Accelero X1 installation is not so simple as NV Silencer 6 (Rev. 2) installation. This is due to the complexity of the original cooler found on high-end video cards. We will show you how to do it on a GeForce 6800 GS.

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Figure 7: We are going to replace the original cooler from our GeForce 6800 GS with Arctic Cooling’s.

The first step is to remove the original cooler from your video card. On our GeForce 6800 GS this was tricky, as you need to remove the top plastic cover from the cooler first in order to access the screws that fasten the GPU heatsink to the printed circuit board. This is accomplished by unscrewing six screws.

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Figure 8: The first step is to remove the top plastic cover from the cooler.

After removing the top cover, remove the four screws that hold the copper heatsink to the video card. Then remove all screws located on the other side (solder side) of the video card. In our case, we had to unscrew nine screws there. After removing all screws you will have removed the original cooler from your video card completely, as show in Figure 9.

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Figure 9: GeForce 6800 GS with its original cooler removed.

Now you need to clean the memory chips and the graphics chip, removing all thermal grease or thermal tape you may find.

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Figure 10: Removing thermal grease from the graphics chip.