Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 VGA Cooler for nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260, GTX 280 and GTX 285. Review

Installed this on an XFX GTX 285.The three fans and GPU radiator seem to do the job.After installation, the temps (registered via speedfan) went from 85C to 55C.The fans and main GPU regulator seem to be of decent quality.

I've been doing computer work for years, and when I read some of the other reviews saying that the installation was difficult, I guess I figured that it couldn't be THAT bad and that maybe people were doing something wrong.They weren't.IT IS THAT HARD.First, the instructions are terrible.Second, the custom aluminum heat radiator didn't match the layout of the voltage regulators on the XFX 285.Third, the other square heat radiators weren't enough to cover everything that the stock cooler was covering.I ended up fabricating something out of other parts that I had around, but it wasn't easy.I had to use thermal expoxy to get things to stick.Also, there's a big metal shield that's supposed to go on the back and stick with just some double-sided sticky heat pads.It's a huge shield (the side of the back of the card) and there's NO WAY it's going to stay on with just these little pads.And, there's no way to secure it with the screws that come with it.

I'm usually pretty good at physically hacking things to make them work.All in all I probably spent 4 hours assembling this, requiring the use of not only thermal epoxy, but also pliers, wire snips, a hacksaw, and a grinder!This thing will make your GPU cooler, but it's DEFINITELY NOT one-size-fits all, even though it says that it's supposed to fit GTX 260, GTX 280 and GTX 285, and definitely not an easy installation.If you really really need something to cool your video card, this will do the job.However, be prepared to have a very difficult time installing it.On cooling alone this would get 5 stars, but the installation is so bad that it only gets 2.

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