Interesting accident (vid cooling)

[RoadWarrior]

Hi guys,

I have had a 486 fan sitting on my Voodoo 3 2000 almost since I got it, it had plastic clips on that nearly gripped, but to help it stay on I looped an elastic band around the clips and under the corners of the sink on the GPU. It was great, gave me a 3000 spec card, 166Mhz stable.....

Anyway, some year or so later, the band perished, and the fan fell off on one side, hanging down at an angle...... disaster????

No quite the opposite!

I left the blanking plate off in the second slot over from the voodoo to let some fresh air at it, and the fan is hanging at an angle that helps pull fresh air in. Also it spreads the airlow over the memory chips better.

Result?

Well where it used to only be fully stable at 166, it is now fully stable at 183Mhz!
Beyond the fact that the fan now pulls in air thru the empty slot better and also spills air onto the RAM, I think being at an angle off the board has also reduced "churn" somewhat. The habit that low profile fans have of pulling their exhaust back in the top. (I try and add a little ducting to the tops of my all my CPU fans to stop this phenomenon, or put a plate around the bottom)

Sometimes Mr Murphy knows best! :)

Road Warrior

[AntmanMike]

Nice. Im using a similar method in Project Condensation to remove the moisture, but instead of brining in air, it takes warm air and moist air from inside the fridge and freezes is, removing the moisture and either freezing it there or dripping it to the reservoir.

[Silver]

This accident IS interesting. Must have a go at trying different angles on video cooling. Thanks

[HiProfile]

The now stoped churn effect may be one of the factors, but I would say that the use of more surface area is the biggest benifit. With the fan sitting right on the fins, It can't really move any air past the very center of the HS. The higher-pressure (moving) air fills the partial vacumm under the shaft which results in useage of more surface area when its elevated.

BTW- I've had an old Global-Win k6-2 HSF (70mm HS, 60mm fan) on my Voodoo3 2000, and its stable at 188mHz. The only problem is that it steals a PCI slot.

[Warlord2]

it could of just been that it had time to "burn in" over the years like cpu sometimes need but either way nice overclock:)