Light our Darkest Hour

Arctic Cooling had a very well lit display at CES this year, and it was so bright that our cameras churned out extremely dark photos. New on the scene are the Accelero S series, passive coolers that make use of heat pipes and plenty of fins to keep your video card cool and silent. Both are fairly low profile and both also come with 8 memory heat sinks.

It's quite large if you think about the chip size.

The S1 sports four copper heat pipes and a healthy array of aluminum fins to help out video cards such as the Radeons X1950, X1900 and X1800 series, and the Geforce 7950, 7900, 7800 and 6800 series. Exclusive to the S1 is the additional inclusion of two special voltage regulator heatsinks, which those high powered graphics cards need to make sure there is enough power flowing through their circuits.

What if we try to use the S1 instead?

On the other hand, the S2 is designed for the more mainstream graphics cards (such as Radeons X1650 and below and Geforces 7600 and below), making use of only two copper heat pipes. There are no heatsinks for voltage regulators, but these graphics cards certainly do not require them.