Zotac GTX 980 AMP! with AC Accelero Xtreme Plus

Modification for Zotac GTX 980 AMP! to use Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus cooler 

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Rig upgrade

In order to keep the subject clear rig upgrade topic will be described in another blog:

Gaming rig configuration

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Stage 2?

Some of you may wonder: what about Stage 2? To be honest I will get to it but I need some time for that. There is insufficient amount of radiators from Accelero set for GTX 980 - so i need to buy radiators, special glue and thermal pads.

Perhaps I will do it when will be upgrading The Rig - we will see.

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Success

Summing up - the goal is achieved. We proved that Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus cooler for GTX 480 is usable with GTX 980 after few adjustments.

I hope that this blog would be helpful for someone with similar idea.

If you have any questions or some parts are not clear enough feel free to contact me.

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Stage 1 tests

In this section I will present a data from temperature measurements before and after the modification. Also we will check if fan control is ok.

First of all why Stage 1?

Accelero Xtreme Plus set also consists of radiators for RAM, RAM and power supply controllers. In Stage 1 on I haven't used them - only main radiator was changed. All controllers and RAM are covered by a factory plate (front & back) that functions as big radiator.

The Rig (little old but powerful set):

CPU: Intel Core i7-875K (2,93GHz/3.6GHz)

CPU cooler: Scythe Mugen 2 ver.B

Motherboard: Asus P7H57D-V Evo 

RAM: 16GB [4x4GB] OCZ DDR3-1600 OCZ3P1600LV8GK (1600MHz, CL7)

System drive: 2x Seagate ST31000528AS RAID0 matrix (1TB)

Power Supply: Xilence SPS-XP800

Case: CoolerMaster CM 690 with modded USB ports (upgraded to support onboard USB 3.0)

Fan & temperature control: NZXT Sentry LXE

Ambient temperature: 25°C [it's winter here and i like it warm at home ;) ]

NZXT sensor for GPU was mounted under the top plate/radiator (above GPU which is on the bottom side as the card is mounted GPU-side-down)

Above results shows that whole procedure seems to be a big success. First of all fan control is working properly so Arctic Cooling was proved wrong again. And all that without modifying fan curve (I was saving that as backup if fan control was working incorrectly).

Now the temperatures. As we can see the more stressed the card the bigger temperature difference in favor of Accelero Xtreme Plus. Which proves right initial assumption that it has better temperature dissipation abilities.

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Assembling

Now we have all ready - let's assemble this monster.

We can see that heat-sink is lower now and with thermal compound we should have excellent dissipation.

For thermal compound I used: be quiet! DC1

Now the attaching fans

And there it is finally complete.

So... we prove the Arctic Cooling wrong - fitting Xtreme Plus on GTX 980 is achievable but with certain modifications.

Next part - Stage 1 tests and fan control check.

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Professional adjustments

First the aluminum cooler blades. 8 blades to be shorten as 2 of the heat-pipes were bent

This part I wouldn't call professional - just used decent, sharp scissors and simply cut the aluminum.

Now we can put the blades back. One-by-one.

And final effect:

What remains is the nVidia mounting plate which was too high.

Now we need a help of a professional - my friend is working with precise mechanics (designing robots for military purposes - MECHATRONIKA http://www.fimpw.com.pl/page15.php [Polish only]) and has a proper tools to perform detailed measurements and to make adjustments.

It appeared that pods were to be shortened by 0,9mm in order heat-sink to at the same height as in factory cooler. Plate was mounted in the milling-machine and milled.

Now every adjustments needed were made.

Next part - assembling.

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Fitting

Having removed the factory cooler we may now try and fit the Accelero Xtreme Plus...

...and see that it won't fit (oh my god Arctic Cooling were right!)... that easily. DVI port is surely colliding with 2 of the heat-pipes and aluminum plates.

Answer to that - remove the plates, shorter them, and bend heat-pipes. I removed plates using just a small knife with thick blade, I just push it between most external blade and one before that and then pull it off. Pulling off should be made carefully from one end of the blade to another just to slip it off all heat-pipes millimeter after millimeter. Takes about 1/2 hour but you wont damage the blades.

8 plates removed. Then I bent the heat-pipes using just adjustable wrench (try to do bending in several places not to tear the pipe - I used 3 places and didn't tear heat-pipes) - maybe there is a gentler way to do it but it didn't cross my mind.

now it fits :)

almost... it seems that in GTX 480 GPU chip was higher than in GTX 980 and we have ~1mm space between chip and heatsink. That won't do. It is too much space for thermo-conductive compound and thermal pads are not good enough.

Damn you Arctic Cooling you were right again! ;)

But we won't stop here - next step: professional adjustments.

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Disassembling

OK here we go...

There we have a card

And there we have all set of Accelero Xtreme Plus ready to go - we have main cooler - and radiators for RAM chips, RAM controllers, power supply controller etc.

Now goes disassembly: 1. We remove 4 screws holding the cooler at the back side 2. Carefully we remove cooler

Effect should be like this

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Preparations

As we may know heat sinks are mounted the same way on most GTX cards. Screw spacing is the same so mounting cooler from GTX 480 to 980 would be possible.

After the more thorough research I found a post where somebody asked the manufacturer - Arctic Cooling, about using Accelero Xtreme Plus on 980 but received an answer that "it won't fit and fan control does not work properly" http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=1402775 [unfortunately in German]

I understand that it may not fit but how on earth fan control will not work properly!? It is a graphic card that is managing fan speed - there is not controller on cooler itself. Even if we assume that we have bigger fans on Accelero - so effect should be even better - the same speed for larger fan means better cooling.

I thought "OK it won't cost me much I'll give it a try".

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Background

Recently my Gigabyte GTX 480 with AC Accelero Xtreme Plus have died... RIP then. But it had great impact on my beloved gaming so this situation couldn't last ;).

Found and bought almost new Zotac GTX 980 AMP!. Very nice card with referential design, factory overclocked (slightly GPU clock from 1139 to 1165/boost 1240 to 1266) with non-referential cooling.

After closer inspection (Internet research) of new GPU I found that provided cooler was smaller than my old Accelero - 2-3 heat-pipes (3 in the rear an 2 in front), 3x80mm fans, copper heatsink only.

On the other hand Accelero had 5 heat-pipes (front and back), 3x100mm fans, copper heatsink but also 1/3 of a radiator was a block of copper.

That would mean better heat dissipation and of course better overclocking capabilities ;).

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Greetings

The purpose of creating this blog was to prove that there is possibility to re-use good-old Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus from my retired Geforce GTX 480 on newest GTX 980.

The Internet was full of rumors but nothing solid so I made the decision to try it and write how it went...