Rated: 93.33% (3 votes)
Loading ...8800GTX Cooler Mod 2
oneeyeuk
Well, I was fairly happy with 8800GTX Cooler Mod 1 until about 3 weeks ago.
It was a Friday and, as usual, I was bored at work and was window shopping at Scan, OcUK, KustomPCs, etc.
When I happened upon the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800 cooler at OcUK.
I’ve been a pretty big fan of Arctic Cooling, especially the GFX coolers, for years.
So, it was nearly all I could do not to buy it straight away but at least Google for a few reviews first.
The reviews were favourable and the pictures in the reviews actually made me salivate.
After giving my keyboard a quick wipe, I was on the verge of pressing the ‘Checkout Now’ button.
But I stopped, I’d had another inspiration.
As good as the Accelero Xtreme 8800 looked and performed, I felt I could make it more gooder.
So, after another quick browse, I found what I was looking for.
Akasa 80mm Freeflo Cool Blue Fan.
Or three of them to be exact.
Although the mounting holes are the same centres as a normal 80mm fan, the Freeflo fan has a 90mm rotor.
And nice blue LED lights too, to fit in with all the other shiny blue baubles already adorning my rig.
So, after adding the Freeflo fans to the basket I completed my order safe in the knowledge that it would arrive at work next working day, ie the Monday after the weekend.
And, sure enough, my bits were there Monday.
I, however, was not.
On the Saturday I fell off a wall walking backwards, quite sober too, showing off to my son.
Broke my shoulder, cracked a rib and dinged my head up pretty bad too.
Spent the night in an A&E Observation ward.
I’m still not able to drive even now, but hopefully not for much longer.
Fortunately, somebody from work was able to drop my package off on the Thursday but I didn’t regain enough use of my arm to do anything with the bits until the following Tuesday.
So, on Tuesday, I set to work.
First, I had to remove the existing modded Zalman cooler and memory sink.
The VF-1000 cooler came off straight away only being held on by 4 thumbscrews.
The memory sink was a different story, removing that was what took the longest.
It’s held in place by 5 thumbscrews, which undo easily enough, and adhesive thermal pads which were stuck on like s**t to the proverbial blanket.
I just had to keep working at it easing carefully away by levering it with an old blunt screwdriver.
Next up, a quick clean with Akasa TIM Clean to remove the left over bits of thermal pad and Arctic Silver 5.
After reading the installation instructions, I first installed the 4 supplied aluminium heatsinks onto the VRM’s. The heatsinks already had adhesive thermal tape applied, just needed to remove the backing and press into place.
The next thing was to apply the supplied adhesive thermal pads to the memory chips and the NVIO chip.
The first pad took me the longest as I didn’t figure out for a few minutes that they were only adhesive on one side and I was trying to peel off backing that wasn’t there on the other side.
I then removed the fan assembly from the heatsink, being careful not to smudge the pre-applied MX2 paste on the base of the cooler, and placed the heatsink in position on my GTX.
I then carefully turned it over and attached the heatsink to the card with the 6 screws supplied, tightening them alternately to get even pressure.
I now turned my attention to the problem of attaching the three Freeflo fans I’d ordered.
I had originally thought that I’d be able to modify the fan mounting assembly from the Accelero and attach the Freeflo fans to that.
But I soon binned that idea for 2 reasons:
1) The Freeflo fans were a bit too big to all fit on the existing fan mounting without overlapping.
2) I could always reuse the original fan mounting again in the future if I ever decided to sell my GTX
So I was still left with a problem of attaching the Freeflo fans.
I remembered that I still had some offcuts of the black aluminium hexx mesh that I’d modded my side panel with and started having a play with that.
One of the offcuts was plenty big enough to attach all three Freeflo fans, which I did using some cable ties.
I then cut the mesh to size around the attached fans and placed it onto the heatsink to see if I could figure out how I was going to attach the two together.
After a few minutes of puzzling, I pushed one cable tie between the heatsink fins at one end then pushed another through the fins about 1cm further down from the other side and connected the 2 together to make a loop.
I did this again in the middle and at the end of the heatsink so I now had 3 anchorpoints on each side to attach the mesh fan assembly to with yet more cable ties.
I also modified a 2-way fan splitter into a 3-way so I could run all 3 fans from one knob on my control panel, freeing up a fan controller for another case mod that I have in mind.
Next task was to see if it all actually worked so I popped it back in my rig and plugged everything in.
PC started, fans span, GFX was even cooler.
Result.
One last small job to complete.
Although bigger, the Accelero cooler is lighter than the Zalman and more rigid when attached to my GTX too.
But I still wanted to use my Card Keeper to give it more support.
So I had to spend about 5 minutes with a junior hacksaw blade cutting about 5-6mm off the bottom lip of the Card Keeper so it would still fit.
Then that was it, job done.
OK, so you all probably want to see some performance figures.
My GTX with the stock cooler and at stock clocks would idle in the mid 50’s and under load in RTHDRIBL would nearly hit 80°C
With my modded Zalman cooler, with fall 3 fans at max speed and at max overclock my GTX would idle at 45°C and hit 57-58°C under load in RTHDRIBL.
It was also quite loud.
With the fans on low speed, and acceptible volume, on the modded Zalman cooler and at my ‘everyday’ overclock my GTX idled at 47°C and rose to 61-62°C
With the modded Accelero, all fans on lowest speed and at my ‘everyday’ overclock the GTX now idles at 43°C and peaks at 58°C under load in RTHDRIBL.
And the fans still aren’t too loud, and I sleep in the room with my PC.
But when I set my max overclock and turn the fans up to 11 (in total moving more than 120cfm of air) the temps drop to 37°C at idle and 47-48°C under load, but your ears start to bleed….. 
Great job. But I’m wondering if you can take it to the next level.
Why not trying to ziptie two 120mm Scythe Fans to it. Like same people have done with the Accelero S1. Without connecting them to the PWM.
You also save yourself from using Rivatuner, and you’ll have a card that’s being cooled all the time at a steady RPM.
I bet you’ll make the card much much cooler and even more silent.