My Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo II impressions **added pics -- not 56k friendly!**

[SickBeast]

 

[Don Karnage]

Christ that case looks cramped

 

[SickBeast]

Christ that case looks cramped

It's an Antec 300 and I can't fit anything bigger into my desk, unfortunately. I love this case though. It has really good cooling. I got it for $30AR as well. 🙂

 

[Stuka87]

My Antec 300 is tight as well, but the case temps stay extremely low. So I am very happy with it in that regard.

Will be interested to see how much your temps lower by (Didnt see them earlier).

I will have to download that program to check my VRM's and such. My Sapphire has a heat spreader that contacts the memory chips and the VRM's (I think).

 

[SickBeast]

My Antec 300 is tight as well, but the case temps stay extremely low. So I am very happy with it in that regard.

Will be interested to see how much your temps lower by (Didnt see them earlier).

I will have to download that program to check my VRM's and such. My Sapphire has a heat spreader that contacts the memory chips and the VRM's (I think).

My temps went from 85C down to 45C under load.

Part of why my case looks so cramped is because my CPU heatsink is so big, as well. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest single tower CPU heatsink available. It's massive and it comes out right to the edge of my case. A few more millimeters and it would not have fit.

 

[tigersty1e]

Thanks. 🙂

There was a *huge* gob of thermal compound gobbing up the core from the stock heatsink. It completely enveloped it. I will post pics when get the chance.

I have a lot of experience installing heatsinks and thermal paste. I cleaned off the stuff the Arctic Cooler came shipped with and installed my own stuff carefully with a very thin layer. That probably gained me an extra 3-5C.

The stock paste job is actually a decent job. If they gobbed it in the middle and used the heatsink to squeeze the excess, they put the right amount. You see the corners how the excess just barely comes over. There's a good amount of excess on the straight edges, but that is fine.

The other way is to use a little and use a credit card or your finger with saran wrap to spread it around. This way is good for noobs because you ensure that every type of tim (thick or thin) gets good contact with the chip, but you get small air pockets throughout the chip.

The better way is to glob a dot in the middle and use the heatsink to spread the tim out. The problem with this way is you can mess up and use too much or too little. You can't use the same amount for every type of tim because as5 and something like icd7 spreads out very differently. What is a good amount for as5 (thin viscosity) is not enough for icd7 (thick viscosity).

 

[SickBeast]

The stock paste job is actually a decent job. If they gobbed it in the middle and used the heatsink to squeeze the excess, they put the right amount. You see the corners how the excess just barely comes over. There's a good amount of excess on the straight edges, but that is fine.

The other way is to use a little and use a credit card or your finger with saran wrap to spread it around. This way is good for noobs because you ensure that every type of tim (thick or thin) gets good contact with the chip, but you get small air pockets throughout the chip.

The better way is to glob a dot in the middle and use the heatsink to spread the tim out. The problem with this way is you can mess up and use too much or too little. You can't use the same amount for every type of tim because as5 and something like icd7 spreads out very differently. What is a good amount for as5 (thin viscosity) is not enough for icd7 (thick viscosity).

Well, their paste-job probably added 3-5C to the temps. The review I read of my card had it at 80C under load; I was hitting 85C.

 

[tigersty1e]

You see that square to the left of your ram chip? It has about a dozen little pins coming out from all sides. That's your voltage controller.

Is there writing on the chip that you can google?

 

[SickBeast]

You see that square to the left of your ram chip? It has about a dozen little pins coming out from all sides. That's your voltage controller.

Is there writing on the chip that you can google?

Not that I can tell, and now that I have my aftermarket cooling installed it would be a PITA to check to be sure.

 

[Stuka87]

You see that square to the left of your ram chip? It has about a dozen little pins coming out from all sides. That's your voltage controller.

Is there writing on the chip that you can google?

A lot of times parts like that are obfuscated to prevent people from finding out what they are. Standard thing to do for military applications, although it is a bit odd to see it on a video card.

 

[rci2990]

just to add for blackened the 6950/6970 coolers did come with vrm sinks, i'm looking at them right now.i got the ac turbo II at the same time i got my 680.its like the noctua d14 for your video card.just plain awesome. 🙂

 

[jacktesterson]

Hey Sick,

I'm glad your card is running cool. It's much better than my Asus 7850 easily.

At 1200/1450 @ 1.165v and 37% Fan (running in my new case with much better Air Flow now), I'm getting about 65 Max.

 

[SickBeast]

Hey Sick,

I'm glad your card is running cool. It's much better than my Asus 7850 easily.

At 1200/1450 @ 1.165v and 37% Fan (running in my new case with much better Air Flow now), I'm getting about 65 Max.

Thanks for that.

I'm trying for 1225/1300.

I'm trying with lower memory as the core seems to make the most difference.

 

[SithSolo1]

Lookin good.

Btw- Trying to load this at work killed my TouchPad. It loaded about 6 pictures and then went "Nope, not gonna happen." and rebooted.

 

[SickBeast]

Lookin good.

Btw- Trying to load this at work killed my TouchPad. It loaded about 6 pictures and then went "Nope, not gonna happen." and rebooted.

Thanks.

Yeah, my playbook wasn't completely happy with the thread either; it took it a few minutes to chug away at it.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I also recently upgraded to a Twin Turbo II on my 6950@6970 and was impressed with the results, especially when the system idles in dual monitor mode.

Unfortunately, a couple weeks passed and one of the fans started making a bit of noise where they'd been totally silent before. Now I'm pondering buying a couple of high quality 92mm fans and strapping them to the TTII heatsink instead.

The quest for quiet performance never ends.

 

[SickBeast]

I also recently upgraded to a Twin Turbo II on my 6950@6970 and was impressed with the results, especially when the system idles in dual monitor mode.

Unfortunately, a couple weeks passed and one of the fans started making a bit of noise where they'd been totally silent before. Now I'm pondering buying a couple of high quality 92mm fans and strapping them to the TTII heatsink instead.

The quest for quiet performance never ends.

It was you that found me that deal, wasn't it??

Thanks very much, I love the cooler. 🙂

I've heard of people strapping 120mm fans onto these heatsinks with very good results.

With mine ramping up the fan speed doesn't seem to make any difference. *shrug*

 

[birthdaymonkey]

It was you that found me that deal, wasn't it??

Thanks very much, I love the cooler. 🙂

I've heard of people strapping 120mm fans onto these heatsinks with very good results.

With mine ramping up the fan speed doesn't seem to make any difference. *shrug*

Yep, that was me. Glad you're liking it! It kinda makes you wonder why OEMs can't include such a nice stock cooler. The reference blower that I removed from my 6950 seems like it would cost at least as much in terms of materials and it obviously works much worse. Perhaps because AMD/NV have to account for the fact that most users won't have a properly ventilated case??

Honestly, I don't think the fan noise mine is now making would bother or even be noticed by most users, but I'm a bit OCD. (The problem with trying to silence your computer is that as you silence something, the other noises become apparent... it makes for an unhealthy attention to detail, at least in me.)

Anyway, good idea with the 120mm fans. I have a bunch of decent 120s sitting around, so I might as well try to ziptie those onto the TTII before I spend another $20 on fans.

 

[SickBeast]

You could do that for the time being and see if AC could send you a replacement fan. Hopefully they won't make you RMA the whole assembly.

I'm planning to get rid of some fans as well. People tend to underestimate how much heat your case can dissipate without much airflow.

 

[Stuka87]

Just kind of posting this as a comparison to the others that were shown here. This is my Sapphire 7950 OC @1050/1350 after playing BF3 (Caspian Border) for an hour.