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Which is the best aftermarket cooler for GTX 780


ShadowC

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I have 2 msi GTX 780 in SLI and im looking in to change the stock cooling on these cards.

So wich cooling is the best and where can i buy them?

This one performs pretty good Accelero Xtreme III · VGA · Cooling · ARCTIC

That card runs very cool but are the coolers sold separately?

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This could be interesting when it comes to the cooling performance, but it looks fugly... then again, I usually don't care about how it looks, I don't have a show rig after all.

Accelero Hybrid · VGA · Cooling · ARCTIC

Full ack. This one costs some more but is quiet and cool. The EKL Peter with Noiseblocker eLoop-Fan is a alternative for single-GPUs (4 slots!!!)

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

if you realy want to stick to pure air the as other have said accelero extreme 3 is the way to go....

but I would sugest considering the accelero hybrid

its part water part air but the watercooling is closed loop and requires no pain in the ass maitinence that standard watercooling dose

it essentialy requires no matinence that standard air dosnt..... simply clean the dust off the fins occasionaly just like with air cooling and that's about it

the ram and everything other then gpu is cooled by standard heatsinks and fan

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  • 1 month later...

Has anyone else here have attempted to fit the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme III on 780 or 780Ti Classified or am I the lone wolf here?

The stock ACX cooling on my card kept weird noises since from the day I installed the card. I removed the cooler and examined it. I noticed that some of the fins on the cooler were very loose which I think was the main reason why the card kept that awful rattling noise everytime fan speed started to increase or decrease. And the cooler also had the weird humming noise especially when the fan speed changed.

Instead of RMA'ing the card I decided to upgrade to more efficient and quieter solution, the Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme III.

Installation was really easy, I didn't even had to use the aluminium heatsinks that came with the cooler. Instead I've kept the card's original black aluminium cooling plate (part of the original ACX cooler) which takes care of cooling the memory and VRM. The cooling plate is attached to the PCB with a bunch of small screws, there's at least a dozen of them.

Best thing about the original cooling plate is that it covers the whole PCB and it keeps the PCB not getting bent (Accelero weights over 600g). I had to completely remove the cooling plate first from the card and modify it a bit so that the mounting plate of Accelero could fit in the GPU area (didn't had enough clearance for Accelero's mounting plate in GPU area).

It was very simple to modify, all I did was the cut off the excessive aluminium surrounding the GPU area (I cutted it so that the GPU area on cooling plate is completely square) to make sure there's enough clearance for the Accelero to fit on top of the GPU. I used pliers for cutting the cooling plate, the aluminium is a soft material to work with so no need for proper cutting tools. Although the Dremel would be the easiest solution for cutting. Without this modification the copper bottom of the Accelero wouldn't have made any contact at all to the GPU so this modification was definitely a needed operation. Another option would have been just to remove the original cooling plate completely and glue on the aluminium heatsinks that came with the cooler. But I came to an conclusion that modding the original cooling plate to fit with the Accelero is much simplier and easier than glueing the heatsinks and is more efficient solution too.

Only real problem with the Accelero Xtreme III and GTX 780 is that controlling the fan directly from the video card drivers doesn't work properly. Several people have reported that fan controller on the GTX 780 is not compatible with the fans on Accelero Xtreme III, even though it runs the fans on ACX cooler just fine. It has something to do with the different specs between the stock ACX cooler fans and Accelero Xtreme III fans or another explanation is that the fan wiring on Accelero is somehow different from the stock ACX cooler.

Luckily I had a existing solution for this issue: Scythe Kaze Master fan controller mounted on the front panel on my case.

However, I had trouble connecting the fans of Accelero to my fan controller. First, I tried to use the Molex adapter that came with the Accelero that lets you connect the fans directly to PSU instead of the GPU. With this adapter you can choose from two different options, 7v and 12v. Unfortunetaly the adapter didn't do anything when I tried to find a way to connect it to my fan controller, the fans were completely dead on the Accelero when I managed to plug it in to my fan controller (my fan controller has a 3-pin female fan plug with yellow-red-black wiring).

I couldn't find an suitable adapter, no matter how hard I searched through the internet. So I decided to make the appropriate wiring myself. First, I took the old Fractal Design 120mm case fan from the closet and cut the wire off from the suitable point so I could have the 3-pin male fan connector and some wiring with it to make the connection. Then I removed the small 3-pin VGA fan connector from the fan wire of the Accelero. Then I just simply stripped the wires (red, yellow and black) I have just cut from the case fan and from the wiring of Accelero fans and wrapped them together so that the colors of the wiring matches. I used electric tape to insulate the bare wires I did just wrapped together to avoid any shorting. And bam, the fan controller recognised the Accelero fans instantly and as a result I have now full control of the fans on the Accelero.

I keep the fans of the Accelero at 1700-1800rpm at all times and I can't seperate the sound of the Accelero fans from my case because they get covered to the sound of the all other case fans I have on my case. The difference in cooling efficiency between 780 Classified stock cooler and Accelero Xtreme III is huge. For example, when running 3DMark Vantage in factory clocks and voltage, GPU max temperature was 73C with the stock cooler with default fan profile. Now with Accelero, max temps were only 56C. Ambient temperature was 23C at that time. So you can expect at least 15 to 20 degree improvement on max temperatures if you upgrade to Accelero Xtreme III over 780 Classified's stock ACX cooler. For me it was definitely worth the upgrade. I'm very satisfied to the end result.

I took a few photos of my card inside the case with Accelero fitted, please use the direct links below to view them.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5vnahjkf79zowtl/IMG_0996.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/15zrtrxy4gsl2m7/IMG_0997.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ch65m9rngfrnv53/IMG_0998.JPG

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I have an Asus Gtx 670 and one of the fans stopped spinning, it's been a while that I'm looking into this artic fans, but the thing is how can I be sure that the fan is dead and not something on the board itself, I don't have any other gpus so that I can check with another fan, and the card is out of warranty so asus rma is out of question.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

WoW they are all so fugly!

I guess the stock is the only good looking air cooler.

PS: I did see somebody who modded their stock air cooler on a Titan and had added a water cooling block inside.

I think that is by far the best looking/performing alternative

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