Project silent 6200

[Ven0m]

Recently I've bought used Leadtek GeForce 6200 with unlocked pipes to grand total of 8/3. Card clocked pretty well (535/730) but it was VERY noisy - like hairdryer and temperatures were very high too. On HDR demo it used to hit 83C, what made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

It was obvious - new cooler was needed. Problem was availability - no Arctic Cooling coolers for this card, Zalman is very expensive and doesn't look great in my opinion, similiar as a few alternatives.

:shrug: DIY time.

So I started looking for suitable coolers to mod for this card. There's a need to allow some airflow for RAM and HSI heatsink, so Pentium4 cooler looked pretty well. I've already had BOX Prescott cooler on my Ge4 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/vga_recent.jpg) and they are cheap (I paid $5 with shipping). This time, it wasn't for socket 478, but LGA775.
Cutting has taken me lots of time - I had to make room for HSI sink and modify stock mounting bracket. I hate zip ties and never use them for modding. So as usually, I drilled and threaded holes for screws. Problem was that they were placed where bracket bends and positioning and drilling was difficult.
After cutting, drilling and threading, there came time for lapping base. I started with grit 800, to check flatness. It turned out that there are weird rings, so I had to use lower grit, then after fixing problems, I went up to 2500 for nice flat and shiny effect.
Mounting - cooler had threaded holes, and on opposite side of card I placed screwes with washers holding springs (from laundry clips :D ), placed on custom cut teflon tape washers. As I've forgotten to take AS5 with me, I used MX-1 paste that I had bundled with AC Freezer7 (Freezer7 @ socket A mod).

Results - it's GREAT. Earlier I had hairdryer that made me sick and kept card idle at ~58°C and HDR load ~83°C, 535Mhz. Now it's silent semi-passive idling at ~46°C, HDR load at ~46-47°C, 576MHz. I think that it will be possible to get better speeds, but that's what I'm getting now.
15th place in 3Dmark05 6200 class and 2nd in 6200/Athlon XP class for today.

Pics time :)
Before mod:
http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/image/winfast_a6200_td_2.jpg

[Ven0m]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/LGA775_top.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/LGA775_bottom.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/LGA775_core.jpg

[Ven0m]

After mod:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/6200_heatsink.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/6200_reflection.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/6200.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v124/Ven0m-img/modding/6200_backside.jpg

[Flip-Mode]

Very nice and it actually looks good and not ghetto. Nice.

[creepy]

Looks nice. Hows the performance?

[Trombe]

Card clocked pretty well (535/730) but it was VERY noisy - like hairdryer and temperatures were very high too. On HDR demo it used to hit 83C, what made me feel pretty uncomfortable.



Good Lord thats an awsome overclock :attn:
The highest I have gotton mine is 420/670 scoring 1888 on 3dmark05 :-/ (Not too bad really, for the price). Soon enough it will be watercooled, and I hope for more impressive results then.

[LabRat23]

You just love the intel heatsinks on gpus dont you venom? Where are you getting these and have you seen any warping on the card you did this to a few months ago?

Looks so good, you would think its stock.

[Ven0m]

Thanks :D

Hehe, I like intel BOX sinks as they are very cheap and they work pretty well for graphics cards. There are no visible signs of bending - I used not too much force to hold heatsink in place, but still much more than stock cooler had.

High OC results - this card wasn't bought from computer store. It's second hand and was selected from some group for best OC possibilites by first owner. He sold it to me @ interent auction for much less than new card when he was changing it for selected 6800GT.

Performance - I haven't tested it much yet, but I managed to hit >3200 points in 3DMark05 and >70fps in Doom3 (high). With all pipes unlocked, it's faster than most 6600 cards.

[Know Nuttin]

can you get a shot of it sideways? I'd like to see how much room there is in between the HSI heatsink and the GPU heatsink.

Very nice mod, btw. I'm contemplating it now. :)

[SolidxSnake]

Your vid card cooling mods never cease to amaze me. GJ as always.

My next videocard gets my stock P4 cooler. Gonna lap that baby up to 2000Grit, along with relapping my Zalman for shine, and then my next card gets the p4 cooler...

Solid copper base, aluminum fins, strong temp-sensor fan (that thing gets LOUD when the sensor is shorted).

[Ven0m]

To get more pics, I'd have to make my bro lend me his camera. So more pics would be likely to be posted, but rather not today.

Distance between HSI and GPU sinks is around 1-2mm. I lapped HSi sink too - that was so bad. I spent lots of time with 150 paper.

This specific heatsink has been chosen because of huge distance between slots and GPU, HSI and RAM location and limited budget. For non-HSI cards with separate RAMsinks and with more cash I'd rather go with all-copper heatsink and try to use some blower along with exhaust duct.

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

holy crap! thats an awesome mod. is that a leadtek refurb from the egg? That hsi sink is a bitch, im not a fan of it, but without it, we couldnt unlock these beauties. Thats an awesome mod, if i didnt have a Maze4 waiting here for me, id do this in a second.

[Navig]

Sweet job venom!

Been waiting for pics. Intel can't seem to get it right! LGA775 the holes come in the bends of the clip, socket478 the holes go right into the fins.

pic1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/P4%20Rig/Heatsinks/lap2.jpg)
pic2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v363/navig/P4%20Rig/Heatsinks/Mounted1.jpg)

navig

ps, my local pc store had a returned evercool pcac for US$8 = another blower for me to mod!

[Ven0m]

I haven't realized your replies :/
Thanks for your words :D

Navig - I was thinking about that Evercool aka Titan blower, but this card has really weird design that simply prevented me from installing that blower. Yeah, that was initial idea to save some slots, but again I'm 3 slots less. Perhaps I'll get it for some other modding, maybe to improve airflow in CPU / VGA area or to cool RAM / sinks

CCUABIDExORxDIE - no, that's not from newegg. I live in Poland, and getting stuff across ocean is pretty problematic. It's second hand card. In March, guy bought it, as one selected for good overclocking. A few days ago he sold it on local internet auction as he replaced it with selected 6800GT. As result I bought card with guarantee to March 2007, flashed to 6600 and guarantee to do 530/700 on stock cooling, and that's for less than price of new card that can do random speeds.

I was considering getting some better modding tools. RAM on this card gets really hot when gaming and it needs a heatsink. I do lots of modding and thought that I might save some time with better tools. An idea was to get dremel, but some people told me that it needs lots of cutting discs and isn't very time effective. I mostly need a tool for precisious cutting and grinding. For that LGA775 sink, I used table grinder, but I had to finish it manually, fix bent fins etc. Any recommendations for tool that would allow me cutting heatsinks and other metal stuff without damage?

[SolidxSnake]

I haven't realized your replies :/
Thanks for your words :D

Navig - I was thinking about that Evercool aka Titan blower, but this card has really weird design that simply prevented me from installing that blower. Yeah, that was initial idea to save some slots, but again I'm 3 slots less. Perhaps I'll get it for some other modding, maybe to improve airflow in CPU / VGA area or to cool RAM / sinks

CCUABIDExORxDIE - no, that's not from newegg. I live in Poland, and getting stuff across ocean is pretty problematic. It's second hand card. In March, guy bought it, as one selected for good overclocking. A few days ago he sold it on local internet auction as he replaced it with selected 6800GT. As result I bought card with guarantee to March 2007, flashed to 6600 and guarantee to do 530/700 on stock cooling, and that's for less than price of new card that can do random speeds.

I was considering getting some better modding tools. RAM on this card gets really hot when gaming and it needs a heatsink. I do lots of modding and thought that I might save some time with better tools. An idea was to get dremel, but some people told me that it needs lots of cutting discs and isn't very time effective. I mostly need a tool for precisious cutting and grinding. For that LGA775 sink, I used table grinder, but I had to finish it manually, fix bent fins etc. Any recommendations for tool that would allow me cutting heatsinks and other metal stuff without damage?


I don't see who told you that crap about the dremel. I'd definately get a dremel, and get a 5 pack of fiberglass reinforced cutting wheels (black/grey wheels). they wear down eventually, but they don't wear down like nothing. It sure beats cutting with a hacksaw or table grinder :D

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

venom, could you do one quick thing for me? could you go into Rivaturner and tell me what that card says for the core. it shoud say NV43 A2 or A3 or A4. that would be the biggest help as i have that card, and im thinking if he had to flash to unlock it, then he did it cause it was the NV43 A4 core. thanks venom. this mod rocks.

[Ven0m]

It says NV43 A2. I heard that NV44A and NV43 A4 are not moddable.

If it helps, on back side, as you can see on pic, there's sign "0504", what may probably indicate when card was made. I've done some research, and it looks like most of old 6200s were unlockable, but now it lseems that only Leadtek are. I'm not sure if the most recent Leadtek 6200s are unlockable or not, but guys @ Polish forums recommend them for unlockability.

I have no idea what's performance boost after unlock or how fast this card is on stock speeds - I've never tried it and can't tell how much you'll get.

I also heard that flash is not required to unlock and should not be performed on not unlockable cards. I was told that the only thing flash does is unlock of HDR and buffering.

[CCUABIDExORxDIE]

on the backside of my card it says 0504 aswell. i might as well give it a flash and see if it works or not. if not. im stuck with a stupid 4 pipes card. this mod is awesome, and you hit some DAMN good clocks with that card.

[Electron Chaser]

That looks awesome!!! Nice job Venom.

[TimmAy]

wow never seen that before.. nice job

[Ven0m]

Thanks ^_^

CCUABIDExORxDIE - high OC results are mostly caused by card selection. Anyway if you're looking for good OC and card is resistant, cooling replacement and vmod may do miracles. vmods are said to give even around 100MHz on 6200s, better cooling should increase OC by around 30-50MHz according to my plain guess.

This heatsink mod was pretty difficult and time consuming, but it looks like with dremel, it should be much easier. Most of time is spent on cutting fins - manual cutting takes lots of time, risk of bending is pretty high. Using table grinder is much faster, but bent fins are almost obvious - I had to fix a few. Drillling holes, when metal bends is also not that easy, but doable and I think that being careful, noone should have problems with it. Drill press should help a lot.
Problem with avoiding risky, ghetto finish called zip ties is that you have to somehow "stick" this cooler to card. So I use machine screws, as my grandpa has lots of tools for threading, but I know that such things are rare in garages and a bit expensive. Alternative might be probably, in some cases self-priming screws, but in this mod they might be problematic as mounting bracket is amde of steel. There's also no place for nuts, but I think that fins might be cut a bit to make room for them. I'd suggest to avoid zip ties at any cost. They not only look ugly but have weird behaviour on temperature change and I just don't trust them.

Anyway, I'd like to encourage to modding heatsinks. It can save some money (if we forget time we spend on mod :) ), give better cooling than any cooling on market, often at less noise. It's also great fun.

I plan to add RAMsinks on backside of card - these chips are really hot. I haven't solved how to use airflow from VGA and CPU fans to move air across that sink yet, but I'm doing my best.

[subtotal]

i believe the tool most commonly used to 'thread' hole is called a tap.

btw you might consider a blower for cooling the ram on the backside of the card

[Ven0m]

Ok, it's not only card selection - cooling does something.
I've managed to hit 600/742 stable today. That means no artifacts and other issues in games, rthdribl and 3DMark05. All I needed was RivaTuner with some "advanced" settings enabled. Unfortunatly, after some time, when air got warmer in room, there were a few artifacts related with RAM.
After RAMsinks installation, it should be possible to run something around 740-750 stable over longer period.

There are no v-mods on card yet. If I'm desperate, it'll change.
I'm not sure with v-mods, but for sure there will be some RAMsinks.

[SniperXX]

I just wanna say nice mod. It looks pretty darn cool too!