Got My VC Waterblock

[madmat]

I got the waterblock for my vid card in today and got it installed before cooking supper and I must say it's nice, so far I've got the core running at 505mhz with no artifacting and I'm letting the mem stay at 953 while I test the overclockability of the core under the new setup.
Here's a peek at how it came out. With a bit of dremel persuasion I was able to massage the back sink so that I can still have my ram helped to cool.

[Dodger]

Awesome, but I am having a few questions...

1.) what video card is that?
2.) where did you buy that watercooler?
3.) how much did it cost?
4.) and what were the stock speeds?

[Thrax]

Looks like an Asus 5900 ULTRA with the sink removed.

If that's so, it's 450/850.


The cooler I think is a Koolance CHC-A09, and that should be 30-40$.

[Dodger]

Excellent, now all I need to do is find out where to do buy one and i'm set!

[Thrax]

Be it noted that the Swiftech MCW50 is superior.

But you can find a listing for the Koolance block on www.nextag.com .

[madmat]

I got it local and they got it from Sharka and with markup, let's just say I paid through the nose for it.
I know there are better ones out there but since I run a Koolance system with its 8mm I.D. hose, it was the simplest solution for my setup.
The ramsinks around the cooler come with the cooler but the included thermal tape isn't exactly the best out there, I had to replace one of the ramsink's tape with some 3M black thermal tape as the hose touching it during the cards installation popped it off.
I wish they included thermal epoxy with the cooler but at least with the tape you can pull the sinks off to transfer the cooler to another card.
I'm seeing idle GPU temps of 36-38C. and load temps of 42-44C as opposed to idle temps of 63C.
BTW, Thrax was right on with the make of the card, ASUS 9950U-TD 256 5900 Ultra.

[Geeky1]

Madmat, looks great!

I'm not sure how you have your case set up as far as fans go, but you may see better results from the RAM if you put in a Zalman fan bracket, or a blowhole or something to get the air moving across those RAMsinks.

You will certainly get better results (if temperature is the limiting factor) by removing the thermal tape and replacing it with arctic silver's alumina epoxy.

And, you may also want to try upgrading the stock 'sinks to something bigger.

[NoFuture]

Maybe Volt mod too if you have the soldering skillz. That would give a couple nice MHZ more...

[Dodger]

Thrax had this to say
Be it noted that the Swiftech MCW50 is superior.

But you can find a listing for the Koolance block on www.nextag.com .

Ooh, not too shaby. I'll deffinently look into buying that along with some RAM heat sinks!:)

[madmat]

Thanks man, I'll look into fabbing a fan bracket to move air across the ramsinks as I don't want to slice up the case window and when the warranty period for the card's gone I'll glue the sinks down but the one drawback to gluing them is that I'm stuck with them for good.
I've been able to get better speeds from the ram with this setup (953mhz vs. 930mhz) I think because the ram on the GPU side of the card is no longer getting heated up by the common sink being shared with the graphics core.
I tell you though when that one sink popped off I was wishing that I could find thermal epoxy here local because I'd have got some, I was that upset with the shoddy tape.

[Geeky1]

Personally, I wouldn't go to the effort of making one, unless you already have some sheet steel/aluminum sitting around... The Zalman FB123, which comes with a 92mm fan, is only $14 (free shipping) here:
http://www.mpcparts.com/itemsearch.asp?search=fb123

and they have decent feedback on resellerratings:
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2094.html

[madmat]

I've got one of those dual 80mm fan brackets laying around that attaches to the pci cover screw holes but it needs to be adapted because if you have a card wider than the slot cover it won't fit.
My Audigy, vid card and hardware modem are all too wide to allow it to work properly so I'm going to do what I like to do; change, adapt, modify.
I don't order stuff online because I don't believe in credit cards or have a bank account, yeah I'm an anachronisim but I don't have a huge C.C. debt to pay either.
The downside is that when I have the local computer boutique order stuff for me I pay a fortune in mark up (usually 27% :()

[Thrax]

'S'all about self control.