Up Close & Personal

Having gone through the main impressions of the Radeon X1950 PRO accelerator, it is time to check a bit deeper and reveal the real nature of the PowerColor Radeon X1950 PRO graphics card. We will actually take a closer look and highlight some of the vital features. We will start with the front and move slowly to the back. We might not have mentioned this, but the PowerColor edition is built upon the reference design set by ATI, but opted for a silent cooling solution. So that is obviously a difference with the default ATI design. All set, here we go...

With the Radeon X1950 PRO board, PowerColor took a different approach then the reference design provided by ATI. As with previous Radeon X1900 series graphics cards the main drawback about it was entirely linked to the noisy cooling solution. To move away from that negative aspect PowerColor remained loyal to Arctic Cooling, the company that in close collaboration with ATI designed the completely new heatpipe heatsink cooler used on the Radeon X1950 XTX accelerator. PowerColor went for the silent approach and used the Accelero X2 cooler instead of the default single slot cooling system. Doing so, PowerColor is differentiating their implementation of the Radeon X1950 PRO by offering just that little extra.

The Arctic Cooling design of the Accelero X2 cooler is definitely an excellent choice. This cooler has proven to be very silent, though very effective and received excellent feedback. The propeller has a decent amount of fins which add up in the air flow it can generate and push through the optimized fan blades. This is the driving force behind the Accelero X2 cooler next to the massive heatsink base. The design however is quite basic which might somehow disappoint the case modders amongst us. But then again, who cares?

The Accelero X2 design looks awesome as a hole and does stand out in the crowd. Next to the fan intake you will find the Arctic Cooling logo surfacing on the plastic black cover. The top of the heatsink cover shows clearly the PowerColor name and which product we have in our hands. The cooler is bigger, taking up an extra expansion slot. In the end this has become a standard with the high performance graphics accelerators introduced by ATI and NVIDIA.

The cooling system of the Radeon X1950 PRO is actually a blower pumping air from inside the PC case and onto the fins of the heatsink with a massive sole and is then exhausting it towards the PCI Express interface at the bottom of the video card. The large heatsink has long ultra-slim fins to expand the volume which is profitable at reducing the heat. The large heatsink is really efficient and has been used adequately by all the different the Arctic Cooling products. This technique also makes use of a lager blower which will run slower, though move more air and reduce the noise tremendously.

The Accelero X2 cooling system is designed relatively simple. The copper sole that has direct contact with the GPU transfers its heat to a heatpipe which is passing the heat over to the set of thin copper fins covered with a profiled case. The Accelero X2 utilizes a Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB), which means that the bearing itself is encased in oil. This allows the fan to operate whilst emitting low levels of noise; and it reduces the amount of heat and friction upon the bearing themselves. The fact that PowerColor opted for the heatpipe technology and cooling design by Arctic Cooling is quite reassuring.