Help!

I have a powercolor 9700 pro I've had the gpu volt modded at 1.65 volts for about a month now running at 412mhz....wanting more...I went water cooled and up'd my voltage to 1.8 and my core to 450mhz. Later I decided that I didn't feel safe at 1.8 and lowered it to 1.75....while I was running atitool trying to find the max core the memory began getting really hot....I measured it and the temp hit 55C before it locked up. There are also some coils and caps getting hot on the underside of the card.....what the hell did I do here


Also...they do not get hot until I run atitool or a game.

Hi,
I was having these "heating" effects when I overclocked my Radeon 9800 Pro to nearly its XT speeds by using the RivaTuner OC SW. I did'nt like flashing my video BIOS as it may cause major problems if it did'nt work out!
These coils situated on the top left-hand corner (components side) are belonging to the power supply circuits for the GRU and memory devices I guessed. In your case your have volt-mod of these circuits making them worse. That was why they were giving out intensive heats when the video card was performing some graphic intensive operations under OC. The on-board memory devices were having similar effects too. I used the STOCK HSF for my GRU just about. Bearing in mind that the increases in heats of these devices should be proportional to your increases in Voltages^2 and Freq. if you're OCing your video card.
I have trimed my RAM sinks to the right sizes and attached to each memory chip using thermal pads, and likewise for the ferrite-cores of these coils on component-side too. Finally you have to ensure that you have very good air-flows in your case too, or you have to re-consider reducing your overclock rates which are self-defeating.

Good luck with your overclocks!

I completely unhooked the volt mod....and ran at stock speeds ....but my ram and coils are still getting up to 55C could I have something shorting?

Get a card cooler to blow on the card from below. Your temps will drop by about 15ºc to 20ºc. I have a fan blowing on my card and mosfets on my mother board. The mosfets went from 47ºc-57ºc to a solid 33ºc under load. The caps on the card are barely warm to the touch even under load.

RoxfatherX,

If your card performs O.K. in 2D & 3D modes and these coils and memory devices are relatively cool when your PC is in "idle", then I would say there is nothing "shorting" in it! However, if it is not then I would say there is something wrong with your video card.
Try my suggestions first and,perhaps, using another fan as suggested to cool your video card. The general cost cuttings by their manufacturers in a highly competitive maket would not do these video cards any good, especially in cooling the cards by removing/reducing the cooling heat-sinks for some key parts on the cards.

RodfatherX said:

I have a powercolor 9700 pro I've had the gpu volt modded at 1.65 volts for about a month now running at 412mhz....wanting more...I went water cooled and up'd my voltage to 1.8 and my core to 450mhz. Later I decided that I didn't feel safe at 1.8 and lowered it to 1.75....while I was running atitool trying to find the max core the memory began getting really hot....I measured it and the temp hit 55C before it locked up. There are also some coils and caps getting hot on the underside of the card.....what the hell did I do here


Also...they do not get hot until I run atitool or a game.

Click to expand...

55C for naked memory chips is very normal when running 3D.

Viper