The story of my 6800GT mod :)

They make noise, too.

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niels007
Posts: 451
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 2:18 am

The story of my 6800GT mod :)

Post by niels007 » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:11 am

Hey guys,

Since I got a cheap and 'decent enough' Nvidia 6800GT I've almost gotten used to the noise it makes. However it made my DIY wooden case ( http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=27717 ) rather useless as the GFx fan was about 5x louder than the whole system before. So, this 6800 had to be modded, a bit like my previous 9700Pro AIW ( http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=27159 )

This time however I had no suitable left over heatsinks and I didn't want to have a really weighty sollution. The stock heatsink is minute, and with the fan at 'minimum' speed (still loud) things where hot, about 105c when gaming. I then saw that a local pc store had Arctic Cooling heatsinks, including the Accelero X1 which is lightweight, has some heatpipes, and a lot more surface area than the stock cooler. I wasn't going to just plug it in, I'd want the cooling to come from my front case fan once again. Here goes!

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The original taken off, weird cloths type things used on the RAM

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thermal pads on the RAM, nice thin layer of AS5 on the core..

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Its a bit bigger than the old one eh.. :)

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careful construction of a fan adapter..

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front to back airflow through the duct.



So how does it work? Better than expected. The heatsink fins aren't alligned with the airflow. The reason I just 'went and did it' was the tinyness of the original heatsink: surely any airflow over a bigger heatsink should give good enough results.. The result of this very academic (ahem..) approach:

Before:
Idle: 74c
Load: 102c

After the mod:
Idle: 63c
Load: 87c

The nexus is hooked up to the graphics card, with rivatuner set to 25% which seems to be about 600RPM. It stays at that RPM in 3D applications as its still cool enough. I might solder a resistor inline to make 25% ~400rpm and have it ramp up under 3D gaming. But with a 600RPM nexus.. its barely audible so I'll probably leave it as is.

Success! :)

Niels

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