We are comparing the stock reference cooler design, the review sample of the Arctic Accelero Plus II and the MSI GTX480 Fuzion waterblock. The first chart comprises the results at the reference Nvidia clocks and the second one a rerun at a healthy overclock of 850Mhz. Clocks that will boost ya game performance nicely.

We also tested different fan speed settings of the Arctic unit to see if the cooling performance can be improved. objective was to see if there's a sweetspot between fan speed, cooling and noise. 

First up the stock reference results :

No doubt the watercooling unit is the performance king, but you all know that's only possible at a hefty cost. The Arctic Extreme plus II, even at the lowest fan speed setting (set by the Asus Nvidia card at 44%), clearly spanks the stock cooler. When upping the RPM of the Arctic fan via MSI Afterburner we see a small gain in cooling performance of the GPU and PCB. We were obliged to use the aftermaket software to increase the fan speed as the PWM didn't seem to function properly. The fans kept spinning at 1156rpm (44%), no matter the GPU temp. Take note that the stock cooler kept spinning at a higher rpm to top out after 15 mins at a scary 92°C. The back of the original non pimped videocard was scorching hot.

Overclocked results :

At idle it doesn't change much as the idle 2D clocks are only a tiny bit higher. Though at load we see the Arctic cooler handling the extra heat output quite well. The stock cooler is on the edge and placing your finger on the on either side of the card will leave permanent traces on your skin. The watercooled unit doesn't even break a sweat. Looking at the price and installation hassles, it's in another league price/performance wise. There's not so much scaling in temperature drop with extra fan speed. With the videocard at stock clocks we gained from 44% to 90% 6°C on the GPU and 4°C on the PCB. With the overclocked setup we only gain 4°C and a mere 3.4°C on the PCB temps. Below some of the test screenshots :

Does the extra RPM create a whole lot of racket ? Not really, lowest value measured was at 44% fan speed. We gradually upped to 60% and then continued with 10% increments.

As you can see not much extra noise is generated if you up the fan speed of the Accelero. The fans become more noticeable, but will hardly match the sound of your CPU or case fans (unless they are of the very silent type too). The stock reference cooler is quite inaudible at idle. But once you start to stress the GPU, the fan speed picks up and the cards cooling device will be clearly distinghuishable from your other noisy PC parts. I also included the stock fan result when running at fulll blast. But mostly it would be around the 68-72% fan speed setting during the Kombustor runs. Which is still 10-15dBA higher than the aftermarket cooler design.

Whenever my rig isn't used, it starts folding on CPU and GPU. As you can see it remains around the 60°C mark, which is quite good for such a hot card...