Dan from Danger Den recommended this site..very nice place:)

[Think]

I've ventured in the water cooling scenario with much intrepedation but have accomplished the task without too many bumps or bruises

I decided to buy the EXOS external cooler but opted for the Maze 3 and Radeon waterblock from DangerDen. He shipped them with 1/4" inlets and I must say that they are doing a fine job except.....

The ATI RADEON was poorly designed!. They have a copper shim around the GPU that doesn't make contact with the HSF, so they compensated by putting on thermal interface material....a big gob of it. No wonder the temps were hitting over 50C with the factory HSF!!!.

Well, when I placed the water block on it with some Arctic Silver II compound, the temps became worse; causing freezing and lock ups. When I removed the waterblock, that's when I noticed that it wasn't making contact.

So these are my options including what Dan had suggested:

1) sand down the shim
2) deep freeze the card to harden the glue and pry the shim off.

Now, I took a look at that shim and that sucker is on hard!. I need to know if anyone has been successful in removing it.

PS, I did a search and found a good article with pics describing the problem on the Radeon 9500 and the 9700's:

http://www.frostytech.com/articlevie...id=1288&page=1

Thanks and hello
Mark

[bigben2k]

Welcome to ProCooling!


Personally, I would opt for sending the block to a machinist, to have a groove cut, but it is possible to remove the ATI shim.

IMO, I think it's best to leave the PC components intact, as much as possible.

[g.l.amour]

yeah, you never know when u need that warranty

[gmat]

Seconded. The groove cut seems like the safe option.
Depends on how crazy you are, and how far you're ready to go (i.e. how much money you're ready to throw away)

[ambient]

Here's another idea. Why not just add a second base plate to the waterblock, i.e, a smaller plate that only covers the core and not the copper ring-rim. Of course thermal transfer would be quite as good, but may be very close.

[cybrsamurai]

amb, Thats what i had to do to get over the ram sinks with my GeForce3 Ti500 the transfer seemed to work ok. I used artic allumina glue stuff and glued a small copper block to the bottom of my waterblock clamped the two together really hard and it seemed to work fine (it was really a heavy waterblock to put on a video card) I had to use one of those plastic clip things to reinforce the card.

[ambient]

do you still get good temps with the WB stack on the GF3?

[cybrsamurai]

yeah, my temps were fine. I didnt have any way to test the before and after as I phisically couldnt mount the waterblock before i glued the other piece of copper on it. I was able to get a really good OC.. I cant recall exactly what it was but i remember my Core OC was above average. Ill get some pics of the block up as soon as i get back from school.

[HMB]

Originally posted by bigben2k
IMO, I think it's best to leave the PC components intact, as much as possible.

I couldnt agree more with you but I ripped the shim off without putting the card in the freezer

[Voodle]

The shim's easy to take off, just slide the blade of a craft knife in between it and carefully push it off - I didn't need to freeze the card to remove the shim on my 9700.

It can probably be glued back into place without the change being too obvious as well.

[Think]

Just got back from work.

Thanks for the replies and suggestions. I think that shaving the waterblock would be the best solution to this. I'm not too keen on adding another piece of copper to compensate for the gap nor do I like the idea of removing that shim.

Wondering if I can do it with a dremel tool?

...hmm, I'll have to think this through.

Thanks again...mind if I stick around this place and make it one of my homes

[jtroutma]

Hmmmmm... there must be different revisions of the Radeon 9700 and 9500 floating around. I have worked with two of them already and both times, the shim and the core were the same level. I checked this with a razor blade and the core was almost the perfect hight for the shim.

Having said that, I have not had a problem installing and using my Radeon block on either card without removing the shim.

<shrug>

Side note: I plan on Vmoding and pelting my Radeon here in a couple of days anyways. Wondering if I should remove the shim for that or not................

[bigben2k]

Originally posted by Think
Thanks again...mind if I stick around this place and make it one of my homes

A fellow Canadian is always welcome

[BladeRunner]

Yeah I think milling the edge of the block is the best solution, and it's what I did with my VPU block.

I hope to start making a limited run of VPU blocks soon, especially for the R 9700 / R 9500 that will have both a milled edge to avoid the shim, and a better than usual retaining method, as well as being all copper, soldered construction and shiny.

will probably be very similar to the one I made for the R300 water-cooling project.

[nexxo]

jtroutma is right: there are two versions about, one with shim level to core.

Rather than modding a DangerDen block, you could buy a block from OverclockedPC as pictured below:



-which has a groove that accomodates the shim in question.

[jtroutma]

I should mention that BOTH the Radeons that I have worked with that have the flush shim with the core have been ATI direct cards, not 3rd party cards with R300 cores.

Hope this helps everyone.

[gmat]

Originally posted by BladeRunner

will probably be very similar to the one I made for the R300 water-cooling project.

Wow, impressive as always. Any project planned for the Geforce FX ? I'm curious to see how ppl manage to watercool that one down - and how it fares in a fanless PC...

[BladeRunner]

I don't think there is any intention to have the shim higher than the core by design, it's just very hard to mass produce a system like that with super low tolerances, at the cards cost level. The shims height in relation to the core probably varies from card to card and some may seem or actually be level, but unless measured with sophisticated equipment I guess you'd never be 100% sure.

I used a small new steel rule across the shim in a few places, while using the laser from my temp sensor I could see the light under the rule so knew there was a slight gap. This gap though was less that the thickness of one piece of standard weight printer paper. The printer paper measured 0.09mm with a quality micrometer.


gmat

Hopefully I have G-Force FX covered, I think you'll like it ......... all I need now is a card

[Think]

Originally posted by BladeRunner
Yeah I think milling the edge of the block is the best solution, and it's what I did with my VPU block.

I hope to start making a limited run of VPU blocks soon, especially for the R 9700 / R 9500 that will have both a milled edge to avoid the shim, and a better than usual retaining method, as well as being all copper, soldered construction and shiny.

will probably be very similar to the one I made for the R300 water-cooling project.

Blade Runner?...by any chance, is your name John?
(If it is then you'll understand the following comment, if not then just trickle over to the next posting )

I read about that review about a month ago and emailed the person who designed and created that beast of a Radeon cooler and asked if they would be willing to mill one for me. I believe that the summary of the reply was that the work envolved in doing so would be rather expensive and time consuming for him to do...etc, etc.

That is some nice work

[BladeRunner]

Think

Yep, I'm still trying to get an initial kit made. To do this I will have to get the main parts made by other sources, This is in hand but things like this don't happen overnight. It will all depend in the end if the total cost of getting the parts made together with the material costs, fittings and consumables used plus the time each one takes to solder and finish etc can a be done for a total price that anyone will want to pay?.

Ideally I'd have upwards of a 1/4 of a million £ to throw at this venture to get me going with my own equipment, but as all I have is around £1000 It is going to be a struggle. I do get a lot of mail about the coolers and like you I get asked if I can make one for them, so this is why I'm trying. What I probably meant when I replied to you is I can't make one offs individually as it's to time consuming, it would have to be a form of small production to a set design for it to be at all viable.

[Think]

Well good luck with the venture John and keep me in mind when an initial product run has been completed

[jtroutma]

BladeRunner:

Too bad you cant get together with another manufacturer and do a join venture.... Like Danger Den or the likes

Oh well, we will just sit here and admire excellent crafts work

[DJ-Quack]

Are you sure the 9700 with the shim is making proper contact? I've worked with 4 9700s, and even though the shim seemed level, it always needed to be removed . Incidentally, this includes Rev 3 9700s with the red anodized heatspreaders attached by nylon pushpins.