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Edit: Sorry about the massive pictures guys.
Hey guys, thought I'd post info on what I did with this voltage mod, just in case anyone else has this card and is looking to push it a bit. Some of the guys at Kingpincooling forum helped me out, and turns out this was a lot easier than I initially thought. This post will mainly be informational on the card and the mod, and I will add some before and after testing in the next day or two. I'll be posting this on a few forums that I'm a member of, in case you see this copy/pasted under this username or my other, xxmastermindxx.
A few words about the card. It is water cooled. I really didn't do much testing with air, because I was going to up voltage anyway and it's primary purpose was to be watercooled anyway. Also, I own the OC version, couldn't grab a TOP. Only difference is a healthy factory overclock. That being said, I flashed the card with a TOP BIOS, so please take this info and review as if it were the TOP version, as it is now identical to one for all intents and purposes. The biggest deal about this card, in my opinion (other than the triple slot cooler, of course), is it has what Asus calls "VGA Hotwire" built in, and this is what it is according to them: "VGA Hotwire allows you to plug and solder wires on the cards voltage regulators and accurately read and control Vcore, Vmem, and PLL voltages on a hardware level."
More on this later. The card looks to be well built, definitely better than reference in my opinion. Bigger PCB than reference, 10 phase VRM for GPU power (compared to four on reference cards), easy voltage mod points, great cooler. Out of the box, voltage is locked like any other 680. The limit is 1.175V, however my multimeter actually shows it occasionally hitting 1.215V under load, which coincidentally is the old limit that EVGA Precision X had. This is prior to any modding. Software only shows it up to 1.175V though, even when I was feeding the card 1.35-1.4V. Anyway, the only thing that is really lacking, in my opinion, is inadequate VRM and VRAM cooling.
Now, some pictures. Sorry about the relatively poor quality, but I'm taking these with a camera phone. Need high res? Google reviews of this card.
Has this box ever lied?
Not going to lie, other than test fitting it in my case to get a general idea of playing well with my other card, the card did not stay in stock, air cooled condition for long lol. I didn't get a great idea of its air cooled performance other than a little bit of BF3, where it hovered in the mid 50C's at around 1300MHz. I put it under my existing Gigabyte reference but then switched it once I changed my loop around and put my block on it.
First fitting:
DC II on top with block installed:
Side note: Although this card is a triple slot, you can in fact fit two of them on most boards, in my opinion. I have a P8Z68-V, and the slots are spaced apart just right for triple slot cards. They will be tight if you leave the air coolers on, but it's doable. Here is a picture of the clearance from the cooler to the next card on the bottom, it is ~1/4":
The DC II cooler itself seems to have overlooked the fact that GK104 die is so small. Only 3 of the 5 heatpipes make contact with anything, making the other two heatpipes useless imo. They reused the same design, obviously (no big deal though):
Remember the VRAM/VRM cooling I mentioned? The VRM's have a small heatsink on them, but it is not connected to or directly cooled by the DC II cooler itself, other than the warm air being blown through the DC II heatsink. They get pretty warm at stock. As I write this post, they're at 53C at idle voltage on the outside of the heatsink, and the temp probe I installed directly on the chips shows around 62C. High, but definitely within specs, especially since it's a bank of 10 VRM phases dumping heat into a small heatsink. There is no built in VRM temperature monitoring that you can read with HWiNFO64, for example, like some cards have. Second point, the VRAM came with ZERO cooling on it, which was weird, because it also gets pretty warm under load. I installed my own copper sinks, and they get hot enough to hurt, along with the small VRM heatsink:
The card, like I said, is the OC version. However I flashed it with the TOP BIOS, so other than possibly higher overclocking ability due to possibly higher binning, the cards are equal. 1137MHz stock clock, 1202MHz boost clock. In use though, it actually boosts to 1280MHz, without touching any overclocking or voltage:
Sneak peek at 1.35 volts clock speed. An offset of +125 gets the max boost up to 1406MHz, and it stays pegged there in everything except 3DMark11 tests 1 and 2, where it fluctuates:
Now, onto some fun stuff :thumb:
Hey guys, thought I'd post info on what I did with this voltage mod, just in case anyone else has this card and is looking to push it a bit. Some of the guys at Kingpincooling forum helped me out, and turns out this was a lot easier than I initially thought. This post will mainly be informational on the card and the mod, and I will add some before and after testing in the next day or two. I'll be posting this on a few forums that I'm a member of, in case you see this copy/pasted under this username or my other, xxmastermindxx.
A few words about the card. It is water cooled. I really didn't do much testing with air, because I was going to up voltage anyway and it's primary purpose was to be watercooled anyway. Also, I own the OC version, couldn't grab a TOP. Only difference is a healthy factory overclock. That being said, I flashed the card with a TOP BIOS, so please take this info and review as if it were the TOP version, as it is now identical to one for all intents and purposes. The biggest deal about this card, in my opinion (other than the triple slot cooler, of course), is it has what Asus calls "VGA Hotwire" built in, and this is what it is according to them: "VGA Hotwire allows you to plug and solder wires on the cards voltage regulators and accurately read and control Vcore, Vmem, and PLL voltages on a hardware level."
More on this later. The card looks to be well built, definitely better than reference in my opinion. Bigger PCB than reference, 10 phase VRM for GPU power (compared to four on reference cards), easy voltage mod points, great cooler. Out of the box, voltage is locked like any other 680. The limit is 1.175V, however my multimeter actually shows it occasionally hitting 1.215V under load, which coincidentally is the old limit that EVGA Precision X had. This is prior to any modding. Software only shows it up to 1.175V though, even when I was feeding the card 1.35-1.4V. Anyway, the only thing that is really lacking, in my opinion, is inadequate VRM and VRAM cooling.
Now, some pictures. Sorry about the relatively poor quality, but I'm taking these with a camera phone. Need high res? Google reviews of this card.
Has this box ever lied?
Not going to lie, other than test fitting it in my case to get a general idea of playing well with my other card, the card did not stay in stock, air cooled condition for long lol. I didn't get a great idea of its air cooled performance other than a little bit of BF3, where it hovered in the mid 50C's at around 1300MHz. I put it under my existing Gigabyte reference but then switched it once I changed my loop around and put my block on it.
First fitting:
DC II on top with block installed:
Side note: Although this card is a triple slot, you can in fact fit two of them on most boards, in my opinion. I have a P8Z68-V, and the slots are spaced apart just right for triple slot cards. They will be tight if you leave the air coolers on, but it's doable. Here is a picture of the clearance from the cooler to the next card on the bottom, it is ~1/4":
The DC II cooler itself seems to have overlooked the fact that GK104 die is so small. Only 3 of the 5 heatpipes make contact with anything, making the other two heatpipes useless imo. They reused the same design, obviously (no big deal though):
Remember the VRAM/VRM cooling I mentioned? The VRM's have a small heatsink on them, but it is not connected to or directly cooled by the DC II cooler itself, other than the warm air being blown through the DC II heatsink. They get pretty warm at stock. As I write this post, they're at 53C at idle voltage on the outside of the heatsink, and the temp probe I installed directly on the chips shows around 62C. High, but definitely within specs, especially since it's a bank of 10 VRM phases dumping heat into a small heatsink. There is no built in VRM temperature monitoring that you can read with HWiNFO64, for example, like some cards have. Second point, the VRAM came with ZERO cooling on it, which was weird, because it also gets pretty warm under load. I installed my own copper sinks, and they get hot enough to hurt, along with the small VRM heatsink:
The card, like I said, is the OC version. However I flashed it with the TOP BIOS, so other than possibly higher overclocking ability due to possibly higher binning, the cards are equal. 1137MHz stock clock, 1202MHz boost clock. In use though, it actually boosts to 1280MHz, without touching any overclocking or voltage:
Sneak peek at 1.35 volts clock speed. An offset of +125 gets the max boost up to 1406MHz, and it stays pegged there in everything except 3DMark11 tests 1 and 2, where it fluctuates:
Now, onto some fun stuff :thumb:
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