video cooler and see what improvements I could make to increase its efficiency. So I took it apart to get a better look at the parts. First, the aluminum cover comes off, revealing the copper heat pipes and aluminum cooling fins hidden underneath.



Next, the fans and heat pipe unit come off. While the outer cover made the video card look pretty beefy, the heat pipe unit itself is actually rather small. The video card also has a black metal frame that serves as the mounting point for the cover piece. And it seems to be designed to reinforce the circuit board, as well.



Also, the fan mounting setup made me scratch my head. The cooling fans are mounted to metal brackets, which in turn are attached to the heat pipe unit. Those brackets block a lot of the airflow from the fans. I have no idea why they did this.



At first, I thought I would improve the existing video cooler. I tried replacing the fans, polishing the bottom of the heat pipe unit (where it touches the graphics chip), and replacing the thermal goop with Arctic Silver. None of that made any noticeable difference. So I decided to bite the bullet and buy an aftermarket video cooler. I've had good results from Arctic Cooling video coolers in the past, so I bought one of their Accelero S1 units. Below, you see the Accelero S1 next to the original heat pipe unit.



As you can see, the Accelero S1 unit is noticeably larger. Plus, it has twice as many heat pipes. However, the Accelero S1 doesn't include any cooling fans. But it's going to need some, because the Radeon HD 7870 generates a lot of heat. So I thought I'd try the fans that came with the video card, and see how that works out. I attached the fans to the Accelero unit, using garbage bag ties. Laugh if you want, but it works. And there are no silly metal brackets blocking the airflow.



The Accelero S1 unit is so big, it overhangs the side of the video card by an inch or so.



Having installed the Accelero S1 unit on the video card, I was eager to get the video card back in the computer and test it out. The comparison goes like this...

STOCK VIDEO COOLER
At Idle -- Temperature around 45°C, fan speed around 40%
Full Load -- Temperature around 80°C, fan speed around 70%

AC ACCELERO S1
At Idle -- Temperature around 36°C, fan speed around 35%
Full Load -- Temperature around 60°C, fan speed around 50%

Idle temperatures and fan speeds were measured at the Windows desktop screen. Load temperatures and fan speeds were measured in the World of Tanks vehicle hangar, with video settings cranked up high enough to run the GPU at full load.

I'm happy to say this was a success. Not only does the video card stay cooler, but the cooling fans never throttle up enough to get annoying.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go blast some virtual tanks.

That was the best eye-gasm I ever had!
Sleepy now...

I'll be reading that again later!

[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 04-30-2014).]

Nice upgrade in both the video card itself and the cooler.

Just FYI, my old video card is posted on ebay. Not sure if anyone would be interested, but here's the link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291...id=p3984.m1555.l2649

My 4 R9 280X cards are under water, and run at 26 deg idle and 43 deg full load... I've got 2x 360mm and 1x 140mm rads though...

Cool (no pun intended) but if I was running a vid card that hot, I'd go with water cooling. If I was going to keep my desktop (with 8 very noisy fans), I'd ditch most of the fans and add water.

I just couldn't leave well enough alone. While the AC Accelero heat pipe unit fared quite well with the stock fans from my video card, I couldn't help but think those stock fans were leaving something on the table. So I grabbed a pair of Arctic Cooling 80mm case fans with PWM support, and an adapter to plug them into the video card. That allowed the video card to retain control of the fan speed. The Arctic Cooling fans should be more powerful and more quiet than the stock fans.

Here's a shot of the new fans installed. I secured them using garbage bag ties, just like the previous ones. I also decided to re-install the plastic trim piece on the heat pipe unit, just because.



The results? See below.

STOCK VIDEO COOLER
At Idle -- Temperature around 45°C, fan speed around 40%
Full Load -- Temperature around 80°C, fan speed around 70%

AC ACCELERO S1 w/ STOCK FANS
At Idle -- Temperature around 36°C, fan speed around 35%
Full Load -- Temperature around 60°C, fan speed around 50%

AC ACCELERO S1 w/ AC 80mm FANS
At Idle -- Temperature around 33°C, fan speed around 35%
Full Load -- Temperature around 55°C, fan speed around 45%

I used the same testing methodology as before. The improvement was small, but measurable. And the new fans are noticeably quieter.

Stick a fork in this one, cuz it's done!

[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 05-08-2014).]

So cool!
I dig this stuff.

quote Originally posted by Monkeyman: Cool (no pun intended) but if I was running a vid card that hot, I'd go with water cooling. If I was going to keep my desktop (with 8 very noisy fans), I'd ditch most of the fans and add water.

There's a long-held belief among computer aficionados that water cooling is quieter than air cooling. Back in the days of small heatsinks (with no heat pipes in them) and dinky "hair dryer" CPU fans, this was a valid statement. Because "back in the day", there were no heatsinks that could mount 120mm fans, and the standard case fan size was 80mm. But with a water cooling system, you could stick a 120mm fan on an engine oil cooler, run it at 7 Volts, and you were set.

But times have changed, and so have computer cooling components. Heat pipes are now mainstream. Nowadays, you can put a big honking heat pipe unit on your CPU and/or GPU, with big, slow-spinning fans. The standard case fan size is now 120mm, same for power supplies. You could easily build a quiet but cool-running computer using standard case fans and heat pipe units. And that is why I gave up on water cooling, several years ago.

Anyway, I should get off the soap box now.