Test System:

• CPU - Intel i5 760 @ 4GHz
• CPU Cooling – Larkool watercooling kit
  
• Motherboard - MSI P55-GD65 (as supplied by MSI)
• GFX Card – Inno3D GTX580 OC
• Sound – X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Memory - 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 with Thermal Sensor (as supplied by Crucial)
• Disks – Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB & 1TB Samsung F1
• Optical - Generic DVD RW
• Case – InWin Maelstrom
• PSU - Chieftec Nitro 85+ BPS-850C (as supplied by Chieftec)
• On Review – Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II

Installation

Installation was fairly straight forward. The Arctic Accelero XTREME Plus II comes with generic instructions to assist with installation on most Graphics cards. Luckily for me, the GTX580 was the example card pictured, so I was able to follow the instructions 100%, however for other cards, you’ll have to do a little bit of guess work as to where your VRM’s etc are (or do a bit of research online).

The first thing you need to do (once stripping your card down to just the PCB) is mix up the adhesive thermal glue. This is easy enough – mix two sashays of goop in the provided plastic “pot” Arctic even includes a spatula for mixing and application.

Next up – apply each heatsink onto the card using the thermal glue. This is simple enough, if not a little harsh on your fingers, as with each heatsink you stick on, you’ve got to keep your finger on it, with quite a bit of pressure for 10 seconds.

Once all your RAMs, VRMs etc are covered, it’s time to move onto the GPU HSF. Helpful Arctic has pre-applied some TIM to this cooler, so all you need to do is screw the HSF onto the card, using the supplied screws and washers.

To be honest I would have preferred some thermal tape rather than this glue stuff. About a week into testing I found that one of the heatsinks (in the above picture it’s the top right one) had fell off. I managed to resolve this by re-applying pressure to the sink, and it’s remained stuck since. Other than that it was actually much easier than I expected.

Once installed, this card and heatsink is quite big! I have high hopes for this heatsink.

Next Page - Testing