Successfully tamed the fire-breathing MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II

[Gary]

I have been a happy owner (over 2 months) of a Serenity Professional system w/MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II video card. There was however, one little thing that bugged me, the video card had a whining noise from 42% fan speed to 51%. It was kinda annoying since the rest of the system is so silent, any component making noise above ambient noise would immediately be noticeable, and in my case, it was the MSI 6950.
After doing some research for aftermarket heatsink/coolers, I found the Arctic Accelero Xtreme II. And yesterday I installed that and what a night and day difference!

1. My GPU temperature used to approach 95C during furmark; now stabilizes at 59C during furmark
2. The whining noises are gone, it is perfectly silent even while gaming... since these fans don't need to spin higher than 48% fan speed to maintain low temperatures.

Anyhow, I would recommend Puget look into Arctic Accelero and possibly qualify it and offer it as an option. It is highly recommended!

Regarding the title: I think I've been playing too much Skyrim :P

[PCC-William]

Hi Gary,

We used to carry aftermarket video card coolers like that, but over time we found them to be problematic in shipping. Sometimes they are substantially larger and/or heavier than the stock coolers, and that can lead to issues with cards coming unseated or being damaged in shipping.

However, we have also improved our methodology for shipping less-stable parts (via instapack and the like) so perhaps it is time to revisit this possibility. I will make sure the idea is brought up to our management

[Gary]

Hi William,

Good to hear that Puget may look into this in the future. I wanted to give some more details about this cooler performance:

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II w/Stock HSF (regular use 38C-42C @ 37-42% can notice fan from 38% -- web browsing, etc.)
Skyrim 2500x1600, Ultra High, load temperature stabilizes at 68C @ 62% fan speed (very audible)

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II w/Arctic Accelero Xtreme Plus II (cannot notice fan at all during regular use: 29C-33C @ 31-33% -- web browsing, idle)
Skyrim 2500x1600, Ultra High, load temperature stabilizes at 51C @ 41% fan speed (very quiet, not above ambient noise)

The stock cooler is noticeable starting from 38% fan speed but still considered quiet. At 42% there is an additional whining noise, at 51% the fan noise is very prominent. When gaming, the stock cooler routinely hits 60% fan speed.

The new cooler is very quiet through 60% fan speed, and at 80% it is still quieter than 60% of the stock fans. I have to bring it up to 90% to be equivalent to to stock fans at 60%. Note that Furmark only required 48% to maintain @ 59C and at that speed it was quiet.

One downside with this cooler: It is very long, certainly extends beyond the length of the MSI R6950 PCB. As such, it does not fit in the Antec P183 case without removing the removable drive bay directly in its path.

[PCC-William]

We discussed this topic at our weekly sales staff meeting today. One of the concerns raised was that often these coolers don't cover all of the hot-spots on a card - RAM chips, for example, aren't usually cooled. Did your cooler cover those, or did it come with heatsinks to apply to the RAM chips individually? If so, how easy did you find installing those to be?

[Gary]

In the case of the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II card, the RAM chips, voltage regulator modules, were already covered by a separate heatsink (independent of the large heatsink for the GPU itself). I did find the heatsink for the RAM chips and voltage regulator modules difficult to remove and therefore left the stock heatsink on. There were no clearance issues at all with leaving the original heatsink on (for the RAM chips, etc.) and installing the Arctic Accelero Xtreme plus II heatsink for the GPU.