6600GT AGP cooling idea

[subtotal]

just trying to think of a way to cool the 6600GT i'm going to get after xmas.

heres the best idea i've come up with: mount a reasonable thinkness (e.g. 1-2mm) copper plate over both the GPU and the bridge chip (with AS5) then mount a conventional Vga heatsink over the plate.

think this would work?
comments, suggestions, ideas?

[Blackmage]

I Had a similar idea but i will try it on my geforce mx first

[subtotal]

yeah, its just an idea, i would love to test it myself. but the thermal output of my video card is nowhere near that of the 6600GT so it wouldn't be a fair test.

[Avg]

It would be better if you didn't need the 2mm plate, because eventhough AS5 is a good conductor it is far from being better then metal itself, so if you could connect the heat sink on top okf both chips it would cool it better.

[consumer9000]

The design I'm having manufactured will use an aluminum pin fin array heatsink, and depending on how things shape up, a copper heatspreader in the base as well. Currently the prototype is using a bury frame 60mm fan and the ducted shrouding draws cool outside air over the array and exhausts it out two sides. Pictures and further revisions to come once the legal stuff is taken care of...and yes, the setup cools the ram, though again it does not appear that the HSL chip is in need of any additional cooling, so the heatsink will not have any provisions for cooling it. Also, the reverse side of the PCB will be cooled (pat pending)...ahh the joys of advanced silicones. :attn:

[subtotal]

i know 2 layers are not as good as one, however the 6600GT agp isn't normal, if you have seen it you'll know normal vga heatsink won't cut it . if you know of a third party heastsink that will, i and many others would love to hear about it

[Avg]

I know tha they are different, but since your building one I though it would be better if you could put one heat sink tha could go over both, or one for the gpu and one for the bridge would be even better because I don't think the bridge gets as hot as the gpu does so if you had them connected you would end up heating up your bridge.

[Chixofnix]

I know tha they are different, but since your building one I though it would be better if you could put one heat sink tha could go over both, or one for the gpu and one for the bridge would be even better because I don't think the bridge gets as hot as the gpu does so if you had them connected you would end up heating up your bridge.

hm heating the bridge may be an issue... (or not?) if they are to be connected by one plate as described...

i like the idea of two smaller ones though... i'll be looking to this post-christmas as well i believe... thing is i don't have access now to a metal working shop, all i got is my ol' dremel... so i need to find a solution to cool this card that i can buy off the shelf, or "modify" with my dremel...

[subtotal]

i don't have a 6600GT or know that much about them (i am getting one). all i was doing was trying to think of a way to adapt currnetly available heatsinks to cooling this beast

[gigabit]

Does any one have a pic of one of these 6600GT with out the H/S on?And how far apart are the holes to mount the h/s?

[subtotal]

i think newegg has pics of the xfx one without the hsf, the different models aren't likely to be too diffeerent

[consumer9000]

See the attached file for a bare view of the card.
As for the bridge chip, I'll say it again, the heatsink will not cover it because it runs cooler than the surrounding components, and is adequately cooled as it is. It would be counterproductive to have it share the same heatsink base as the hot GPU and RAM. :mad:

[gigabit]

that things gonna be a bugger to water cool .If you wanna cool it right.

[consumer9000]

I'm not sure how big of a demand there will be for watercooling a midrange card. Nonetheless, I will see what can be done... :santa2:

[deathBOB]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2295

Looks like cooling the card isnt gonna be a big deal... DIfferent temperatures didnt have a huge effect on clock speeds... I think the card is limited by the chip itself (maybe voltage?) rather than heat...

Also: DId anyone see an add for a Leadtek 6600GT AGP in the Frys flyer last week? What day does the Frys flyer come out?

[subtotal]

i was thinking about this mainly because i don't want it to be too loud, my pc is in my bedroom

[Trios]

i was thinking about this aminly because i don't want it to be too loud, mc pc is in my bedroom

Aww crap, you're going to give the guys at McDonalds ideas.

"Now, get a McDonalds McVeggieburger with McNuggets and you have a chance to win a free McPC!"

[consumer9000]

Well, lower temps will be beneficial, though additional voltage may be necessary as well. I look forward to voltmodding these boards once the means to do so is discovered. :D

[UniX696]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2295

lmao how the hell did the 2 highest memory clocks come from the cards with no hs on the memory :rolleyes:

[subtotal]

they said te sparkle one might have been hand-picked, btw it seems XFX uses a copper plate under a stock(?) cooler

[q149]

I have one of these on the way and was thinking about cooling too. Anyone know if this will fit any waterblocks currently, like the Danger Den (http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/ex-blc-37.html) one?

One thing I was thinking about trying was ordering one of those thermalright or Swiftech NB copper heatsinks and putting that one the core and some ramsinks. But I am not sure how well that would do on there... I have never seen one in real life and wonder if it would be big enough. Thermalright (http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thnb1.html), Swiftech (http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/swmc4.html). Think these would be better than the stock cooler? If not i could always use it for NB anyway i guess.

[consumer9000]

I'm working on getting some copper heatspreader plates fabricated, which will allow you to mount directly to the board, cooling the RAM and the GPU. Cooling the heatspreader will be your choice of waterblocks. This way I can straighten out the angles by which you have to mount the water block so you don't have hoses and fittings fux0ring everything up! :santa:

[deathBOB]

lmao how the hell did the 2 highest memory clocks come from the cards with no hs on the memory :rolleyes:

Because 6600GTs use GDDR3, which is not really hot. They arent heat limited in thier OC...

[NavyDood]

The holes are at least 3" apart for the GPU. The danger den one as stated in this thread won't even come close to reaching the mounting holes.

As stated before nothing else needs to be done to the HSI bridge chip. The stock heatsink is more than enough.

[consumer9000]

GDDR3 runs hot nonetheless, though cooler relative to standard DDR. I suspect, aside from differences in the chips themselves, the quality of the components used on some of the boards (such as the pcb, capacitors, filters etc) varies by manufacturer, which is how some manufacturers such as Abit and BFG can consistantly ensure good overclocks. :eek:

[deathBOB]

I think you gonna need a volt mod to take full advantage of any aftermarket cooling...

[Skrybe]

I'd just like a reasonable aftermarket cooler because even at stock with no overclocking the one of the Albatron cards isn't sufficient. The card overheats and crashes within five minutes :(

Tested by running it in a room with ambient temp of 22 degrees compared to a room with ambient temp of 30 degrees.

[deathBOB]

You sure? I am surprised any vendor would make a card that overheats at stock. They might be lazy, but I doubt they are that lazy. What kinda temps you get on the card?

I bet you just have a bad card or driver issues...

[subtotal]

The fatal flaw with this card is the same problem that we had mentioned on the first page. The rectangular HSF is only attached to the board at two diagonals with the GPU somewhere underneath. This can and will cause contact problems if the heatsink is nudged or bumped too hard.

this could be your problem

[consumer9000]

Exactly, as the Anandtech article found, nearly every vendor ships the card with a poorly design (read cheap!) cooling solution, which allows the heatsink to rock like a seesaw accross the GPU, breaking any bonds that the thermal tape or compound may have had. And because of the limp spring push pin mounting system, the heatsink never makes good contact again. I suspect there is going to be a wave of RMA's in the near future if people continue running cards at 110C becuase of insufficient heatsink seating. :bang head
I'm working as fast as I can on an aftermarket solution, but manufacturing will not begin until January most likely.

[subtotal]

care to say which company you work for?

[q149]

I wonder if this (http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/ex-blc-112.html?mv_pc=2035) would fit?

[gigabit]

Morethan likely no.It doesnt give measurements for the mounting so it must likely come up short.That is a big distance between mounting points.And if it did someone would have figured it out by now.Well maybe not.

[alinosa]

the distance is 3 and an 1/8" center to center on the holes. the cooling on my xfx left something to be desired too. there's a poorly machined copper plate that didn't sit square on my core (bare core... when did they start doing this?) and the thermal goo they put on there was the only thing keeping my card from going insanely hot. i lapped the plate and applied ceramique. mucho mejor now. i noticed the bridge chip and the core are the same height on the pcb, too. with the design of the maze water blocks you might be able to have the flow go from the bridge dhip area to the GPU core then out to the rest of the loop... would this take care of the "heating the bridge chip with one contact plate" problem?

[subtotal]

looks to me like they let quality slide so they could produce somthing cheap and quick

[consumer9000]

Can't say yet until the legal side of things have been worked out...
Things are moving along well though, and I can say it's all U.S. Designed and domestically manufactured as well. :thup:

[maehor]

consumer9000: Could you estimate the noise a) the stock fan makes and b) the fan of your future heatsink will make? I'm currently trying to decide what case/CPU fans I should buy for my new system and would just like to know if my attempt to find the perfect compromise between noise and performance will pay off or not. Some pictures or sketches of your WIP would be great!

[Nandro]

I did read an article that said the HSI bridge chip got very hot. So hot in fact that it would burn you to touch it. I believe that was one of the reasons the memory was clocked back a bit on the agp version. I think the HSI deffinitly needs to be cooled, and cooling it could lead to much better clocks. I will look for the article. I believe it wasnt on the card as much as it was on the bridge (the article)

[consumer9000]

Current fan: >25db according to the specifications, realistically around 30db because of turbulence and backpressure.

Prototype Solution: >27db according to the specifications, realistically no more than 30db as the shrouding will negate some of the noise. Also, the fan used is a substantially larger 60mm ball bearing unit, which moves over 2X the air with no additional noise. :burn:

I will start a new thread in the coming days specifically related to this product, and it's finalized features. Any feedback and questions will be welcomed, as a number of decisions and possible tradeoffs may need to be made.

As for the HSL chip, the passive cooling seems to be more than adequate, as the heatsink never gets very hot. Sufficient case airflow should be more than enough for it. (The shrouding will likely divert some fresh air directly over the HSL chip nonetheless) :cool:

[alinosa]

say, i have a question about the bridge chip: Have you taken the ugly yellow goop off of it and put real thermal paste on it? i took mine off the other day and thought to myslef that this stuff can't be very good for thermal trnasfer... I got ambushed with an appointment so i didn't change out the goop for real thermal paste, but i was wondering if that would make a difference?

[consumer9000]

It is a real mistake to remove a heatsink with existing, broken in thermal compound, and then replace it without removing all of the old compound and replacing it. Now that you have broken the bond that this thermal pad (already inferior quality compound likely) a significant amount of it's heat conducting abilities have been negated, as once it breaks in a hardens, it does not reform the proper bond. When you put the heatsink back on, there is no way you could have lined it up to be exactly the way it was before, and as such, the thermal compound is even furthering the distance between the chip and the heatsink. Replace the compound as soon as possible or you may end up replacing your board! :bang head

[JasonDTM]

I'm gunna get some OCZ ramsinks, and pull out one of my dead 9800 Pro's to rob the SK-6 off of it (I've owned a few ATi Radeon 9800's, the two I've had died of voltage....)and make a alum braket and get some screws, rubber washers, and a one off custom alum brace, I'm willing to sacrifice my jewel for hardcore overclocking.... and even sacrifice those trick OCZ copper ramsinks in my journey for more MHz :/

[consumer9000]

Wait a few more weeks and I'll save you the trouble. :cool:

[alinosa]

sorry, i didn't give you the WHOLE picture. I put the heatsinkl back on then put the card in the packaging, because i'm doing an overhaul. So the card isn't installed or being used at all. :cool:

i do know that you should never reapply a heatsink with the old goo on it. I just had it in my head and didn't actually type it out... Got the whole system apart and i'm tweaking the mobo a little: sinked the MOSFETs near the CPU socket, pulled off the NB and applied some ceramique to help keep it cool until i get around to putting a waterblock on it.

but anyways, back to the subject: i plan on replacing the goo on the heatsink, i just didn't worry about it then because i knew it wasn'y going to be used for a while.

appreciate the warning. :)

[JasonDTM]

Consumer, I like the challenge, if I can make a bracket, I'll look into what you're doing :D

[deathBOB]

Wow, look at the zalman solution: http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/view.asp?idx=149&code=013

[subtotal]

i want one, is the distance between mounting holes thae same on the agp and pcie version?

[consumer9000]

Typical Zalman "blooming copper onion fare" :rolleyes:
While it is a nice design, and no doubt quiet, it is heavy enough to do in your video card, takes up at least 1, in many cases 2 PCI slots, ingests and exhausts hot case air and offers a memory cooling setup added merely as an afterthought. Also, there may be clearance issues due to the unconventional layout of the 6600AGP boards...such as the HSL heatsink and the angle issues.

[alinosa]

<--is eagerly awaiting the cooling solution fro consumer9000... it's obvious he has done his homework! I wanna see this cooler!