6800 Ultra problem solved! 7800 too?

[theseeker]

If you read my previous post about my ASUS 6800 Ultras locking-up, I found the solution.
My GPU's are H2O cooled with Aqua water blocks. My system was crashing during 3DMark and any video game I tried to play. I spent alot of time with ASUS techs trying to solve the problem. I thought it was the MB and this morning they asked me to RMA my MB and both 6800's. I did not want to do that. I had mentioned to them that I thought it might be the fan issue, similar to 7800 cards. As it turns out my suspicions were correct. Even though the GPU is cool, the card BIOS tells it to shut down if the RAM gets to hot. The ASUS cards have a heat pipe under the RAM sink which is dependent upon the fan to draw the air across. I cut an opening in the side of the fan shroud to allow my tubes to pass through and viola', everything works and works great. I left the cover off of the top of the cards to allow for more air flow.

You can tell that I was not worried about aesthetic value. I needed to get this machine to work! I am happy to report it does now.

I am not sure how this score rates, but at least now I can begin to OC!

One more thing happened that I was not expecting with this change. My idle temps have dropped 8C. I know that sounds strange but they did. I checked before and after with MB monitor and ASUS Probe. I can only summize that the fan is drawing the cool air over the water block and cooling it down as well.

 

[el rolio]

hey man, before i say anything else, your setup that musta been posted somewhere else started me and revenant on a super hunt for the type of cooling solution i saw posted in your pics. at first i thought it was some gpu waterblock that came with ramsinks but all the searching i did showed none to look like yours. next i tried to look around fo the waterblock itself and saw that it did not come with any sinks at all, which then led me to belive yu got the sinks elsewhere. since i have a bfg 6800 i had never seen sinks like that but low and behold it was the sinks from the 6800 ULTRA cards.

after that it was as simple as contacting some guys on ebay who were selling 6800 ultras, most of them with upgraded cooling (like the nvsilencer) and asking them for hte spare parts. we ended up getting 3 full ultra cooling assemblies.

all im waiting on now is the cashflow to build my WC setup, but in the meantime i was trying to research the bar hieghts and whether they would fit over the tall ramsinks of the 6800 assembly etc. glad to see that they do again in your pics.

now this is interesing what you have brought up: originally i was planning to jsut use the L shaped section of the ramsinks and then put my waterblock on the gpu, but are you saying that it wont work properly unless i ALSO have the fan part on there AND running? also, will the fan introduce a level of noise i have tried to defeat for so long?

edit: oh and my WC system will be the swiftech kit which means 3/8" tubing. i was considering the high profile dangerden block or even the swiftech block but it looks like it wont be a problem with your clearance.

 

[Top Nurse]

One more thing happened that I was not expecting with this change. My idle temps have dropped 8C. I know that sounds strange but they did. I checked before and after with MB monitor and ASUS Probe. I can only summize that the fan is drawing the cool air over the water block and cooling it down as well.

Glad you were able to fix things and not have to wait through a hardware replacement or buying new stuff. You say your GPU temps went down 8 C? How are you measuring that particular temp?

 

[theseeker]

Glad you were able to fix things and not have to wait through a hardware replacement or buying new stuff. You say your GPU temps went down 8 C? How are you measuring that particular temp?

TN, the temps of my CPU and NB went down 8C. I am using MB Monitor and ASUS Probe to monitor the changes. This is the only way I could monitor the temps and be consistent with my previous set-up. FYI, Aquasuite is reporting the same!

 

[theseeker]

hey man, before i say anything else, your setup that musta been posted somewhere else started me and revenant on a super hunt for the type of cooling solution i saw posted in your pics. at first i thought it was some gpu waterblock that came with ramsinks but all the searching i did showed none to look like yours. next i tried to look around fo the waterblock itself and saw that it did not come with any sinks at all, which then led me to belive yu got the sinks elsewhere. since i have a bfg 6800 i had never seen sinks like that but low and behold it was the sinks from the 6800 ULTRA cards.

after that it was as simple as contacting some guys on ebay who were selling 6800 ultras, most of them with upgraded cooling (like the nvsilencer) and asking them for hte spare parts. we ended up getting 3 full ultra cooling assemblies.

all im waiting on now is the cashflow to build my WC setup, but in the meantime i was trying to research the bar hieghts and whether they would fit over the tall ramsinks of the 6800 assembly etc. glad to see that they do again in your pics.

now this is interesing what you have brought up: originally i was planning to jsut use the L shaped section of the ramsinks and then put my waterblock on the gpu, but are you saying that it wont work properly unless i ALSO have the fan part on there AND running? also, will the fan introduce a level of noise i have tried to defeat for so long?

edit: oh and my WC system will be the swiftech kit which means 3/8" tubing. i was considering the high profile dangerden block or even the swiftech block but it looks like it wont be a problem with your clearance.

The WC gear is all Aqua. Swiftech will fit, with the exception of the NB cooler. The fan will add a little noise but the cooling effect was something that I did not expect.

 

[Top Nurse]

I think what is happening is that your fan is cooling the board down near where the sensor is as water conducts heat away a lot better than air. Especially when the only thing that radiates is a block of copper with nothing much in the way of radiating fins. I had a similar thing come up once before and when I isolated the probe from the air my temps went back to normal. Now if your water temps dropped 8 degrees C then I would say you got something going on there

 

[DamienThorn]

Glad to hear that you solved the problem, especially because of the amount of time you spent trying to troubleshoot. It's always refreshing to actually fix something instead of RMAing it.

 

[el rolio]

The WC gear is all Aqua. Swiftech will fit, with the exception of the NB cooler. The fan will add a little noise but the cooling effect was something that I did not expect.

right. yea the kit is the good ol 120 black kit i was thinkin (pump, rad, res, cpu block) then i would choose which gpu block to put on as i mentioned before, then prolly use the polarflo NB block since its lo profile enough + i can rotate the block for optimal tubing routes... especially since my agp slot is RIGHT beside it.

thanks again for your comments aaaaaand hapy to hear that stuff worked out for you.

and again, for clarification: the temps of the other items in your loop went down? and yu think this is cuz their was some new airflow across the block on your gpu which AIDED the performance of your whole loop?

oh and please let us know how the OC'ing goes, especially with regard to the memory oc's on the gfx card