What’s the best way to cool your graphics card?

Nvidia’s Titan might be all the rage at the super-high end at the moment but the green team’s dual GPU, GeForce GTX 690 4GB is still king of the hill in terms of performance. More importantly for this article, the sky-high priced monster also trumps Titan when it comes to power consumption and heat too. Our test system peaked at nearly 400W under load with Nvidia’s dual GPU card, while with GTX Titan 6GB in the system, this number fell to less than 350W.

Thermals are even more of an issue for the GeForce GTX 690 4GB. It’s the hottest-running graphics card in our current line-up, recording a delta T under load of 63°C. This is 4°C warmer than our GTX Titan 6GB sample, 9°C hotter than a GeForce GTX 680 2GB and a sizeable 20°C more toasty than a GeForce GTX 660 Ti. However, we haven’t seen a graphics card fall over due to thermal issues for quite a while, so why bother looking at ways to reduce its operating temperature?

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There are actually a number of reasons why you might want to consider looking into a better way of cooling your graphics card.

Firstly, we’ve seen more than a few pieces of hardware die over the years that we suspect may have succumbed to prolonged periods of heavy use and high temperatures. Beefing up the cooling on offer can potentially lead to a longer life for your hardware.

Fitting a better cooler can also improve overclocking potential, both by making for a more thermally stable environment at stock voltages and of course by offering more thermal headroom to allow for higher voltages to be used.

The final reason you may want to replace your graphics card’s stock cooler is of course noise. During gaming sessions, most graphics cards create quite a din – less so these days but they’re still likely to be by far the noisiest component in your PC while you’re gaming.

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The third party air cooler scene is somewhat lacklustre with far less choice than there was five years ago. This is largely due to the fact that graphics cards today are much cooler-running thanks to lower power consumption and more efficient coolers. However, a couple of companies do still offer high-performance heatsinks for both current and previous generation hardware, and for the most part, you’ll be looking at an outlay far less than that if you opted for a water-cooling solution.

However, water-cooling still has many positives, plus a few other negatives. We’ve seen some stonking results from water-cooling graphics cards in terms of temperatures. While stock coolers have improved massively, we’re constantly reminded that they’re nowhere near as good as you might think when compared to water cooling solutions.

In addition, full-cover graphics card waterblocks not only cool the GPU core but also deal with the RAM and VRMs too. This means that all that heat is absorbed by the coolant and sent packing to the radiator. In contrast, many graphics card coolers don’t actually directly draw away heat from some components and they dump some exhaust air back into the case, which clearly isn’t ideal.

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The downside is of course that water-cooling is inherently expensive to get into, although once you’ve invested in a full setup, all you have to do is buy a new waterblock every time you get a new graphics card (not chump change admittedly, but not bad in the grand scheme of things).

So, our goal here is to compare two third party cooling options to see just what the latest generation coolers can do, and of course find out which is best at keeping the world’s hottest-running graphics card in check.

Head over the page to check out some third party cooling options.

Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 690

Manufacturer: Arctic
UK Price (as reviewed): £80.70 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $102.99 (ex Tax)

First up is quite simply one of the most monstrous graphics card coolers we’ve ever seen. Arctic’s Accelero Twin Turbo 690 extends Arctic’s range of third party GPU coolers, which already stretches from ancient graphics cards such as the Radeon 9700 Pro and GeForce 8800 series. We haven’t had great experiences of Arctic’s latest coolers, for the simple reason they only attach physically to the GPU core, often requiring a heap of separate heatsinks to be secured to VRMs and RAM modules.

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However, the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 uses a single cooling plate for the VRMs and memory making installation far easier and safer. The reason the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 is so huge is that rather than use 90mm or 92mm fans, Arctic has gone all-out and used two 120mm fans. Each of these blows air onto a huge heatsink, fed by a total of ten – yes ten heatpipes. For such a leviathan, it’s surprising that the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 only stretches into a third PCI slot, meaning your GTX 690 4GB will end up using three in total.

It’s the width that’s the main issue though; the heatsink and fans push over an inch passed the PCB. Most of the small cases we tried were simply too shallow to get the side panel on, but we suppose you probably won’t be using this kind of graphics card in a case that costs less than £50 anyway. The fans are powered by the standard fan connector on the PCB, which you need to hook up prior to mounting the heatsink.

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You also need to apply about half a mile of thermal pads, which fit on the various VRM and RAM modules and various other hot spots. In addition, you need to fit more than a dozen spacers and apply thermal paste to the two GPU cores. Needless to say it’s pretty involved – far more so than your average waterblock.

To make matters worse, several areas need to be isolated from short circuiting against the large single-piece heatsink. The instructions point you at a strip of insulating tape, which you cut into sections and apply accordingly. This is fair enough, but it did nothing for our nerves and once we’d mounted the massive cooler, we did half expect some sort of explosion when we powered the system on.

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Thankfully this didn’t happen. In fact we had to make sure the fans were spinning because the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 was so quiet. Even under load it proved to be practically inaudible compared to the rest of the system, and a huge amount quieter than the reference cooler.

EK-FC690 GTX Full Cover Waterblock

Manufacturer: EK
UK Price (as reviewed): £111.59 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $149.99 (ex Tax)

EK was one of the first companies to release a full cover waterblock for the GeForce GTX 690 4GB and has also been the first out the door with an equivalent waterblock for Titan too. The EK-FC690 GTX is an absolute monster of a waterblock, but mounting it should be no more difficult than fitting that of a GTX 660 Ti 2GB.

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The block itself is available in either a copper or nickel-plated finish along with either clear plastic or black Acetal top sections, with the clear and nickel options being the slightly more expensive. EK’s current waterblocks use a circle-pattern design on the tops, which we think looks great, but each to his own. Unlike the days when EK’s full-cover waterblocks had inlets and outlets on both sides, its current models have them only on one side, typically facing down in a standard ATX tower case.

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This may or may not suit your needs but EK also includes what it calls an EK-FC Link with all current waterblocks of this type. It’s essentially a twin angled adaptor that bolts on over the ports and allows you to point the ports at a right angle or essentially parallel to the PCB. With some right-angled barbs, you can then point your tubing to the side or vertically in your case. It’s a necessary measure to have the waterblock fit a little more snugly to the PCB and we’d argue it looks better too.

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EK’s instructions are pretty good, and fitting the block was far easier than Arctic’s monster cooler. You still need to deal with a few thermal pads and apply your own non-conductive thermal paste, but despite its size and weight, it was pretty straightforward and the ports allow you to have two compression fittings side by side too.

Head over the page to see the cooling results and our performance analysis

Cooling Results

We used a reference GeForce GTX 690 4GB to test the cooling options and opted for a typical water-cooling loop with a quad 120mm-fan radiator and Laing D5 pump to test the EK waterblock. Both setups were enclosed in a Silverstone TJ11 case We recorded the temperatures using GPU-Z, while running Unigene’s Heaven benchmark for 30 minutes to allow the temperatures to level off at their peaks.

Heat (load)

Unigine Heaven Benchmark (2,560 x 1,600, default settings)

GeForce GTX 690 (EK-FC690 GTX Waterblock)
GeForce GTX 690 (Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo 690)
GeForce GTX 690 (Stock cooler)

Delta T in °C

Performance Analysis

After 30 minutes under full load for each setup, we recorded the peak temperatures, the results of which were pretty surprising. The reference cooler of the GeForce GTX 690 4GB has always struck us as appearing to be more than up to the job, however with a delta T of 63°C it was a huge amount warmer than our other setups.

For an air cooler, the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 put in a pretty impressive showing, managing to keep the GPU below a delta T of 35°C, that’s 28°C cooler than the reference cooler – a fantastic result. What’s more it remained incredibly quiet, even under load.

However, if ever there was an advert for water-cooling your graphics card, the EK-FC690 GTX
waterblock is it. The delta T it recorded was nothing short of astonishing – just 15°C, with the temperature not rising more than 10°C from idle to load. This is a massive 48°C lower than the reference cooler, and again it’s a fair bit quieter too. In contrast, the reference cooler span up to quite a din during testing.

Conclusion

If you’re keen to boost your overclocking headroom or reduce the noise your graphics card makes, then what is your best option?

With our fears over the Accelero Twin Turbo 690’s somewhat tricky installation laid to rest, the case for third party air coolers is relatively sound. It beat the pants off the reference cooler and you’ll obviously not have the complication or expense of a water-cooling system to contend with. That said, the air isn’t exhausted out your case so you’ll have to consider how it affects other parts of your system, plus the Accelero Twin Turbo 690 will still set you back over £80.

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As for water-cooling, well, in terms of performance, the case is just about as strong as it possibly could be. What’s more, water-cooling your PC is pretty easy these days.

However, as has always been the case, the main issue with water cooling is price. Even using a cheaper waterblock for a less powerful graphics card will still see you spending over £150 for graphics card-only setup. But, a majority of the kit you buy will be an investment. We realised quite recently that in many of our home PCs, the pump is now one of the oldest components, and transplanting your radiator, pump, fittings, reservoir and maybe even the tubing to another system is straightforward.

The likelihood is, then, that the only time you’ll need to buy anything new for a system upgrade will be a new waterblock for your graphics card; if you owned an LGA1156 waterblock, chances are you could have transplanted it into your LGA1155 system.

Also worth considering is that you’re possibly more likely to be able to fit a dual or triple 120mm-fan radiator in your system than an extremely large third party air cooler such as the Accelero Twin Turbo 690.

Overall, though, what is clearest from our tests is that reference coolers, even on the most expensive graphics cards are far from perfect. The cooler on the stock GeForce GTX 690 4GB looks hefty enough but while it’s up to the job, there’s a huge amount of room for improvement, which was tapped into with our third party cooling options. Personally, despite the expense, we’d opt for water cooling. It’s far easier to fit a waterblock to your graphics card than all the air coolers we’ve tested over the years, it offers the best cooling by far and of course you get all the other advantages of a water cooled system.

EK-FC690 GTX Waterblock