Cooling help a non overclocking card?

[Jakalwarrior]

I went ahead and bought a zalman VF700 Al-Cu to slap on my 9800pro since its compatible with a ton of cards and I can keep it when I upgrade. My question is, this card only clocks to .... well... about 380-385 if im lucky, from stock of 378. Whats the chances of the cooler letting it go any higher? And would it be worth it to go ahead and use the ram sinks? the ram goes up to 360 from 337 but dosent seem to help performance any.
I dont have any of the stuff in yet. Just ordered it about 5 mins ago with 3 day shipping. With the holidays and stuff it could be a while.

 

[maxxpehling]

does ATI Tool give you temps? I'd be curious to see them. My 9600XT is the same way. won't hardly overclock more then 10mhz, I just like 5 minutes ago added 2 60mm thin delta fans to the stock heatsink, and I notice the load temps have gone from 51 down to 40!!!! so I'll try it again here and let you know how much the temps affect the overclock. I would suspect that a better HS should let you overclock a lot more then that, there other contributing factors with the existing heatsink such as contact and poor thermal compund application. Do you plan on using some good thermal compound when you install it, or just the stuff in the white tube that zalman includes with all of their cooling products?

 

[Jakalwarrior]

It has no temp probe but I can say it gets hot enough that I cant stand to leave my finger on it. I removed the heatsink and put AS5 a while back on it in hope of some better clocks, didnt help. Maybe if this dont help I can voltmod it and pray that will do something.

 

[maxxpehling]

ugh. it seems that the problem is temperature at this point, and all volt modding will do is make that worse. Wait a few days to get that cooler, make sure that you have good contact, and also make sure you have good air circulation in your case. Could you possibly draw and post a diagram of your airflow?

 

[Jakalwarrior]

Hehehehe. Imagine an aluminum case, stripped of all side pannels, fan grills cut out, PCI slot holders taken out, drive bays popped out, etc.... Pushed up to an AC unit. Not a lot gets south of the vid card though but it does have a constant breeze going and infinite supply of room temperature air with some draft of colder on the back side (but not now in the winter, the compressor wont cut on because of the temp outside. Bahhhhh