R9800pro mod.

lhgpoobaa · Aug 29, 2003

Last nite i finished attaching the ramsinks to my new R9800pro

Its the 128mb version, so comes without any ramsinks.
Big mofo black ones added, 8 in total using arctic silver epoxy resin.
Good stuff.
Transfers heat and is virtually unbreakable.
But that means care must be taken in application.

U can see shots here. sorry about the image quality
<A HREF="http://lhgpoobaa.customer.netspace.net.au/R9800pro-02.jpg" target="_new">http://lhgpoobaa.customer.netspace.net.au/R9800pro-02.jpg</A>
<A HREF="http://lhgpoobaa.customer.netspace.net.au/R9800pro-04.jpg" target="_new">http://lhgpoobaa.customer.netspace.net.au/R9800pro-04.jpg</A>

Ramsink size is approx 16mm wide x 12mm long x 16mm high.

OC RESULTS:
Stock = 340Mhz (680)
Best OC before ramsinks = 360Mhz (720)
Best OC after ramsinks = 372Mhz (744)

Ramsinks feel only luke warm to the touch, around the same temp as the GPU heatsink.

COST:
8 bux for the ramsinks from Jcar (an automotive audio and electrical store)
AS epoxy resin which i allready had sitting around

All in all a good mod. Takes a bit of nerve messing with an expensive card... but time and care is all thats needed. And a fair bit of time for the epoxy to cure.

Not only do i get a 12Mhz higher OC i also get a card that is nicely Summerproofed.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

RobD · Aug 29, 2003

Good work fella! Couldn't wait to mess with your new card could you?

Shovel wielders don't get any

lhgpoobaa · Aug 29, 2003

nup.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

RobD · Aug 29, 2003

Looks good though and the results speak for themselves. Bloody show off.

Shovel wielders don't get any

scottchen · Aug 29, 2003

My Sapphire 9800pro did 370 without ramsinks, oh well i guess i was just kinda lucky.

-Intel PIV 2.4C @ 3.84G -Asus P4P800 -OCZ Gold 2x256 3700EL memory @ 256mhz 2.5-3-3-7 -Sapphire 9800pro @ 490/780 -SB audigy -80G Maxtor Diamond Plus9 Ultra ATA-133 hdd -450 Enermax PSU

lhgpoobaa · Aug 30, 2003

Indeed. given that the ram is 'rated' for ~350mhz you were very lucky.

I wouldnt want to run at 370 for long periods of time without ramsinks though...
Thought of installing some?

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

ufo_warviper · Aug 30, 2003

I wish I were rich like you Poobaa. *Steams with rage, FURY, MAXX, and astronomical envy* - just kidding. I'm glad the mod was successful. You shoould be kicking high framerates witht that beast for a VERY long time. BTW, Do manufactures still provide warrenties even if you OC the video products? Poor boys like me will dissagree with Eden about the 9700 non-pro being mainstream vs. high end enthusiast (I think the latter), sorry Eden.

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!Edited by UFO_WARVIPER on 08/30/03 00:29 AM.

lhgpoobaa · Aug 30, 2003

I doubt it. Be very hard to get an RMA on it, even though i could probably show the ramsinks havnt done any damage at all.

And i WAS poor once... hang on... after this purchace im poor again

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

Crashman · Aug 31, 2003

Installed ramsinks on my Radeon LE (6ns DDR) and it's been supporting 183MHz (DDR366) without overheating ever since.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

Willamette_sucks · Aug 31, 2003

Nice PooBaa, what games or applications have you used to test the memory at overclocked speeds, specifically at 372mhz?

"Mice eat cheese." - Modest Mouse

"Every Day is the Right Day." -Pink Floyd

ufo_warviper · Aug 31, 2003

Which LE, R200 LE?

My OS features preemptive multitasking, a fully interactive command line, & support for 640K of RAM!

Crashman · Aug 31, 2003

Radeon LE DDR TVO, same PCB as the Radeon DDR 64MB VIVO, but with half the memory and no video input chip.

Heck, if I bought the missing parts, I could make a Radeon DDR VIVO out of it.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

grassapa · Aug 31, 2003

good job poo, maybe you should put some paddings on those bad, sharp, hot ramsinks so hammie wont hurt his lil feet. by the way, is hammie still alive? can i please hear him squeak once? please?

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My computer is so fast it proves the theory of relativity wrong...

jiffy · Aug 31, 2003

Looks nice! Do you plan to add a HS to the top for the processor?

Added to WS question, what settings?

I quickly tried 375MHz on my Hercules. It ran UT @ 2x 8x OpenGL and GTA III 2x 8x 3D and the Ram were just starting to get warm to the touch.

As soon as I turned to 4x 8x I had to lower the Ram quite a bit, UT had a lot of artifacts, while GTA III was just starting to show them.

When Application Preference was check I stretch to 380MHz.

It would seem in my case that AA/AF has something to say about the OC, because the card will OC less, the higher the AA/AF is set. And heat doesn’t seem to be a problem, since the card doesn’t have a chance to heat up, feels cool and I felt it extremely hotter while @ stock before.

At the moment it’s pretty cool in my place, but during the day it can get pretty warm and just running the card @ stock and high details can cause the card to get very hot. I might be lucky my card came with a HS or I could be freezing up. I did add a couple ignorant turbo case fans that I can turn on while gaming, because of the heat and I do OC from time to time on some games, but I yet to see where it helped, considering I still had to lower the game setting. It might depend on the game, but I think the OC is close to useless. Take a P4, now there is an OC.

lhgpoobaa · Aug 31, 2003

Hmmmm. Most interesting.
I didnt know that about the AA/AF.
Hardly suprising really considering the nature of AA and Ansio.

Maybe thats why some folks are getting 370+ while i only got 360 stable without heatsinks...

All my testing is done at my "standard" settings, namely 4x AA and 16x Ansio.
Lots of RAM intensive calculations there.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

lhgpoobaa · Aug 31, 2003

Mostly my good ole faves... Freelancer Serious sam and Will Rock.

Freelancer seemed most sensitive to excessive core overclocks, and willrock was good in picking up artefacts due to excessive memory overclock.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

EvilHammie · Aug 31, 2003

*SQUEAK!*

[snuggles warm ramsinks]

Friend of Fredi and his Cables.

jiffy · Aug 31, 2003

Yeah, I’ll have to keep that in mind myself, and test @ 4x and 16x if I ever decide to stay OC.

The first and really only time I felt the need to OC was playing NFS Hot Pursuit 2. The game running @ full detail and believe 4x and 8x wasn’t 100% smooth. It was ticking me off, I OC my card as much as I could, also OC my P4 to 3.5 and it still didn’t help. I even consider Vaper cooling, hmm $700+ to OC some more I decided to settle down and lower the game settings a little, lol. Turning down settings with the latest card stinks, but no where near what my GF4 was like, and with AA/AF enable I can’t complain

, but I’ll be first in line when the new cards come out.

4Ryan6 · Aug 31, 2003

Do you have any helpful tips to pass on using the Artic Silver Epoxy?
Did you go by the websites instructions?
The RAM chips really sit low on the card, it looks like a really nerve racking procedure, since the Artic Silver Epoxy according to the website can conduct electricity, what special precautions did you take.
I'm curious because i'm considering doing this myself, and it looks like you've done an excellent job.

Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

4Ryan6 · Aug 31, 2003

Also I'm seriously curious now so don't go blasting me for asking this question, why on the back of the card did you align the top set of heatsinks perpendicular to the bottom ones, instead of parallel with the bottom ones since your airflow is basically pulling across them from the front to your rear fans? Were you just matching the front setup?

Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

Willamette_sucks · Aug 31, 2003

Hmm, that IS interesting. Never thought of that before. I've done my testing in games with 4x or 6xAA and 16x aniso, and at that I can do 380 on the memory on all the games I've tried so far. I havn't run it like that for hours and hours though so I'm not sure if it could keep it up forever.
I also test with 3dmark 2003 with AA/aniso OFF and at 380 I get minor artifacts in the mother nature benchmark, which seems to be the most sensative thing to memory overclocks I've found thus far.

"Mice eat cheese." - Modest Mouse

"Every Day is the Right Day." -Pink Floyd

grassapa · Aug 31, 2003

HAMMIE! youre there, my favorite hamster. just be careful with those sharpy ramsinks hun. I HEART YOU

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My computer is so fast it proves the theory of relativity wrong...

lhgpoobaa · Sep 1, 2003

not running smooth eh?
I had a similar problem with freelancer.
Turns out the problem was tasks running in the background... even benign low priotity things like nDU meter, a network monitor.
Best results if im running bare.

I havnt tried NFS hot persiut 2, but i know that need for speed: porsche runs BEAUTIFLY at any resolution i can throw at it, full detail levels and max eyecandy

With a card like the 9800pro though i believe you are just SILLY not to use some level of AA and Ansio. Makes things look much creamier.
I dont think i will ever go back to non-AA now.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

lhgpoobaa · Sep 1, 2003

Actually ryan the arrangment of heatsinks was mostly dictated by space.
The card looks clean, but near the ramchips are raised resistor components (or whatever they are).

So i had to take care as to the orientation of the ramsinks, given that they are considerably larger than the chips.
So curiously that verticle/horizonal arrangement worked well for both the front and back ramsinks.

And also, the bottom most ramsinks on the front and back were getting close to the agp slot retention clip, so i put ramsinks horizontal to get more room down there.

Yes, before i started gluing i took some time determining what fitted and what didnt.

Clearance is about 2mm at worse between the ramsinks and the raised components. Pretty good.

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

lhgpoobaa · Sep 1, 2003

The application of the AS epoxy resin was not hard. You just have to take your time and be confident and DONT make mistakes LOL.
I used an antistatic sheet and a bit of foam so as not to break anything.

Like i said in my other post, the ramsink orientation was mostly determined by components on the PCB.
Most are of lower profile than the ramchips, but there are larger resistors that are higher than the chips, thus the orientation was determined by clearance issues. Also had to make sure the sinks where touching any mobo components and as far away as posible from the AGP lock.

With the AS what i did was:
Squeeze out a small amount of equal measure of the 2 parts.
Mix well on a sheet of white paper for 3 mins using a wooden toothpick, trying not to spread it out too far.

Using the toothpick apply a small amount to each chip. A bit of judgment is required here.
Enough to cover most of the core, but i didnt go right to the edge as i didnt want it oozing down the sides. 1mm or so around the edge not covered, and moderately smoothed out in the middle.

I then lined up the sink, put it on and GENTLY twisted it side to side to smooth out the contact, spread the AS and get the alignment correct. Thus you need enough to cover the core with a bit left over for spreading and full bondage.

As far as i could tell i got no oozing down the sides for any of the chips and contact on most of the surface of the chips.

I did the frontside first, and left it to dry for a day.(cauz i had to go to bed then work the next day). The backside i let dry for 3 hours or so, but didnt really try any serious overclocking that night. let the epoxy cure properly.

All in al a very pro job

My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon

Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.

R9800pro mod.

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