Test results: temperature

3D Mark 2005's Firefly Forest benchmark was placed in loop in order to properly stress the GPU. Ambient environment temperatures averaged near 20°C. With Rivatuner in-build PWM fan compatibility we were able to monitor and manipulate the Accelero Xtreme fan speed duty cycle. Most people are familiar with changing fan speeds through Rivatuner, we tried two different settings to get an idea of the cooling performance of the heatsink itself: stock auto fan speed correction vs 100% duty cycle fan speed. Here are our results:



Amazing performance! After testing the Thermalright HR-03 Plus I thought there would be no other product out there that would ever outperform it, not with the high 92mm RPM fans that I used, but Arctic Cooling just proved me wrong. In auto mode, the Accelero Xtreme 8800 gave on par performance with the HR-03 Plus which is nearly 20°C lower then NIVIDA's reference heatsink! In addition to that, boosting the fan speed to 100% made the Accelero Xtreme come out as new heavy weight champion, category G80, beating the former champ by 2°C.


Test results: noise

Noise created by fans and spinning hard disks is not what everyone cares about, though some people are really keen on dead silent pc's, therefore we added a noise chart. Noise is measured with a Smart Sensor AR824 digital sound sensor 50cm away from our Antec PC housing. We stopped all fans in order to give an exact representation of the noise that is being created solely by the video card cooler. The noise level of our testing environment is at 40,1 dBA, here are our results.



Another shocking fact, with the above performance in mind the cooling device remained very quiet even in the heaviest Direct3D applications. With every fan detached I could hear the Accelero Xtreme fans over my 120mm PSU fan, but overall it did not sound louder then the reference NVIDIA heatsink which already offers a great performance/noise ratio. Using three 80mm fans at 1400rpm, the fluid dynamic type of bearing really pay off.

Increasing fan speed to 100% made the heatsink noisier, not by a whole lot, but still noticeable in any high-end setup. With higher heat outputs (read overclock) this 100% fan speed setting will prove useful of course.