Installation …
Now we come to the assembly! After studying the installation instructions, this proved to be relatively simple but time-consuming at first glance. In addition to the large heat sink for the GPU, the Twin Turbo II also uses smaller aluminium coolers for the memory and the voltage converters.
But first a small teardown of the graphics card: In our test we use a Palit GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Dual. Here you can see the card in original condition.
A quick look at the Palit heat sink and you can see the first difference to the tested Artic Accelero Twin Turbo II. It is slightly smaller and has only 3 heatpipes.
After the cooler is removed, you can see the naked PCB of the 1070Ti. Palit has strongly followed the reference design. The installation of the Twin Turbo II should therefore not cause any problems.
While we’re at it, you can still see the GPU (GP104-300-A1), …
the power supply …
… and the coils as well as the RAM.
The next step is to install the additional heat sinks. Exactly here we see also the 2 biggest disadvantages of the Twin Turbo II cooler. On the one hand, unfortunately, there was no documentation of where the aluminium coolers should be attached and, on the other hand, Arctic relies on heat-conducting glue. A quick and easy disassembly is therefore no longer possible. Since the manual, as mentioned before, unfortunately only gives an exemplary illustration of the positioning of the heat sinks, we had only our own research. After studying the board and various mounting examples of other boards, we were able to find the most sensible positions for the heat sinks.
Fortunately, the successor has solved this shortcoming and the small heat sinks have been replaced by a large backplate. Of course, this makes installation much easier, but it prevents universal applicability and, of course, has its price.
After the card had rested for an hour and the aluminium heat sinks were glued tightly, we went to the GPU cooler. The assembly was very easy, as described in the manual. You just have to be careful that you use the correct washers. Which of the 3 different sizes fit best to which card is described very well in the installation instructions.
Viewed from the top, the card with the Arctic Cooler now measures 2.5 slots in width.
At first look, there are hardly any serious differences between the assembled Palit 1070ti Dual and the factory cooler. The Twin Turbo II is also relatively compact and not much larger than the factory cooler. Whether the 2 additional heatpipes and the larger cooler make a noticeable difference in practice, we find out in the following practical test …