Author Topic: Tips for installing an Arctic Cooling Accelero on a 4870  (Read 489 times)

  • Offline Beaker

  • Posts: 3,803
  • Hero Member
Anyone who gets one of these will know the fans are far too noisy to live with for any length of time.  While fixing the fan speed in the profiles gives some respite, it also means that the heat climbs to points some of us would rather it didnt.

Well eventually I lost my temper.  Couldnt use the machine for very long without using headphones, and even then it was bloody loud.  I did the fan speed fix, but the temps climbed a little TOO high under load, and I always ended up changing  it to the default, and putting my headphones on.  After some research I worked out that the Arctic Cooling Accelero was probably the best option, and onto that add some of the Turbo Fans onto that.  

This is in 2 stages because Ive had problems.

1st attempt :: I installed the fans, and clipped everything together.  It was all working perfectly until I put it under heavy load.  At shich point the VPU recover kicked in.  I tried a few different things, including adding an extra fan (120mm I had in the draw), and changed the memory and Voltage Reg heatsinks to copper ones.  Still failing hard at this point.  So next one was to find out if something specific was overheating.  I tried various apps until I remembered GPU-Z does temp monitoring.  As it is the latest version supports the 48x0 series of GPUs as well.  On booting it up I found my various temps where a little higher for the various sensors than I expected.  As it happens GPU-Z can log temps to a text file.  Easy enough, boot up a game, hit it hard and wait for the crash to see if things are working ok.  5 minutes into a game It crashed hard.  So reboot and check the text file.  Sure enough the MEMIO temp had broken the 100*C barrier.  THis called for removal and reseating for the HS.  

Idle Temps prior to removal and refitting ::
GPU Temp.(DISPIO) [°C]  = 41.0  
GPU Temp.(MEMIO) [°C] = 83.5
GPU Temp.(SHADERCORE) [°C] = 69.0

2nd attempt :: Pulled it apart again, re-pasted the HS with some Akasa silver compound, and re-seated the HSF.  on inspection the compound previously had been perfect, however the little plastic retainer clips on the top of the HSF had pulled the Accelero to an "off" angle, and as a result it hadnt been sitting correctly.  Seems to have "fixed" things

Idel Temps Now after leaving the plastic retainers off.  
GPU Temp.(DISPIO) [°C]  = 34.5
GPU Temp.(MEMIO) [°C] = 49.0
GPU Temp.(SHADERCORE) [°C] = 41

Somewhat more respectable.  Ive no results for the standard OEM HSF Im afraid, except it was sitting at a steady 38*C according to the CCC.  

Excuse my verbosity, Im somewhat chuffed, and I can use my PC without headphones again!!!

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.