GF3 Ghetto mod

M1ster_R0gers

[H]ard [H]eaded
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Jun 8, 2000
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I have a neighbor with a 15 year old son who is getting into computers, and from the likes of his friends, both his family and I deemed him being a geek is an evolutionary step beyond being a punk. I put a system together with all good last gen parts on the cheap so he can do some gaming and whatnot.

I got a call from a mutual friend who informed me that the system I put together had died and they could not get it fixed. Since I have already shown him what and what not to do with reinstalles I figured it might be a little more serious than software. His father didnt want to call me because he doesnt have the cash to pay for me to fix it, but wth I dont have a family and a little cash to spare so a case of this every once in a while is ok.

After reaching in the system I found the vid card WAY to hot for my likings, and upon closer inspection found the fan dead. I really was not up for throwing cash out to buy a replacement fan but I figured I could do something to get it back up and running.

Upon coming home I dug through the boxes of crap that I was not going to be using any time soon and found a few fun peices so without further ado here is a quick

Geforce 3 Ti 200 Ghetto Mod

We are starting with a PNY Gforce3 Ti 200 that lived in my machine for a few years. It clocked up to about 215/500 from the stock 175/400 so it was a pretty damn stout card to begin with. Very good for its day. Also in the pic I managed to find the fan from a TT silent boost that was replaced with a higher volume antec 80 MM and a 80MM to 60MM adapter that was for a project that I later deemed to silly to complete.

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Crud from having the computer too close to the kitchen:

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those inner fins are sharp!

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remember these?

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I had to find a way for the screws I had on hand to grab the fins on the GPU heat sink since the ram sinks were only adhered by paste, while allowing clearance for PCI slots:

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Mounted in a test system:

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so far without pushing too hard the card now does a completely stable 236/505 and its pretty quiet. with an xpm at 2200 it ran for a 10k+ 3dmark2k1 so I am sure between that and the looks of a "hypermodded" video card this young geek in the making will have much fun in the coming months.

EDIT for a "real world" test using 1024x768 32 bit display settings the card pulled an 8889. I think I am going to give him my UT2003 set so he has something to game with.
 
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