Overclock My GTX470 Today

I'm reading over the overclocking information on nvidia GPU's in preparation for an overlcock I intend to perform later today. The sticky at the top of this forum pretty much contains everything I need as far as 'how to' is concerned and it's a lot more straight forward than overclocking my processor was.

I only have 1 question: At what temperature should I become concerned?

max thermal spec is 105c, but you will experience instability way before that. i would just worry about stability. i try to keep temps under 85c, much past that and it is in no way stable.

That's not good... my 470 sits at ~89C while folding and that's at stock settings. I have a fan pulling air from it too.

i would check to see if the HSF is clogged a bit with dust. have you ever removed the cooler and replaced the TIM? i usually do that shortly after getting a feel for temps right out of the box.

what exact 470 have you got? with what cooler? the 470's do run quite a bit hotter than my 560, but i should think yours could be running lower still, considering it is at stock speeds.

i have 2 reference 470's in sli. they max about 80C while gaming but will rapidly heat up to about 90C with an over clock of 815Mhz and 1.087v which is why i dont run them overclocked, and the vrms squeel a little which concerns me. they max out everything at stock anyways. i rigged a fan duct from a coolermaster atcs840 on the back of my cm690ii to pull air through the video card shrouds. depending on air temperature it lowers the max temps by about 5-10C.

I will pull the card out and give it a good cleaning when I get home this afternoon. It is the EVGA GTX470 and I have it is equipped with stock cooling. I will outfit it with any aftermarket cooling that can be recommended.

Excuse my ignorance... TIM? thermal paste maybe?

@fundip - didn't see your post. you say they 'max everything out at stock'. are you suggesting that overclocking the video card is not a good idea?

I don't want to break this thing if it's already running hot.

goose90proof said:

@fundip - didn't see your post. you say they 'max everything out at stock'. are you suggesting that overclocking the video card is not a good idea?

I don't want to break this thing if it's already running hot.

Click to expand...

if you run them in sli, overclocking is not necessary.

goose90proof said:

Excuse my ignorance... TIM? thermal paste maybe?

Click to expand...

yeah you got it, TIM or thermal interface material, or paste.

Ok, I'll perform 10 point maintenance when I get back. Fortunately, I stay stocked in thermal paste and canned air

I have been interested in sli ever since it was first announced. Back then, I had no job and no money. Now, I am told that multiple GPU's is counter productive in some cases. Any comments on this?

goose90proof said:

Ok, I'll perform 10 point maintenance when I get back. Fortunately, I stay stocked in thermal paste and canned air

I have been interested in sli ever since it was first announced. Back then, I had no job and no money. Now, I am told that multiple GPU's is counter productive in some cases. Any comments on this?

Click to expand...

the tim on reference 400 series cards was improperly applied at the factory. replacing it should drop temps 5-10 degrees.

i wouldn't say its counterproductive, but they dont scale well after 2 cards unless youre using surround monitors. so no more than 2 cards for a single monitor and no more than 3 cards for surround. 4 way sli is pretty much a waste other than synthetic benching. also it doesnt make sense to sli newly released cards that arent the most powerful, because you will get better performance for about the same price with the fastest single gpu because sli doesnt operate as smoothly in all games, crysis comes to mind as being like that though it still runs great. a lot of people were doing this with sli 460's when they came out instead of just getting a single 480. saved them maybe $20 at the cost of increased processing cycles for sli and less vram.

i'm actually trying to sell my 470's, just ordered a sparkle calibre 580. if your interested send me a pm. like i said i can get them stable at 815Mhz on the cores and 1895 Mhz on the memory, but it really isnt necessary in anything other than metro2033.

First thing I would do is download afterburner and make yourself a custom fan profile which ramps the fan up to 100% around 85-90C (Obviously using a gradual increase, not just a flat ramp up from like 30% to 100%) While itll be louder than what your used to, it should be enough to keep your temps below 80C at stock, and within reason OC'ed. As someone else mentioned, if your comfortable, redo the heatsink with a quality TIM application. That would probably help you out by at least another 7-10%.

If you can get your temps under control, you should see solid returns on the OC because if I remember correctly, the 470 along with the 480 had a good amount of headroom which was inaccessible because of heat.

@everyone reading - Ok so when I got home I took out the vid card and started disassembling it. I ran into two roadblocks...

A: I don't have a screwdriver small enough for some screws. gf works at a hardware store so I'll be getting one of these for the cheapy cheap.

B: Scared ****less to remove heatsink. Now this might come as a shock but I've never had a dedicated card for processing video so I've never had the need to disassemble a graphics card. I am electronically and mechanically inclined and I know a thing or two about processor heatsinks but this thing unnerves me. I loosened the four screws holding the heatsink but they don't come out. I can't really see well in the pockets they're sitting in but it almost looks like they are held to the sink with springs? After the 4 screws on top of the sink are removed, is it safe to yank or are some of the tiny screws on the back of the card holding the sink as well? Please advise.

@fundip - "Im actually trying to sell my 470's"

I'm def interested. Money is tight cuz I just moved into a new place. Lukee also made me a similar offer about month ago. When did you buy your cards and how much do you want for 1?

@NOVAA - "if I remember correctly, the 470 along with the 480 had a good amount of headroom which was inaccessible because of heat."

>.< I heard the same thing after I bought it. It's a great card. I can't really complain. There's nothing I can't really play but I'm sure that'll change before too long.

Alright, I managed to completely disassemble my 470 without breaking anything and I gave it a good air dusting and applied new thermal paste. Comp is up and running and I'm going to see how hot everything gets.

Ok looking good. I downloaded Afterburner. This thing is great by the way. Excellent app. Set myself a fan profile to set 100% fan speed at 90C. Only, I never even hit 90C after cleaning the card and re-applying the paste. The highest I got was 83C. So, I reset 100% to 80C and now I sit at 81C while folding.

Going to run Kombustor and see how that goes.

goose if your interested in after market cooling heres a good cooler series

I have plans for putting one of those on my gtx 580
http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga.html

Bookmarked
Thanks!

goose90proof said:

Bookmarked
Thanks!

Click to expand...

you are welcome, if you go through with it and are up to it, do make a big OC forums-esque review with pictures and everything ,

I'd love to. I write technical documents for a living (among other things) so I'd very much enjoy contributing to the article base here at OC.net

Another question: how much more head room on the clocks opens up if I get better cooling?

My galaxy GTX 470 maxes out around 75C at the same OC.