Dusting off the OG Titans

[Railgun]

In light of the forthcoming folding competition, I figured I'd toss every bit of HW I can get working again into it. This entailed retrofitting my OG Titans back to their OEM coolers from the current water blocks they have.

First one I did had some small signs of light corrosion on a couple solder joints along the front edge of the card. But cleaned it all up and popped new 2mm thermal pads where needed and seemed good.

The issue simply is that it's overheating. The OGs didn't come with a back plate, though there isn't a lot of airflow where it sits at the moment so I used the back plate for the water block I had, and lasted just a little longer, then hung. Popped the card out and it was extraordinarily hot.

The cooler is working fine, and interestingly, the fan does not ramp up to full speed and the core temp isn't all that hot, rather it's the rest of the board, dare I say the memory that's the problem.

Even with some airflow I don't see how this isn't an issue, and it's certainly unexpected. I will need to retrofit the second card to confirm it's not a fluke/bad card.

Knock on wood, I've never had to tshoot a GPU before, so in this particular instance, I don't even know where to begin other than chalk it up to an 11 year old card that's been sitting for the better part of five years.

Any thoughts or waste my time on better things?

 

[MaddMutt]

Do you have a picture of the card? The old heat sink/fan still have their Tim pads? The Tim pads from the WB might not be the right size/hight for the old heat sink. IIRC some old WBs recommended adding a dot of Tim paste along with the Tim pad on the memory/vrm section for proper heat transfer.

 

[Railgun]

The old pads are still there, but have been exposed for over five years so I've replaced them. They're all 2mm pads on the top side for the memory and VRM and have been replaced with the same. I used NT-H1 as the paste. I used the same pads for the back side memory and added a couple pads for the back side of the chip too. The EK block only used .5mm pads but it still works well enough as it is a bit of a hack to get it cooler. Given the back plate is quite hot to the touch, it simply means to me it's getting too hot.

Funny thing is, with the Internet being the Internet, I cannot find a single image of the original Titan in its original form. Everything is an X or XP or V or whatever. But I'd left the original pads in their place on the OE cooler.

 

[Woomack]

I sold everything older that had any value. I only checked what is worth folding from what I still have, and there is a huge gap in PPD between RTX3060 and RTX4070, while both show about 150W while folding. I mean 2.5m vs 10m PPD. RTX4080 has 20m PPD. This is what the client says, but it's less on average. Still, I'm surprised how it improved in F@H, as in games, it's not so visible.

I guess if I had Titans, then I would keep them. I always keep high-end and unique stuff. There have not been so many series like that in the last few years. No special edition graphics cards, motherboards, or other things. I'm not counting regular items with a different sticker.

If the electricity bill is not a problem, then you can still restore them for folding.

 

[Railgun]

If the electricity bill is not a problem, then you can still restore them for folding.

It's a huge problem. But that's another thread for another day.

 

[MaddMutt]

OG Titans?? You mentioned 6GB, so are these the 1st Titans that came out that are based on the GTX-680 GPU? IIRC all Titans (black, x, xp) are built to Nvidia’s reference design. This is the same as the GTX-295/590/690 cards with the sticker being the only difference.

 

[Railgun]

Based on the 700 series technically (780/ti). Though the 600s had some parts share with the Kepler generation, these were the full fat Kepler parts (GK110).

In any event, I'll let them lie for this go around as I just don't have time to sort them out and will troubleshoot them later next week sometime.