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Hey,

I'm running these specs:

Q6600 2.4Ghz
GeForce 8800GT 512mb (OCed a tiny bit)
2GB OCZ PC 3200 RAM
Asus P5KC Motherboard
550W Corsair PSU
1x120mm fan, 2x80mm fans

I'm running Oblivion on medium settings, on my 23" inch widescreen monitor with a resolution of 1360x768.

I thought these specs would be enough to run Oblivion smoothly, but it's quite choppy. My graphics card is reaching temps of about 70c and I'm having to put the fan on max RPM to cool it down.

I saw the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 VGA Cooler but I've never used a graphics card cooler and I've read that the thermal pads they provide for the GPU RAM are not very good and can fall off.... etc.

Basically, my 2 questions are:
-Is cooling the reason why I'm getting choppy gameplay, is there anything else I should do first?
-Is this the cooler what I should be getting, do I need anything else for it and will it fit in my fairly small Coolermaster Elite case?


Thanks, I'm happy to provide any more info etc if required. Any help greatly appreciated.

I also have an 8800GT and I just use RivaTuner to bring up the fan speed to cool it. The 8800GT stock fan is defaulted at 29% speed when you first buy it. You shouldn't worry too much about the relatively high temperature, because the 8800GT chipset has a high heat tolerance level. I keep my fan at 50% idle, and 80% load, and it never goes above 65C.

Upon purchasing my 8800GT, I also considered getting the AC Accelero S1. It is a good quality passive VGA cooler with a low price and has great reviews all over the web. Many users have reported using that product and having the RAM-sinks stay on. The trick to getting the RAM-sinks to stay on with the stock adhesive is to thoroughly clean the surfaces of the RAM chips, and to apply enough pressure for a long enough duration. Be aware though that the Accelero S1 does not come with MOSFET heatsinks for the 8800GT (even though Arctic Cooling claims they are not needed).

I use a thermalright HR-03 for my graphics card, and that came with some ramsinks, which are attached to the ram via sticky thermal pads....

I made sure I cleaned my ram chips with isopropyl alcohol, and then stuck the ramsinks on.

They've never come off, even though they've been hanging upside down since installing it. Been about a year now.

I'm not sure how the accelero will perform compared to the newer versions of the HR-03, but my bets are on the HR-03 since those come with more heatpipes XD