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** 2x7800GTX (v-modded & TEC-cooled) ** (w/ pics)

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Revivalist

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2005
Location
Fresno, CA
Well, I just finished a little project that I've been working on for a few weeks. . . . They're certainly not professional Viper John quality, but it was fun giving it a shot myself. . . . I even put together a guide for v-modding while doing the work. (You can find it here.)

Yes, I know, I'm still in the 7800 stone ages. :p . . . But I'm hoping these puppies will still keep up with the big boys . . . . Here's some pics. (Click on the link below the thumbnail to see a full size picture.)

The top

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The bottom

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Edge on (with my lovely wife assisting me with her hands. :) )

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Here’s the work I did on these things.
1. V-modded GPU and VDD. Also put voltage measuring molex
2. Installed Maze4-1 chrome waterblocks with 110W TECs
3. Fanned out some FrozenCPU Monster heatsinks and mounted them with Artic Silver Adhesive
4. Cleaned up the voltage regulator chips, put some Artic Silver 5, and mounted the heatsink back on with a 40mm fan.
 
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Next, I checked to see that these things would actually fit in my rig together. . . .


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Thank God for the widely spaced PCI-E slots on the Expert! These babies barely fit over each other.

And here's the rig with everything installed. (Yes, I know it’s a jungle in there but I guess that what happens when you have four waterblocks in a regular full size case. :) )


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The only hitch I have so far is that the system doesn’t pick them up in SLI. I enabled it in the BIOS and I tried plugging the monitor into the top card and there was no display at all. I have the monitor plugged into the the bottom card now and I can boot into Windows but still no SLI. I uninstalled and reinstalled my drivers (the 84.20 from Guru3D), but it still didn’t’ work. . . . . This is my first time doing SLI so I think I’m probably missing something. Can anyone help a noob? Thanks. :)
 
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I dont really know how to help with your problem, but I just wanted to say that I think you did a pretty darn good job. I think they look great. Lets see some BENCHMARKS(as soon as your problem is sorted out).
 
Make shure nothing is shortin out (highly dout it) and check the sli bridge thing and try reseatin the cards again
 
EvilT said:
Make shure nothing is shortin out (highly dout it) and check the sli bridge thing and try reseatin the cards again
I'm pretty sure nothing is shorting out cuz the system runs fine. I also made sure to put the SLI bridge. . . Unfortunately reseating the cards would require taking apart the entire waterloop. :eh?: . . .

I'm really hoping I'm just missing some simple setting. Maybe someone running SLI on an Expert board will chime in with the setting I need.
 
Are there any jumpers you forgot to set? I'm not sure on the expert boards but on my friends dfi sli-dr there are the jumpers between the 2 pci-e slots that you have to set before running the cards together.
 
Thanks for the ideas, guys. . .

On the Expert board, SLI is enabled electronically in the BIOS which I did. . .

I'm going to try uninstalling the video driver, use driver cleaner, and install the drivers straight from the nVidia website. If that doesn't work, I don't really know what else to try.
 
Revivalist said:
I'm pretty sure nothing is shorting out cuz the system runs fine. I also made sure to put the SLI bridge. . . Unfortunately reseating the cards would require taking apart the entire waterloop. :eh?: . . .

I'm really hoping I'm just missing some simple setting. Maybe someone running SLI on an Expert board will chime in with the setting I need.
Well sinch u tryed every thing it was just an last resort u never know :p
 
*Update*

Well, it looks like things are a little more serious than I thought. . . . I just discovered that the GPU and memory aren't getting any voltage. I tested the 6-pin connector and it's getting 12V. (I'm talking about the pins seen in the pic at the bottom of this post. Ignore the arrow and question mark.)

I also felt the voltage regulator heatsink and it wasn't hot like the other card that's working. I know this card was working before because I tested it right after doing the v-mod. So this problem occured somewhere between the time I installed the TEC-block and installing it in the case. . . .

Or maybe the card is getting grounded like was suggested earlier. But wouldn't that kill the card? How do I check if it's being grounded? . . . I'm really not sure what exactly to try at this point. I really hope I don't have to take my whole rig apart again for nothing. :eh?:
 

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Kenshiro said:
First test the card invidividually to make sure your cards are fine.
Yeah, that's what I'm going to have to do. . . . It's just a real pain because I have to drain the water, take apart the waterloop, take out a card, put the waterloop back together, and put water back in just to test each the card. . . . I really wish I could avoid that. . . . :rolleyes:

But I'm not very hopeful that the card still works. I don't know you if you read the previous posts above, but the card is not getting GPU or memory voltage. That seems like a major problem. . . . I can only guess that it means that card is dead. :(
 
Thanks for the encouragement, guys. . . .

I spoke with Viper John today and he said he could take a look at the card for me. I'm going to try swapping the cards just as a test and see what happens. If there's still no voltage on the card then I'll send it to John. . . . Hopefully I'll get things cleared up soon. :)
 
LONG LIVE VIPER JOHN!!!!!!!!

If I ever go water cool, I will send mine to viper john too. But I'm just not comfortable running water in my computer. Plus, setting up the water cool system is also a pain in the ***. I wanted to go with phase change, but totally out of my budget. Sigh......., so I'm still with air cool now.
 
Ouch,

The pics were fantastic to look at, but sorry to hear about the card. Have you looked at the voltage regulator chips for damage? Stupid me when I got out of the watercooling scene, I installed an NV silencer and crushed my voltage regulator chips because they were hitting the silencer:(

Well good luck to you,
Bryan d
 
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