Sapphire Radeon HD4850 512MB Graphics Card Review

Arctic Cooling MX-2 & S1 Rev.2 Installation

By now I am sure you all know that the HD4850 and HD4870 are compatible with the same heatsinks and universal (not full coverage) water blocks that the HD38xx series were. If you don’t already know this….welcome to the dark side where voiding warranties is the norm and high temperatures are a thing of the past.

Today we have something a little different for you since we have already gone through test fittings of these coolers over in our HD4870 review which can be found here: Palit Radeon HD4870 512MB Graphics Card Review. Instead, what we are doing here is a little review within a review where we will be testing two very popular products from Arctic Cooling : MX-2 thermal compound and their always-popular Accelero S1 Rev.2. It is important to note that the MX-2 was also applied to the base of the S1 during testing.

Well, let’s get to it!!



Accelero S1 Rev.2 Installation

As some of you know, the Arctic Cooling S1 Rev.2 is one of the most popular GPU coolers on the market today. It offers the possibility of completely fanless cooling due to its massive surface area while also offering modders the option to mount a 120mm fan or installing the recommended Turbo Module. Sticking with Arctic Cooling’s philosophy of keeping prices down while offering superior performance, it is also one of the least expensive coolers on the market even though it does not come with a pre-installed fan.


After removing the stock cooler and the stock thermal compound, we can get to applying all the necessary ramsinks and VRM sinks. You can see above the NEW VRM sinks (the tall ones on the large inductors) which will be included with every S1 Rev. 2 produced after May 2008. There are 6 included in a package (I somehow lost the other ones, d’oh!!) so we are using low-profile Thermaltake heatsinks for the other VRM modules.

The only thing that Arctic Cooling still needs to work on is the thermal tape used on their ramsinks since it does not stick well at all. So, make sure to gently press all of the ramsinks down for about 30 seconds each to ensure they adhere properly to the ICs.


It is then a simple matter of applying the thermal compound, tightening the screws and making sure that the S1’s base makes good contact with the core. Basically, the fitment is flawless.


The only very minor issue we ran into was that due to the height of the ramsinks and the memory’s proximity to the core, the heatpipes will interfere with the outside ramsink. To alleviate this you either need to use a shorter ramsink or push the one supplied by Arctic Cooling back a bit so the heatpipe isn’t pressing down on it.


Just to make sure the S1 was applying sufficient pressure of the thermal compound and the core itself, we removed the heatsink to check if the TIM was evenly distributed over the GPU’s surface. As you can see above, it is absolutely perfect with the MX-2 spread perfectly to every corner of the core.

On the next page we take a look at the fan options and finally the performance that the Arctic Cooling S1 Rev.2 offers on this card.