By the way the temperature readout on the G80 seems to top out at 128C. I found this out whilst trying to run mine with a fully passive HR-03. Was rather toasty.

Hello, I recelty just got my 8800GTS card (eVGA) and wanted to at least put some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste instead of the stock TIM, as some folks indicated on the first page of this thread. However, being a complete noob to GPU modification, of any kind , I had trouble getting the cooler off. The coverplate came off easily, and I was able to get all (~10) screws securing the cooler to the board, but the thermal pads were so sticky they seemed to be stressing the card while I tried to pull them off.

Should I slide the cooler off sideways? I noticed I could slide the cooler around on the board, but trying to pull it directly off was really tough, and I didn't want to pull off any of the mosfets or worse. My concern about sliding the cooler off however, was that I didn't want to get TIM on any of the circuit board parts...

Any thoughts? I was looking at the links that you had posted in this thread, but they all depict the 8800 after having the stock cooler removed already.

Any help is greatly appreciated !!

Having destroyed a 7800GTX card a few weeks ago by ripping a memory chip out I'd try and be careful getting it apart.

Have you got white pads on the memory? If so that's the default (non sticky) pads so it will only be held on by the thermal paste on the core.

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getart ... rticID=543

If you're having real trouble remove the PCI plate from the card (four stand offs unscrew by the DVI ports and a single screw in the card.)

The PCI plate has a hook on the top making it harder to remove the cooler.

You should then be able to pull the cooler off and reseat the core with Arctic Silver 5 without too many problems.

You need to re-use the white thermal pads though as otherwise the components won't be in contact with the heatsink.

Thanks alot for the advice ! I'll give this a try and see how it works. The thermal pads are white, but as I mentioned they seem to be really stuck tight to the mainboard of the card, so I'm suspecting there is something else that is holding it on.

When you refer to the PCI plate, is that the basic plastic coverplate on top of the heatsink, that also surrounds the fan? That came off very easily after peeling back some of the stickers on the very top (4 screws total). If the PCI plate is actually a different piece, perhaps removing it is what I need to do, as all I removed was the basic plastic coverplate before working on the large heatsink.

The PCI plate is the metal plate where the card attaches to the case.

You should have removed the two black screws at the top of the pic already as they hold the cooler in place.

The four standoffs by the DVI ports will unscrew easily using an adjustable spanner. After that there's just a single screw at the top of the card holding the plate on.

You were probably thinking of the Madshrimps article where they use a HR-03 Plus with 8800GTS card passively?

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getart ... rticID=557

The main thing with that review was that there were a lot of fans running in the case.

In a low airflow case my old 7900GTX with HR-03 couldn't safely run passively under load.

It seemed unlikely that the far hotter 8800GTS card with a passive HR-03 Plus would do much better.

Does it work ok under load with a low noise fan at 5v fitted ? There aren't that many people who mention how fast they have the fan running.

Some 8800GTS Idle temps with HR-03 Plus for comparison:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=39561

Well I merely had an 8800GTS and an HR-03 and was trying it fully passive, plus all the other options (a little bit of directed airflow from an 80mm fan, ducted this that and the other, some light breeze from a 120mm fan, etc., etc.).

IMO the Madshrimps review is ... not relevant to silent computing. That's my polite assessment.

I now have a Nexus 92 on it on the quiet end of a Fanmate and it's fine (drowned out by the racket from my HX520W).

My case is a P150 by the way, in case that's relevant to the debate about quiet airflow

What sort of idle and load temperatures do you get with the nexus fan at low speed?

A good comparison would be looping the Lost Planet DX9 demo benchmark for half an hour. I think I posted load temperatures from that with both watercooling and the stock cooler a few pages back.

Lost Planet Demo:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_19164.shtml

The graphics settings were:

FPS view: ON
Anti-Alias: NONE
HDR: HIGH
Textrure Filter: ANISOTROPIC 4X
Texture Resolution: HIGH
Model Quality: HIGH
Shadow Quality: MEDIUM (it won't let you enable high for some reason)
Shadow Resolution: HIGH
Motion Blur Quality: HIGH
Effect Resolution: HIGH
Effect Quality: HIGH
Effect Volume: HIGH
Lighting Quality: HIGH
Display 1280*960 (should be 1280*1024 but the game doesn't support it)
Display Frequency: 60hz
Fullscreen On: ON
Vsync: OFF
Aspect Correction: OFF
Concurrent Operations: 2
Concurrent Rendering: ON
Multi-GPU: OFF

Audio:

Max channel Sounds: 64
Reverb Quality: HIGH

The Antec P150 case is basically identical to my Antec Solo so it should be a reasonably fair comparison.

My case has a single Scythe S-Flex SFF21D 800rpm exhaust fan running at 12v.

You probably have more airflow using the active PSU though I'd have thought.

Thanks alot for your help WR304! As it turned out, it was the massive amount of thermal goop that caused the heatsink to be secured so tightly to the GPU and board.

I managed to carefully pull them apart, and cleaned up all the goop with a paper towel, q-tips, and Arctic Clean solution (great stuff).

So I've got a fresh layer of AS 5 between my GPU and the heatsink, my first graphics card modification (well, not really a mod I guess ), and looking forward to seeing what this does for my temps.

Also, I'm not a big water cooling guy - but I'm thinking about attaching a standard case fan to the 8800 heatsink blades to facilitate air cooling, and perhaps build a cardboard vent, similar to the one you showed on the first page, to pipe the hot air out of the case.

Looking forward to seeing how my temps are, and will post here possibly with some pics of my air cooling setup (will be about a week, had to RMA my P5B mainboard after upgrading to the 8800 GTS and new 550W PSU - for some reason the main board would never post after just swapping out these components, but never had a problem before with /shrug...)

System:
Asus P5B mainboard, E6300 oc'd at 3.1GHz, stock CPU cooling with AS5 TIM, 8800 GTS, 2x 512MB sticks of A-DATA 800 MHz RAM, WD 120GB hard drive.

This is a pic of my first go at a quiet mod for the 8800GTS:

This was using a suspended Scythe SFF21D 800rpm 120mm fan blowing up onto the stock heatsink with shroud removed.

This may look workable but in practice was a complete disaster.


EXAMPLE ONLY - This didn't work

The CPU and case temperatures were 5c+ hotter than with the stock cooler and load temperatures were uncontrolled.

I stopped testing when it reached 85c after little more than a minute or so and put the stock cooling fan back on.

When you see pictures of an 8800GTS with a case fan attached directly to the heatsink it must be running at quite a high speed to cool the card sufficiently.

Idles at 51C
74C after half an hour of Lost Planet

Those seem like reasonable temperatures.

Was that with the graphics card at stock speeds or overclocked?

What was the room temperature?

How long did it take for the temperatures to reach 74c under load? Did it go to 74c quickly or did the temperatures gradually climb to that level?

Has there been any change in CPU, system and hard drive temperatures using the HR-03 Plus when compared to the stock cooler?

When I originally swapped my 7900GTX (with HR-03 and 100mm Scythe Kaze Jyu Fan at 5v) for the stock 8800GTS card I was quite surprised to see a significant 6c+ drop in hard drive temperatures. At that time the hard drive was mounted in the bottom section of the case.

It looked as though air must have been blowing onto the HR-03 graphics card cooler and then at least some of the hot air was being blown sideways into the bottom right section of the case.

Yep I'm happy enough with them not to mess about with anything more



That's all stock.



Ummm... well you know what the weather's been like here recently, all over the place! 20C I'm guessing.



Hit 74C within about 15 minutes



CPU temperature does get quite high (~61C, it's cooled by a Ninja with a Nexus 120 in a 'suck and blow out the back' configuration) but nothing I'm alarmed about.

I haven't tried with the stock cooler -- having already heard the stock cooler on a mates 8800GTS it was a no-brainer that it wasn't an option for my rig and I went straight for the HR-03.

Thanks for the update.

Are the CPU temperatures higher now than with your old graphics card?

Swapping my (underclocked to 100mhz core) 8800GTS 640mb card from the stock cooler to watercooling didn't actually make any noticeable difference to the CPU or system temperatures for my PC.

Where it did seem to make an improvement was in heat at the top of the case. The section of the case directly above the Nesteq PSU would get really hot using the stock 8800GTS cooler. With the watercooling it's not so hot now.

I've been meaning to copy the holes cut into this Antec Solo case as it looks like a really good idea, particularly when using a fanless or semi-fanless PSU:

I'm also thinking about blatantly copying the hole in the base of the case but that's one for a different thread.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=39939


Vidicio's Modded Antec Solo Case

My 8800GTS 640mb with the stock cooler idled at 52c and reached 81c (the threshold where the fan ramps up) running the same test at a room temperature of 20c.

With the Zalman watercooling the card idles at 37c and reached a load temperature of 50c at a room temperature of 21c approx.

That was with clock speeds of 570mhz core/1200 mhz shader (1300mhz shader with watercooling)/900 mhz memory.

Increasing the core clock speed over 600mhz makes the card significantly hotter under load which is why the later load temperatures I posted are higher.

what zalman system are you using and what vga cooling block pieces are you using?

i am going to be getting a 640 meg GTS soon and i have a res1 system.

Anyone had any luck having complete control over the fan speed?

With rivatuner I set mine to 50% duty which makes it much quieter than the stock 60% setting. However I still want it to ramp up under load. It seems the 'driver level fan control' tab for 2D/3D modes does nothing.

The card is cooled using a Zalman Reserator 2 and Zalman ZM-GWB8800 GTS waterblock in a single loop.

There are more pics and a detailed description of fitting on the first page of this thread.

It seems ok with just the single card connected and is quiet. I'd be concerned about having more than just one 8800 card connected though as the reserator 2 gets quite hot.


ZM-GWB8800 GTS waterblock installed on Nvidia GF8800GTS 640mb card


Reserator 2 Installed And In Use

@busky2k: I haven't heard of anyone being able to set detailed custom fan speed settings for the 8800 series cards yet.

It's the sort of thing that will probably appear in a software update for rivatuner or ATItool sometime I expect.

DVD watching temperatures are nowhere near as high as full load temperatures but if you use the PC a lot as a media PC they might be useful to know.

DVD Watching Temperatures Watercooled
With the Zalman watercooling the temperature difference when watching a DVD movie appears to be around 5c.

At 2D clock speeds of core 100mhz/shader 300mhz/memory 400mhz the 8800GTS 640mb card was idling at 39c with a room temperature of 21.5c.

Watching a DVD movie the clock speeds go up to their 3d mode speeds (core 648mhz/shader 1620mhz shader/memory 1000mhz). After 1 hour the card temperature had risen to 44c. It then stayed at that level for the next hour until the end of the film.

The reservoir was barely warm when I checked it.

DVD Watching Temperatures Stock Cooler
It's difficult to compare the temperatures I posted back on page 1 as the clock speeds are so different.

The room temperature then was 18.5c ( 3c cooler than today).

With the stock cooler the card started off idling at 48c in 2D mode (200mhz Core/Shader 625mhz/Memory 500mhz)

The 3D mode clocks at that time were 570mhz Core/Shader 1188mhz/memory 900mhz and the card temperatures rose to 58c after two hours of DVD playback.

jeez. i wont be running my 8800 above 500mhz so I should be fine then with old reserator aand a cool running cpu. I am guessing. shrugs? I use 95% pure steam distilled watter with 5% watter wetter. I do this to get maximum heat capacity and so far it works . pink though.

What graphics card are you using at the moment?

The 8800GTS is likely to add at least another 20-30 watts of load to your water loop compared to an older card.

If your reserator is already flat out with the current components that could be pushing it a bit.

what did you do to your solo!

The pic with the holes drilled in the side isn't actually my case.

The pic with the hole cut in the side and covered with foam is my PC though.

I cut a hole in the side panel to allow removing the graphics card without requiring disconnecting the watercooling.

It avoids having to drain the water loop every time you want to move the case.

The hole in the side panel is surrounded by foam to stop the water cooling tubing touching the case sides.

It means that all you have to do is remove the case side and take out the graphics card before moving the case.

The alternative is using the Zalman quick release connectors and having to refill the tubing/ get any air out of the system each time.

I've heard of people having problems with the Zalman quick release connectors leaking after they've been connected and reconnected repeatedly too.

A hole in the side of the case is a small price to pay to avoid that.


Zalman Reserator 2 Quick Release Connectors

This card has me beat.

Here's what I have, and its a fairly quiet case.

Chenbro SR209
120mm YL exhaust
120mm GlobalWin (zip-tied on to a Scythe Samurai-Z)
92mm Nexus intake
92mm Silent Scythe intake
8800 GTS 640mb

After swapping out the CPU fan (92mm Sycthe Silent) with the GlobalWin, I've realized that the noisiest thing in my case now is the damned 8800GTS.

I'm not about to downlclock a US$300 card, especially since I bought it for games.

My Asus P5-K deluxe and its ridiculously bad PCI layout will not accomodate an HR-03 Plus.

My GTS idle temps are 70C (@60% duty). I don't mind that, as I can replace the TIM....what I can't stand is the fan noise. I know its probably not a big deal, but hearing how quiet everything else is, its starting to get under my skin.

*the 92mm low speed Scythe sounds silent as intake, but for some reason, is quiet noisy as a HS fan. Could be due to turbulence with the fins?

With an Asus P5K- Deluxe and a smallish CPU cooler you'd be able to mount the Thermalright HR-03 Plus above the card.

Both the Thermalright HR-03 and HR-03 Plus coolers have the same height of 38mm according to the Thermalright website:

http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main ... 3_plus.htm

There's quite a big gap between the Scythe Ninja and HR-03 heatsinks so you ought to be able to fit a quiet fan blowing down onto the HR-03 Plus.

Suspending the fan is better than having it touching the HR-03 cooler to reduce vibration.

This pic shows the original Thermalright HR-03 cooler mounted on a Asus P5K (non deluxe) motherboard.


Suspended fan in Antec Sonata case cooling Intel E6700@3ghz/ Nvidia GF700GTX

If necessary you can get a thin 12mm x 120mm x 20mm Yate Loon D12SL-12C fan now also.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=41795

.

thanks WR,

hmmm...I was juts looking at pictures of the vanilla and Deluxe versions and although there is some variation on layout, the HR-03 Plus could fit.

I wish I could get definitive confirmation on this though.







Thanks!

Looking at those pics the blue PCI Express slot on the Asus P5K Deluxe is actually a lot lower than on the Asus P5K (non deluxe).

If you count the PCI slots from the bottom of the case it's one slot lower down.

The Thermalright HR-03 series coolers have quite a large gap to the edge of the card also so won't foul the memory or stock Northbridge cooler.

You can see from this pic of an 8800GTX that it doesn't even overhang the GPU core fully which leaves a lot of free space between the cooler and motherboard.

From that pic it should be possible to estimate the gap to your memory modules.

I don't think there's going to be any issue unless you have large RAM heatspreaders such as on the Corsair Dominator modules.


Thermalright HR-03 Plus fitted on Nvidia 8800GTX card

The Thermalright HR-03 on a Nvidia 7900GTX card (same dimensions as a 8800GTS) fitted easily when mounted on a Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. That has the RAM slots in almost the same place as the P5K Deluxe and was nowhere near touching.



EDIT: I took the side off my brother's computer and measured the gap between the HR-03 cooler and the memory sticks on his Asus P5K (non deluxe) motherboard.

Using OCZ Platinum DDR2 RAM there is a 1.5cm gap between the RAM and HR-03 cooler.

The cooler overhangs the memory slots (even on the non deluxe motherboard) but only that extra bit of heatsink on the edge rather than the heatpipes.


Thermalright HR-03 (non Plus) clearance to OCZ Platinum DDR2 Modules

Thanks WR304!

I think I'm going to pull the trigger on the cooler.

I've spent US$ on 2 slot fans, repalced TIM with AS5, and even on 50% duty cycle, the thing is still noisy for my liking.

*replacing with AS5 dropped temps 7C on idle. The TIMs on my eVGA was exceptionally poor quality and implementation was equally bad. it was a mess!

PCI Slot fans don't move much air and are rarely quiet either.

The slot fans are probably adding more noise than you've saved from turning down the graphics card fan speed.

WR304, thanks for the info you gave in the last couple of pages, it was the last nudge to convince me to try watercooling my new video card.

It's weird, but my advice to people with older setups would be: upgrade to high end hardware


CPU idles at 30 °C - load (orthos) 41 °C.
S-flexE volted down to 600 RPM on a Thermalright 120 extreme.
This is amazing to me, my former CPU (old 3200+) would idle at 44 °C (with S2KCtl enabled).


The 8800 GTX with stock fan idled at 60 / 50 °C (core/ambient).
Loaded would get temps up to 83 / 67 °C.


[edit] The following temps have been changed after a proper waterblock attachment (see next page for details):
With the reserator 2 and waterblock it idles at 45 / 39 °C (core/ambient) - measured after gaming on low 2D clock.
When loaded (NVidia smoke demo, over 1 hour), 64 / 53 °C.
[/edit]

The results are ofcourse not as good as with your 8800 GTS (in fact, a little bit higher then I expected) but temps are lower then stock cooling and it's much more silent.
[As the card is a few days out of the box, things are running stock speeds (575/1800 MHz) even in 2D mode - RivaTuner is only used to check temps]

I still can't believe you can use an (almost) silent watercool system to cool a 8800 GTX... I'm glancing a lot to my lower right, too.


So now I'm "back to square one" my hard disk drives are too loud...

Thanks, again!

I'm glad you're pleased with the new PC.

With the watercooling are you sure you've got all the air bubbles out?

It took quite a while before they were cleared out of my loop.

What's a bit odd with my reserator 2 is that after about a month all the anti-corrosion additive seems to have seperated out. The water in the tubes is really clear compared to when I first put it together.

The water in the reservoir is really dark.

I've downloaded the Nvidia smoke demo but haven't left it running for long.

I'll do a test tomorrow to see what sort of temperatures my 8800GTS card gets with it.