The 1U Graphics Card Experiment
 

Okay, here's the deal. I'm going to attempt to attach a 1U P4 solid copper heatsink fan to my ATi 9500 Pro card. The old cooler I had (which was a step up from stock) was a piece of crap and is limiting my OC, so now I'm going to take the business to the next level. A picture of the cooler and box is at the end of this post.

I considered using a stock 2500+ cooler, but that would take up too much room and create a mess in my case. I want something sleek and sexy, not fat and arrogant.

I haven't checked to see if this bad boy will fit on my card, but if it does I'll be putting on a full power 60mm fan and drilling the mounting holes out for mounting. I figure that if this can cool a hot server chip it should handle my 9500 ... especially once the fan gets buffed. I can't currently OC my card past 310/305 (275/275 stock) without heat generated artifacts (massive) occuring during 3D acceleration. I'm also going to take the small heatsinks from a series of Vantec Iceberq Cu installs and dremel them into ramsinks and will mount them with frag tape. When all is said and done I WANT 360/330 or higher. I'm desperate for better FPS and I don't want to upgrade ... though I suppose that if I ended up upgrading I'd sell this modded card for retail prices in a heartbeat.

Here is the cooler:

been done b4, but ill be waiting...

Airspirt:

After OC my 9700 for a while and using watercooling on the core, I would say that your cooler idea is only half the problem. I am sure that you are going to have to kick up the core voltage on the 9500 a bit in order to reach your goal.

Dont get me wrong, that HSF should take care of keeping the core cool enough but from my experience, a voltage mod will be enevidable for you to reach your 360 core speed.

Good luck

Let us know what happens :)

Okay, I couldn't use that sink ... too wide and I didn't want to cut it so ....

I used a 2500+ retail sink instead with a 60mm Antec smart fan on it. I'm now at 373.5 core and 310 mem (it won't go faster at all, rrr). No voltage mod was needed. Now I am prolly going to sell this card to my brother so I can attempt to do the same to a new 9800 Pro ....

I'll have pics soon. I ended up drilling my foot with a cobalt bit in a dremel during this experience ... the dremel rotated so fast it bent the bit out and it snapped ... the part that was still attached jumped and dug into my left big toe. I might give you pics of that too just for kicks.

Could a heatsink be made to fit over both the GPU and RAM? It'd have to accomodate the two different levels...

where can i buy that cooler?

my 0.02 cents
 

>Could a heatsink be made to fit over both the GPU and RAM? It'd
>have to accomodate the two different levels...

I think 3, if you are considering a standard heatsink. I think you forgot the SMD's. There are several between the memory and the GPU , and between the memory chips. If you check Bladerunner's blocks, you will see several grooves that he had to make to avoid hitting those same components. So you'd need a layer for the GPU, a layer for the memory and a layer which will include the "holes" to avoid the SMD's.

OR , you can take a large copper plate , with a thick base, and mill out all the unnecessary copper leaving only extrudes directly over the contact points (GPU and Memory) but with sufficient height between to miss all the SMD's.

The GPU sits higher than the RAM right?

I'd use a simple heatsink, drill holes through it, to accomodate the odd components, and shim it, so that there's a contact with the ram. Shims would be a thin copper layer, thermal epoxied to the heatsink.

That's if I don't watercool it. Just a thought.

Okay, I picked up a 9800 Pro and moved it to that with some ramsinks. I'm at 445/365 on that chugging along pretty. More things to post pictures of ... though the cards look almost identical.

Pic1 of 9500 Pro inside:

9800 Pro outside:

You can see in that previous picture how I chopped some fins down, right? The method is to measure out your 57mm holes or whatnot, drill them through, then dremel out the fins from the outside to 1 inside of the hole (top of bolt). When you put the casing on for the fan mount, it recreates the air-flow path.

I used a Dynatron DC1206BM-R1 Copper CPU cooler on my 9700. I was a easy fit. It being a 1U HSF only cost you your first PCI slot. I am not using the second slot either for better air flow. Later I found a nice write up on how to do it.

The HeatSink

the Write up

Good luck with your Mod.

There are passive-fin 1U coolers available, for both P4 & 603s.
About 25-27mm high copper fins, fan-less so cheaper.

For cooling, try to use an 80x15mm Panaflo fan. They are
hard to get, but offer good airflow in a compact package.


Sticking to the 1U theme, it's common to use a 90-degree
PCI adapter in the last motherboard socket on M-ATX boards.
That extends the PCI card horizontally out beyond the board.

Thus potentially allowing a very tall/large heatsink/fan combo,
such as a standard Panaflo 80mm L1A or similar. Even at 25cfm
that is enough to cool 125W at a very near silent 21dB(A).

You would have to verify your case permits such, but it is a
way of "lengthening" the motherboard re cooling/airflow etc.
Most cases will not permit it re "cards running to the floor".
However, if not an ATX board it's possible it may work ok.

Just a thought re changing the physical environment.

Heres my version of this mod...

http://users.bigpond.net.au/poojou/images/dscf0001.jpg

this is a cooljag 1U cooler - the base was polished/lapped to a high shine like this

http://users.bigpond.net.au/poojou/i...gfxcooler1.jpg

I heard that some models of the 9500 non-PRO can be moded to be 9700 PRO and 9800 PRO, but they have to be an 256-bit channel versions (Power Color seems to be one of them)

Does anyone have more info about this?