1/2" watercooling for 6800 cards (NON-dangerden)

[Kilyin]

Much better temps all around. Memory is naked and LOVIN IT. It barely even warms up at 1.04 gig. Getting the air bled out, but at 405 the core idles 46 and 50 at load according to the (who knows how inaccurate) built in temp. monitoring. It hit 82 loaded at that same speed with the old, crappy, shiny heatsink. Some pics:
http://www.cameron32.com/hardwarepics/watercooled-08-24-04.jpg
http://www.cameron32.com/hardwarepics/6800gt/

Nice setup there, very clean and compact.

 

[Kosmic]

Thanks. The new Swifty pump is pretty loud. Hoping it'll break in and quiet down a lot. My last one did.

 

[BeerHunter]

The DD block is a waste all around IMO.

Waste of money at $125 when hundreds of other blocks can fit..notataby the swifttech or polarflow for a fraction of the price..Or just do what I did and toss a $25 Tc-4 on there..core is same temp as case now..1/2 inch and very low resistance block.

Waste of pump power..just look how restrictive that block is, don't need no charts to see that.

Waste of space and good copper all over the ram. This is DDR3 people and can run 900-1000Mhz without even using ram sinks. Toss a couple ram sinks or make your own from a chopped up retail HSF and the sky is the limit... definity don't need to be water cooled.

 

[fafnir]

kosmic, tell me about how hot your mosfet sink gets, its the think black strip thing near the power connectors:

you should also feel the board itself near the mosfets, as that heats up quite a bit on my watercooled GT



_

 

[Kosmic]

It doesn't get too hot, actually. I have a 120mm fan mounted over my agp slot which appears to be doing a good job. Everything heated up a LOT more with the old heatsink on it. The PCB, the mosfets, the RAM...tons of heat trapped.

Still not getting much of an OC on the core. Coolbits only gives a positive test at 406 on the core, and that's with a 6800GT OC bios that bumps the vcore from 1.3 to 1.4 -- I'll try a bios that gives 1.5 and see how it does now that heat isn't a concern anymore. It might be that this card is just a dog of an overclocker. We'll see.

 

[aldamon]

Or just do what I did and toss a $25 Tc-4 on there..core is same temp as case now..1/2 inch and very low resistance block.

Beerhunter, how did you get a TC-4 on a 6800? Pics? I'm curious about the routing of your tubing. Did you stick some elbows on the block? I have a TC-4 laying around and would LOVE to stick it on my card instead of dropping $60 for a MCW50, 6800 adapter and fittings.

 

[BeerHunter]

Beerhunter, how did you get a TC-4 on a 6800? Pics? I'm curious about the routing of your tubing. Did you stick some elbows on the block? I have a TC-4 laying around and would LOVE to stick it on my card instead of dropping $60 for a MCW50, 6800 adapter and fittings.

Man I wish I did have proceedure pics for you bro but my camera is lost half the time so you'll have to follow instructions.

http://img27.photobucket.com/albums/v80/beerhunter/GPU.jpg

Basically what you want to do is get some 90s from danny over at dtek or harware store.

then set block on the core as striaght as possible. Mark with a pencil where you need to drill holes in block....card already has holes..lots of em..stay outside O-ring lol

Drill four ~1/8in holes where you marked.

Then find some nylon screws from hobby shop/rc car shop and put it on just like you would a WB. Need nylon because video cards holes are not electrically insulated and steel screws may fry card.. I used zip ties but I'm a redneck who does'nt give a ratsbutt what anyone thinks.

Anyway...then chop up a retail HS or buy some ram sinks for ram and artic silver them on...

Good luck.

 

[aldamon]

Thanks. That sounds exactly like how I mounted a Cooljag 1U on my 9800 Pro. Looks like I'll be making a trip to Lowes!

Something else I noticed though. If you turn the TC-4 at a slight angle, its mounting holes line up with the existing holes on the 6800 perfectly. Since the block has plenty of suface area, nothing is lost by turning it. It should still cover the core.

* The hole widths are different but maybe I could mount the block with some thin zip ties?

* Or maybe buy some hollow inserts for the existing holes on the TC-4 to reduce their size? Do they even make such a thing?

* I could also fill the existing holes with some hard-drying adhesive or material and redrill the holes to the proper size. That would be easier than drilling through 3/8" of copper and 5/16" of aluminum at home.

Damn, now I'm pissed we're vacationing for Labor Day. LOL. Project time!

 

[BeerHunter]

Slight? Like covering a ram module partially.. But you're right you could use existing holes.... I have access to drill press so it took all of 4 minutes to drill proper holeage.

Also, you could always just arctic silver epoxy any block on. then freeze it off later... I just chose these methods because I concerned if AS epoxy has good thermal properties so i chose to use non adhesive AS5... In retropect it's not needed....card runs ice cold.

Third you could fabricate a bracket like I did for TC-4 to A64.

Meh..were's theres a will there's a way. Best of luck.

 

[MoreGooder]

Off topic:

How sexy does a GPU block need to be? Unless you stick your head into the bottom of your case and look up you'll never see it once installed. I suppose you could put a mirror in the bottom of your case to show off the bling bling. CPU blocks on the other hand are quite visible and should be attention getters for those that are seeking a conversation piece as a side benefit of watercooling.

On topic:

I currently have an AIW 9800 pro water cooled, and I plan to buy a 6800 GT in about a month as an upgrade. However, I am not all that excited about screwing around with a $400 video card to get a few more fps. I'm having a hard time justifying water cooling a 6800GT because overclocking it will not be necessary since it's incredibly fast at stock speed anyway. If I broke off even one tiny component from the board it would then become a $400 piece of landfill.

 

[aldamon]

I'm having a hard time justifying water cooling a 6800GT because overclocking it will not be necessary since it's incredibly fast at stock speed anyway. All it would take would be to break one tiny fragile component off of it and it would then become a $400 piece of landfill.

I understand your point, but if you ever took the time to see what a POS the stock cooler is on the 6800, you'd see why we're going this. It's literally just a ~3/8" piece of aluminum cooled with a crappy fan. A water block would also let me take advantage of the 1.5V VCORE BIOSs that are available.

 

[MoreGooder]

I understand your point, but if you ever took the time to see what a POS the stock cooler is on the 6800, you'd see why we're going this. It's literally just a ~3/8" piece of aluminum cooled with a crappy fan. A water block would also let me take advantage of the 1.5V VCORE BIOSs that are available.

Doesn't that depend on which NVidia partner you buy it from? I think the heatsinks vary. I was planning on researching this prior to buying one, but if concensus is that all of the 6800GT's on the market have crappy cooling solutions then I will buy the necessary adaptors for my Swifty MCW50

 

[BeerHunter]

Off topic:

How sexy does a GPU block need to be? Unless you stick your head into the bottom of your case and look up you'll never see it once installed. I suppose you could put a mirror in the bottom of your case to show off the bling bling. CPU blocks on the other hand are quite visible and should be attention getters for those that are seeking a conversation piece as a side benefit of watercooling.

On topic:

I currently have an AIW 9800 pro water cooled, and I plan to buy a 6800 GT in about a month as an upgrade. However, I am not all that excited about screwing around with a $400 video card to get a few more fps. I'm having a hard time justifying water cooling a 6800GT because overclocking it will not be necessary since it's incredibly fast at stock speed anyway. If I broke off even one tiny component from the board it would then become a $400 piece of landfill.

OCing is just an added bonus. I watercool for silence as many do.

Water lets you run highend hardware, like GT for example, w/o bearing intolerable noises from 60mm high RPM fans


ill never beat anyone in benchmarks...that's like a dog chasing his tail anyway...but I know I'm silent and resonably deadly.

 

[bucken77]

Off topic:

How sexy does a GPU block need to be? Unless you stick your head into the bottom of your case and look up you'll never see it once installed. I suppose you could put a mirror in the bottom of your case to show off the bling bling. CPU blocks on the other hand are quite visible and should be attention getters for those that are seeking a conversation piece as a side benefit of watercooling.

On topic:

I currently have an AIW 9800 pro water cooled, and I plan to buy a 6800 GT in about a month as an upgrade. However, I am not all that excited about screwing around with a $400 video card to get a few more fps. I'm having a hard time justifying water cooling a 6800GT because overclocking it will not be necessary since it's incredibly fast at stock speed anyway. If I broke off even one tiny component from the board it would then become a $400 piece of landfill.

That is true unless you have one of the new Lian-Li cases which I am getting. Then you can see the top side of the vid card. I think my dual rad dual pump setup can handle the DD block. But if the performance is not there maybe I should look at the swifty.

 

[aldamon]

Doesn't that depend on which NVidia partner you buy it from? I think the heatsinks vary. I was planning on researching this prior to buying one, but if concensus is that all of the 6800GT's on the market have crappy cooling solutions then I will buy the necessary adaptors for my Swifty MCW50

The new BFG cooler is even worse than the stock cooler. If you already have an MCW50, spend the $15 for the adapter.

 

[Kosmic]

Ya, go with the MCW50 and 1/2" barbs with the 6800 adapter. It looks good from the top when mounted and delivers great performance with probably some of the lowest flow restriction you can get in a gpu block. (That's just my opinion based on its design)

I'm also a big lover of quiet but fast. Currently have my cpu at 3.84 gigs although the vid card just doesn't like life past 415 core...it's fast enough at that speed though. All 4 of the 120mm fans in my case / radiator are rheostat controlled for silence when the system isn't being stressed, then when I game I crank them all up and put the headphones on.

 

[GoingH2o]

Kosmic, what case do you own that has 4 120mm fans or its 1 Front, 1 Back and the 2 on the shroud?

 

[Kosmic]

It's actually 2 on the front mounted to a radiator in push/pull, one on the side blowing on the agp slot and one on the back. So if the case wasn't watercooled, there would just be 3 fans.

Here's an old pic with a 9800 pro on board: http://www.cameron32.com/hardwarepics/watercooled1.jpg
You can sort of see the agp fan on the door to the side.

Here's a more recent one with the 6800 and waterblock in place, but I went back to the mcp600 pump because the 650's high pitched whine sound just did NOT do it for me:
http://www.cameron32.com/hardwarepics/watercooled-08-24-04.jpg

The case is a custom job from "mnpctech" http://www.mnpctech.com/SC195.html
I deleted the 92mm fan and added a 120mm agp fan. I also ended up swapping in a couple of my own fans and ditching the enermax that came with it.

 

[GoingH2o]

Thanks for the heads up Kosmic
I am still debating on getting a new case. The Antec P160 is really what i need but then again I have a Thermaltake XaserII with excellent airflow.

I just got an XFX6800GT but haven't yet purchased a gpu block. On my 9500pro I used one of JFettig's blocks which really did a good job.

You said the mcw50 is working pretty fine, do i have to get the 1/2 barbs from Swiftech or buy them myself?

 

[Kosmic]

Ya, just get 'em from swiftech. They're $4 and you can get them along with the $12 6800 kit adapter for a grand total of $16 (or so..)

As for cases, I'll never get another case that doesn't have 120mm fans front and back. The airflow from them is just fantastic. The side agp fan is also great for keeping my naked vid card RAM cool.