need some measures for a 9800 block

[-J-]

somewone would be so kind to share with me the design of the base for a 9800 block?

i need basically the XY positions, size and height of the squares that make contact with the core and mems. XY coordinates for the mounting holes also usefull.

any other usefull info is welcomed too, such as links to other 9800 blocks (preferably core+mem blocks, but mem blocks only also welcomed)

thx

[ChrioN]

read the sticky page 2, its a blueprint of an all in wonder 9700

[-J-]

but 9700 and 9800 arent somewhat different?? specially the AIW ??

[ChrioN]

I don't know. sorry. but the core and the holes are the same, if you want to only cool the gpu.

[-J-]

no, i want to make a cpu+mems block.

ive been looking my card, and the only thing i would really need, is the diference of height between the core and the mems.

i can handle the rest.

[BladeRunner]

From another topic here I touched on this subject, the reason why you can only give a loose answer when someone asks what is the height difference from the core (or IHS) to the ram chips.



note dimension A in the second image is 2.80 - 3.30, which is quite a big margin

Ok so that's an FX not a 9800 but it will be similar.

Making a one piece block so it effectively contacts both GPU/VPU & Ram is not as easy as it may appear unless you have access to high quality CNC, or plan to use a chewing gum Tim, which could compromise the performance.

I'm not certain what the height difference on my 9800 is but it wasn't a major consideration due to using separate blocks for both.

this maybe useful too:-

[-J-]

using AS5 shouldnt i be able to cover that 0,5mm variation ??

[ChrioN]

its easy to just mill. or are you planning on using a drillpress? Do you have a blueprint of a 9800? I would apreciate it if you post it here

[-J-]

a friend is going to make the base for me with a mill, and i will make the channels with my drill press.

i cant pay for all the channels made with the mill.

[JFettig]

Does anyone know if the ram layout and dimentions are the same on all newer ati cards with bga ram? Thats something that would be interesting to know for designing purposes.

Jon

[ChrioN]

word.

[-J-]

what do you mean by all newer ati cards?

[JFettig]

radeon 9500 on up.


Jon

[-J-]

well, layout differs between most cards.

about ram and core heights, i dont really know. i believe the ram height should be the same, as BGA ram chips are always similar.

about the core, dont know.

[JFettig]

Alright. The main thing Im wondering is if the placement of the ram chips and the components around them are similar, I would like to make some ram blocks that I could have for a few cards.

Jon

[ChrioN]

I though many cards shared the same layout...hmm...must be the reason why no company have made any fully cooled gpu-blocks

[|kbn|]

if its the same layout as a 9700 then I have measurements you could use.
I know there are some diferences though, for example there is no heatspreader on the back of 9800, some of the chips on the back have been moved around, and the 9800 uses a 1" molex doesnt it? while the 9700 used a 1/2" floppy drive type power connector..
4.6mm is the size of the ram chips from both sides including the pcb between them on 9700, that would probably be the same..

[BladeRunner]

Been meaning to post here but been busy recently........

This is the main problem, they are all different. Even same model cards by different manufactures can be different so unless you have one of every card it's impossible to make one cooler fit all version of one model let alone all 9xxx range for instance.

Yes there will be a lot that are the same when they stay strictly to the reference layout, for instance my 9700 pro cooler made for connect 3D fitted a black Sapphire 9700 pro. I have encountered makes and version differences all along when making card coolers. You have to appreciate they are not designed to make air-cooling easy let alone water-cooling.

It's something I'm not overly bothered about because if you make a block-set to fit 9800XT for example, there is no way, (even with inside information), that you'd be able to ensure it fits the next top end card from ATI. I went through a lot of this when making the prototypes for Gainward's cool FX and just a simple thing like change of cap type resulted in a ram contact issue, (short out problem), when fitted to a later card. The revisions they go through can change wildly in layout too. Another one for instance was the Gainward Ti4600 cooler... wouldn't fit the Asus Ti4600 because of an extra IC on the card.

It is extremely difficult, and is why we have only seen, "feeble attempts" by the card makers so far. it's just to costly for such a small market / card run. These are the types of things anyone wanting to make a full card cooler solution is up against and unless the card designs change significantly with a move to PCI express I don't see it getting any easier in the near future.

I guess the only other thing that might help is if the DDR3 runs blisteringly hot, then they might have to leave plenty of room for heatsink mounting around the ram chips.

To sum up:- make a cooler to fit the card you have in front of you only and if it's reference then it will most likely fit a good percentage of other makes of the exact same model. It looks like my 9800 pro (connect 3D) cooler will fit an Asus 9800XT, but I will have to mill additional relief's in the ram blocks base as they have relocated the holes near the ram and in doing so some surface mounts.

[|kbn|]

I look forward to when cards will eventually become in some way standardised, so that the GPU's are socketed instead of BGA and slots for ram making the card essentially just a mobo for the gfx. That is one thing that I doubt we will see any time soon though, and we may even never see it.
Im also hoping with the pci express cards that the gpu is on the back of the card, so it faces up instead of down. it would give more space to cooling solutions and prevent pci cards from getting blocked.

[BladeRunner]

Some VGA cards were socketed, (at least the ram), back in the day.. It's not really practical now as they change so often and the design is a whole the PCB quality being equally as important to performance..

Part of the PCI Express transition is to get the cards the other way up, (correct way up for cooling in a tower PC), at least that is what I assumed, haven't been keeping up with the development of the format though so I maybe wrong..

What I'd like to see is duel slots so we can have two top end cards in a PC & switch between them, (ATI & Nvidia for instance). They would have to work on solving the current driver conflicts with both installed but I can't see why it couldn't be made to work.

Silly dreaming now.... but even better would be SLI ability cards on the two slots, twin R400's in SLI........ then maybe we would finally have card performance in front of the new release games for once....