[BLOG] An old X850 and a lot of patience - Part 7

lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
edited November -1 in Community
We're back in business. Our man JRW21 was kind enough to sell his X850XT to me for an awesome price—all in the interest of LUDICROUS SPEED. Thank you, sir. I will be putting it to very good use. Being a crossfire edition card, it was produced later than the original XTs. With any luck, the R480 core fabrication was refined by that point and it will overclock better than my Sapphire card.

While I'm waiting for JRW21's old X850 to arrive, I made some additional progress. I was able to find an old DangerDen Maze 4 GPU water block for a very reasonable price here in Canada. It came with some free Zalman ram sinks that I'll be putting to good use as well. I only have a single 120mm radiator water system to use with it, but since it will be dedicated to the X850, its like the cooling power of a Thermalright Ultra Extreme (or more) on the GPU. I need to source some 3/8" barbs for it, or get some 1/2 to 3/8 reducers as the system is not 1/2" ID.

As an added benefit, I plan to use much of the Danger Den mounting hardware to get the vapochill on the X850. I've already done some test mounts of the evaporator head and it will indeed fit. I'll have to hack it up a bit, but it should work just fine.

I wasn't originally planning to run the X850 on water, but I think it is a good intermediate step to do once I've completed the volt mods and I'm ready to do some additional runs. If this new X850 overclocks as well as my old one, I'm confident that I can come close to the record on water alone.

Fingers crossed! Stay tuned.

Comments

  • BuddyJBuddyJ Dept. of Propaganda OKC Icrontian
    That's awesome. Slide a pelt between the GPU and waterblock and see what happens ;)
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    I did electronics and fine detail soldering work for quite a while. Be careful not to use too much heat with the soldering iron, that is a good way to lift pads on the circuit board. And no more hot glue, just tape it for now if you have to. You should be in & out with the iron in 3-4 seconds at the most.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    Thanks for the tips, Tim. The soldering was surprisingly easy with the right iron and tip. I'll definitely steer clear of the hot glue for next time :)
Sign In or Register to comment.