first of all a picture of the card itself.
A few words about stock cooling:
BAD. BAD. BAD.
i enabled temp reporting through bios mod, i had 60 degrees in idle and after 5 minutes of rthdribl i had 89 degrees, and i knew i had enough.
decided to take the whole ting apart and see what i could do t improve things. what i found:
1. peanut butter style TIM all over the GPU, and i mean THICK, just like u would use on bread.
2. thermal sticker of some sort for the bridge.
3. badly polished HS....and these are kind words.
conclusion: i did expect things not to look good, but not this bad
What i did:
1. Cleaned up all that butter, applied some regular Thermalright TIM, had nothing else around the house, applied like on processors, very thin layer.
2. rebooted the whole thing...temp was 75 degrees
i was in shock, started rthdribll....temp went up to 105 degrees and i knew i had to stop it.3. reexamined the board,
SHOCK #2: the HS was not making contact with the GPU...now i realized why they buttered the GPU, to make contact with the HS...through the TIM.
Today i took a good look at my A64 venice cooler and decided - it was going in to save the honour of my video card.
I have previous experience with making and active gf2mx passive, but u have to admit these are completely different things.
What i did:
first of all i established it's orientation exact position....of the fan. i tried to keep some room for a separate bridge HS but it was impossible, and i found a position where the entire a64 stock heatsink can cover the bridge at an acceptable level.
----space for a top view picture of the card-----
Then i tried to devise a clip system. on my gf2mx i used a piece of copper wire, 2-3mm thick,driven between the fins of the heatsink...well that's what i did here. I found the same piece of wire, cut up about 12cmm of it. bent two circles at the ends, the adjusted and adjusted it, until the circles were overlaping the holes on the card's PCB.
at first i tried to use screws and rubber washers to secure it, but my dad showed me the exact SMD parts that might be damaged, so i didn't use screws...but instead used the cards...push through....things, i don't know how to call them, they have a spring on it and they click on the other side, and stay there.
here is one of the clips in position
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/the_real_ ... m=639a.jpg
and here is the other one
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/the_real_ ... m=3ddb.jpg
the size of it all...
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/the_real_ ... m=def7.jpg
so the heatsink is held in place by self made clip that uses the white things to secure it, and it is quite stiff might i add.
I've also used some rubber feet to stabilize the heatsink on the sides, the stock heatsink had them so i borrowed them also
.Rebooted the pc, all was fine, at 12volts, tons of air were blown through the fan. started rthdribl, and then i noticed the fan was temp controlled
..started ramping up really bad at 69 degrees. then i decided to use temp controling feature, but with max 5v on the fan = hooked up the fan to the 5v line. it is still sort of noisy, but if u look at the temps they are pretty decent, and i could probably go lower with the max temp.edit: - it seems i was wrong about the noisyness - NB fan, that was close to the board fooled me. so i put the NB fan at 5V, and the GPU cooling is still quieter=i can't hear it, i can still hear the NB at 5V.
Now for temp results:
Conditions: open case, MB placed horizontally.
Ambient temperature: in the 30's, summer.
idle temp - 56 degrees - fan rpm was between 1100 and 1300.
load temp - ran rthdribl for 20minutes, temp did not go above 65 degrees - the fan controlling circuit kicked in an upped the RPM's from 1300 to 1800, and kept it at 64-65.
edit:2 hereConclusion: for something that is as big as the VM-101, and VF-700, it keeps the GPU very cool....don't know how the vf-700 is noise wise, but the stock AMD fan @5V is below the bluestorm 400W in noise levels[the bluestorm has a stupid clicking noise], in an open case experiment like this one.. u can buy a 15mm silent fan, if u really want to and the entire solution can be ever quieter, at the expense of the 2 pci slots.
This is a cooling solution that won't cost you 30USD, unless u want spend the cash exclusively for the zalman looks, in which case this thread was not of much use to you
Note: these are open case tests. i'd expect temps to go up by 10 degrees, in the current layout, once my wood case is completed.