Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 5970

Arctic Accelero Xtreme 5970

Anyone with an ATI 5970 knows by now that the card can begin to run very hot if it is not properly ventilated. This heat will only be compounded if the card is overclocked. Even for users running their cards at stock clocks, a very long gaming session can leave the card running desperately hot, ultimately leading it to an early grave. To counteract noise concerns, but still keep the cards running cool, Arctic has come up with a cooler for the 5970 that dissipates more heat than the 5970's stock cooler, even though Arctic's claim of heat removal is less than that stated by ATI's reference cooler. We will investigate if the Arctic Accelero Xtreme 5970 has what it takes to keep our 5970 cooler than the reference heat sink. Arctic claims this cooler has 300 watts of cooling performance. ATI claims 400 watts on their cooler, so it seems that the Arctic cooler is already at a disadvantage. However the sheer size of the Accelero seems to dwarf that of the 5970 stock heatsink, so it is uncertain if ATI is telling the truth. On paper, this cooler looks great, with three 92mm fans instead of the one smaller cage fan on the reference cooler.