As expected, I could not hear this cooler outside the case. It is rated at 0.4 Sone, which is incredibly quiet. To test out its performance
in temperature, I left it running overnight to test the idle. For a load test, I ran a 20 minute continual loop of Quake 4 timedemos in windowed
mode so I could see the nVidia temperature control panel. Temperatures for the Accelero were only a degree higher at idle, but they were identical to
the Zalman at load.
Temperatures (°C)
GPU
Ambient
Zalman - Idle
47
34
Zalman - Load
57
42
Accelero - Idle
48
34
Accelero - Load
57
42
Fins
CONCLUSION
I was expecting the Accelero to be as silent as the Zalman it was replacing. It was. I was expecting the Accelero to perform at least as
well as the Zalman it was replacing. It did. The edge that the Accelero has over the Zalman is that the Accelero works in SLi mode. To
install the Zalman in SLi mode I had to remove the brace plate from the back of the bottom card because it interfered with the fan of the
top card. The height of the Accelero and the fact that there is no large brace on the backside of the card takes care of the whole Zalman
problem. Overall, the Accelero is a great cooler and works well when running in SLi mode. It doesn't greatly improve temperatures over
other air cooling devices, but for the price of $29.99 at CrazyPC and the fact that
it works in SLi mode, I give the Accelero X1 a Grand Slam. Thanks to CrazyPC for the
review sample.
