Introduction

It gives me a great pleasure to introduce the Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 Pro cooling unit for , Accelero L2 Pro is targeted for mid-range to low end graphics card since it is small in size and have no heatpipes for heat dissipation. Accelero L2 Pro is an active video card cooler which is designed to replace your stock heat sink on your video cards. Accelero L2 Pro is an extremely quiet gpu cooler and will aid us in creating a very quiet system. Today we are going to take a close look at Accelero L2 Pro with X Fire set up of ATI Sapphire HD 3870's and see what it has to offer.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Arctic Cooling website.

Quiet Cooling Solution for Mainstream Graphic Cards

With a multi-compatible mounting system, Accelero L2 Pro offers excellent cooling for both nVIDIA and ATI graphics cards.

Main features

• Excellent cooling performance up to 100 Watts
• Ultra quiet 92mm PWM fan with low noise impeller
• Patented fan holder eliminates the buzzing sounds
• RAM and voltage regulator cooling
• Pre-applied MX-2
•  SLI and CrossFire compatible

Excellent cooling for a wide range of VGA boards
Featuring a 92mm PWM fan that runs from 900 to 2,000 RPM, the Accelero L2 Pro achieves up to 27 CFM airflow and 100 Watts cooling capacity. The optimised heatsink and the pre-applied thermal compound MX-2 guarantee excellent heat dissipation from the core. 

The flexible mounting is designed for fitting a wide range of nVIDIA and ATI cards – from GeForce FX5700 to the 9800 series; and Radeon X1300 to HD4850 series. The Accelero L2 Pro is surely a perfect cooling solution for these graphics cards at a very competitive price.

The Art of Silence
The Accelero L2 Pro also excels in noise management. The 92mm fan is equipped with low noise impeller and installed in a patented fan holder in order to eliminate buzzing sounds. Thanks to this excellent acoustic design, the Accelero L2 Pro remains extremely quiet (only 0.4 Sone) even at full speed.

	Application: ATI Radeon HD 4850,4830,4770,4670 nVIDIA GeForce 9800, 9600, 9500 Up to 100 Watts ATI Radeon HD 4850, 4830, 4770, 4730 HD 4650, 4670 HD 4550 HD 3870, 3850, 3650 HD 3470, 3450 HD 2600, 2400, X1950, X1900, X1800, X1600, X1550, X1300 series nVIDIA GeForce 9800, 9600, 9500, 9400 8800, 8600, 8500, GTS250 7950, 7900, 7800 7600, 7300 6800, 6600 FX5950, FX5900 FX5800, FX5700 series

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at Accelero L2 Pro.

Closer look

Box Front		Box Back

The actual Accelero L2 Pro is rather small. I was expecting a bigger size of the fan and the whole unit over all. Accelero L2 Pro is equipped with a 90mm fan which rotates at about 2000 rpm's. The packaging of the Accelero L2 Pro is pretty much all clear. From our side you can see everything that comes with Accelero L2 Pro.

Specifications		Features

On the side of the packaging i found Specifications of the Accelero L2 Pro and on the back side of the package Arctic Cooling listed some of the signature Features of Accelero L2 Pro. I feel that it is important to show the customers what is exactly in the "box" and to educate them before hand on what are they buying.

Out of the box		Ram heat sinks

Opening the package was very easy. Just a few pulls and everything came undone. Inside of the package we found 16 heat sinks of various sizes, a molex to 12 and 7 volt adapter for various speeds of the fan, a small ziploc bag with hardware, the main unit itself and of course an installation manual. I strongly recommend that you read instructional manual before proceeding with the installation.

Our test subjects		X Fire Sapphire HD 3870

Our test subjects for today are going to be two ATI Sapphire HD 3870s running in the X Fire mode. The Sapphire HD 3870 is running hot video card and heats up pretty quick so it will be very interesting to see how the Accelero L2 Pro will perform.

Clean canvas		Ready for modding

First step to mod 3870 was to remove all of the heat sinks and get it ready for the new Accelero L2 Pro application. It is very important to clean gpu from any of the old thermal compound so that the new compound joins nicely with the gpu. Accelero L2 Pro comes with reapplied signature Arctic Cooling MX-2 thermal compound. Since the Accelero L2 Pro has been released, Arctic Cooling came out with new generation of thermal paste MX-3. Keep and eye on our reviews as we will review MX-3 for cooling performance.

Ram heat sinks		Installed cooler

After cleaning everything nice off the old thermal compound, we have installed the ram heat sinks. The ram heat sinks have adhesive compound that sticks to the ram surfaces. In our installation we have used 16 ram heat sinks. Installation of the gpu cooler was pretty easy as well. Just 4 screws and the Accelero L2 Pro was securely installed.

Perfect clearance		Perfect clearance

All round the Accelero L2 Pro has pretty good clearance between itself, heat sinks and board components. At first i thought that we are going to hit the components and ram heat sinks but in the end everything fit perfectly.

Secure design		Ready for testing

On the back of the video card Accelero L2 Pro is secured only by 4 screws. I was expecting a little more of a complex design but this will hold the Accelero L2 Pro just fine too. After about 40 minutes of installation we finally have a new modded ATI Sapphire HD 3870.

Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 Pro

When these two card are installed in X-Fire mode, it doesn't leave much room for anything else in the pci slots. Accelero L2 Pro is significantly bigger than the stock heat sink so please beware that you will be losing some room in your case. Lets move on and take a look at some test we ran.

Testing

For our testing we are going to be using PerfomanceTest 7.0 and CPUID Hardware Monitor. The readings were done under PerformanceTest7.0 on both stock and Accelero L2 Pro.

Stock cooling Performance Test 7.0

Our first test we ran was with stock cooler. The results were so so. 3D Graphics Mark was 471.6 with Simple graphics at 584 Frames per second. A relatively average numbers.

Stock cooling CPUID Hardware Monitor

The minimum temperature of GPU cores was 34C and maximum temperature for the both cores was 51C. As i ve mentioned before these cards to run kind of hot so this is expected from stock cooling.

Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 Pro Performance Test 7.0

Our next test was with Accelero L2 Pro. Accelero L2 Pro performed extremely well in my opinion. The 3D Graphics Mark resulted in 752.2 in comparing to 471.6 on stock cooling. Graphics 3D-Simple was pretty close to max out at 915.6 in comparing to 584.8 frames per second

Arctic Cooling Accelero L2 Pro CPUID Hardware Monitor

The temperature did changed from 34C on stock cooling to 40C on first core and 34C on second core. It is possible that the thermal compound needs to be burned in for lower temperatures. The maximum temperature was dropped from 51C to 43C. Awesome!

Conclusion

Another very well designed product by Arctic Cooling. Accelero L2 Pro was a pleasure to review and i had no problems installing the GPU cooler or the ram heat sinks. Judging by our tests Accelero L2 Pro definitely a good replacement for the stock coolers which come with ATI Sapphire HD 3870. Running these cards definitely gave us a perspective look in to what we can expect for performance and over clocking the 3870s. One of the signature features of Accelero L2 Pro is the super quiet operation of the fan. There is a minor issue that i would like to address. The Accelero L2 Pro comes with a molex connector to connect to the power of 7V and 12V. Why not just let the GPU board to decide on what current to run the fan. Accelero L2 Pro comes with option to run in PWM mode but doesn't not come with any extension. I think Accelero L2 Pro deserves a solid 9 out of 10. A highly recommended gear!

Some pros we found:

Easy to install

Very quiet and light weight

Outstanding performance

Some cons we found:

Molex based power

Short PWM cable