Taken apart 6800 GT - Arctic silver results.

T

Toad21

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
445
Ok. I got my PNY 6800 GT yesterday, and right away I took apart all the heatsinks very carefully, and applied arctic silver 5 to everything.

I found the the GPU already has what seems to be arctic silver on it.

xHeats.JPG


I can now overclock it to 427/1200 stable @ 52 C. Thats right 52 degrees celcius. I have a Vantec PCI fan at full blast, and I took off that graphics cover plate to expose the heatsinks underneath.

Its 52 degrees at full overclock after running 3dmark 2003 3 times in a row.

The ram timings of 1200 seem to be almost the best I have seen.

I will post pics of the entire process tomorrow.
 
1200 is pretty impressive for your mem speeds.

congrats...

*on a side note*

I'm still astonished at just how tiny the actual GPU heatsink is on these GTs. heck, the freakin' heatsink on my mobo's chipset cooler is bigger.

what was nVidia thinking when they designed such a small heatsink on such a fast card?
 
Your temp sensor must be defective...no way you can have only 52c with the stock heatsink... I have this result but with watercooling. I tested 3 GT yet and all of them had the same results after 3dmarks 2003, around 70c. There is no compound on earth that will lower the temp by 18c. Watercooling can do it but no the silver 5 !!
 
the thing is...

it doesnt matter how great whatever the thermal compound is that you're using because its only job is to transfer heat from one source to another.

and like I said earlier, the stock GPU cooler on the GTs is a joke and there's no way in hell its going to provide the same cooling abilities like watercooling can or could.
 
ozziegn said:
what was nVidia thinking when they designed such a small heatsink on such a fast card?
Click to expand...

nVidia was thinking: "This is a 6800 core on a card designed and sold to run at a speed way below it's potential ceiling. This small cooler is all they need to run at 350mhz. *maniacal laugh*" :p
 
tijean said:
Your temp sensor must be defective...no way you can have only 52c with the stock heatsink... I have this result but with watercooling. I tested 3 GT yet and all of them had the same results after 3dmarks 2003, around 70c. There is no compound on earth that will lower the temp by 18c. Watercooling can do it but no the silver 5 !!
Click to expand...

i doubt his sensor is defecetive. the temperatures are just dropping before he sees them. i suggest running that demo i linked to earlier. you can run it in a near full screen window and watch your temps at the same time.
 
yes, run rthdribl and watch your temps...i go from 53c to 80+c when running that at near full screen
 
Mine idle's on 45*C @ 425/1200, I put AS5 on everything a week ago, didn't help much though :(
 
out of interest...does taking apart the cooler and applying AS or any other non-stock TIM void warranties?
 
Most warrenties are a complete pain in the ass anyway, but yeah, the second that the heatsink comes off the card your warrenty is gone.
 
do you reckon that if you RMA'd a card that, on which you had changed the TIM for a legitimate reason they would pick up on the changed TIM and not replace ur card? I know that they would be well within their rights but would they even pick up on it...or would they just sling the card into a test rig....see if the issue that you have reported exists...and then take appropriate action? Or would they look closely enough to notice that you had messed with it?
 
They won't know I took apart the card unless they took it all apart and found the memory pads are missing. So I am not afraid of voiding the warranty.

One thing I noticed. The Memory chips say "Samsung 422"

Is this really 844 mhz ram they just have overclocked?

And about the temps, I know the card temp readouts are fine, I have the case open and touch the back plate of the card and it is about the same temp as my skin.

I havent run very extensive games or tests yet, but I will to see if it raises the temp. I know this vantec pci fan cooled my 5900 crazy style. It went from 110 degrees after gaming at stock speeds to 95 degrees fully overclocked to 463/934 after gaming for hours. This fan pushes alot of air 1 inch away from the card and works wonders.

Here are some pics, you cant read the ram though, I had to use a magnifying glass to see "samsung 422"





6800GTchipset.JPG
 
If you look at the side of the card you can see right away if the TIM pads are missing.
Besides if you mod it, the warranty is modded also, It wouldn't be right to RMA it if you messed with it!
 
I took my eVGA apart today and applied AS5 to the core and all of the memory chips. The pads on the memory chips are disgusting and the heatsink is laughable. Then I updated the BIOS with the 1.4V version. I still can't get as high as some folks have gotten, but I'll take 407/1.08.

Thanks for the link to Real-time HDR IBL. That's a real nice way of breaking in the AS5 while monitoring temps. I'm currently getting ~83 - 85 degrees under the HDR IBL @ 1.4V.
 
The "Samsung 422" is not the part number. The 422 is the year and week the memory was made, in this case 2004 week 22. The string of letters and numbers below that is the part number of the memory.
 
Like I said I am not worried about the warranty. They most likely will just pop it in the test computer, see what it does, then send you another one. You cant really see the pads are mising from the side unless you really look hard. And I am placing my money that they wont take apart all the heatsinks just to see what it looks like.

Anyways, i will do the bios update to ultra later today and post my results of that. Again, I will just save my old bios, and flash it back to normal if I have to RMA it. And if its dead, then there is no way they will know what bios was on it will they ;p.
 
Toad21 said:
Like I said I am not worried about the warranty. They most likely will just pop it in the test computer, see what it does, then send you another one. You cant really see the pads are mising from the side unless you really look hard. And I am placing my money that they wont take apart all the heatsinks just to see what it looks like.

Anyways, i will do the bios update to ultra later today and post my results of that. Again, I will just save my old bios, and flash it back to normal if I have to RMA it. And if its dead, then there is no way they will know what bios was on it will they ;p.
Click to expand...

Toad, IMO they should thank us for taking off that ridiculous frag tape or pads or whatever the hell they were.
 
Agreed.

Ok, I flashed it with the ultra bios and my results were as follows:

10mhz increase in GPU core speeds.

0mhz increase in RAM speeds.

NEGATIVE 500 3dmarks. Yes it actually made my card perform lower with the extra 10mhz.

Plus it makes that annoying Leadtech Ram counter at startup that i hate.

I flashed it back to original, and wont be flashing it to ultra again unless there is a version where the ram counter doesnt come up when the computer boots.
 
Could you give me a link to the 1.5v bios? Is there a version that doesnt have a ram counter on startup?
 
Just curious, when you took off the pads to the memory and put AS5 on there, did the heatsink actually make contact with the memory chips? Just wondering because those pads look pretty thick and they might have considered that and left a little space between the heatsink and the memory chips.
 
Toad21 said:
I can now overclock it to 427/1200 stable @ 52 C. Thats right 52 degrees celcius. I have a Vantec PCI fan at full blast, and I took off that graphics cover plate to expose the heatsinks underneath.

Its 52 degrees at full overclock after running 3dmark 2003 3 times in a row.

The ram timings of 1200 seem to be almost the best I have seen.

I will post pics of the entire process tomorrow.
Click to expand...

heyheyhey said:
Mine idle's on 45*C @ 425/1200, I put AS5 on everything a week ago, didn't help much though :(
Click to expand...

Have you guys run the HDR demo yet? Running 3DMark and then looking at your temps doesn't mean a hoot. The temps will drop faster then you can exit out of 3DMark and 3DMark is going to stress them as hard as the HDR demo.

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

Fire up the HDR demo and monitor your temps while its running. You can view both at the same time because the demo runs in window mode.

My XFX 6800GT idles at around 57 degrees Celcius at stock 350/1100. And thats the temp most other people get. I find it hard to believe some of you are getting 45C and even 52C overclocked.

And i dont suggest flashing a GT to an Ultra because there have been quite a few people have some real issues doing that. It applies more voltage to the GT than what was intended. If you want Ultra speeds just OC it. Dont flash it.
 
does the GTs fan blow air ONTO the gpu or AWAY from the gpu....j/w cause i might buy an antec card cooler too once i get my gt....
 
xSyzygy666x said:
does the GTs fan blow air ONTO the gpu or AWAY from the gpu....j/w cause i might buy an antec card cooler too once i get my gt....
Click to expand...

I believe the fan blows IN against the heatsink.
 
ok...then a pci card fan would help....cause if it was blowing out the fan would just push back and itd actually cool LESS
 
Maybe his room temp is -20 degrees? :p
Related question - for those of you who have applied water cooling to your 6800GT, or just a big mutha HSF, how much difference has it made to your core's limit?
 
The pads are not as thick as they seem to be. The Artic silvler touches the ram heatsinks nicely.

Running HDR at 1600x1200 8xaa 8xaf PCI fan at full blast I get 72c, fan at slow I get 80c.

That is at 427/1200.
 
Heck, you could always just take the thermal pads, through them in a zip lock bag and if you ever need them just through them on there to RMA it. I can't believe they are using those cloth like pads, horrible for cooling. Anyone know what the BFGs are using, same thing?
 
Yep, they were on my BFG, its all stuff direct from Nvidia anyway.

The BFG's supposedly come with AS 5 on the core, but I got a 4 C drop right off the bat switching to Shin Estu and another 2C drop when it cured.
 
Well I decided to rip apart my GT as well and put AS5 on the memory chips and reapply it to the core. While I was doing that I also figured I'd take off that other heatsink, that separate one closest to the power connector and held on with push pins, and put some AS5 on there too because it had those pads. It was just covering three small chips, not sure what they are. If I had to guess I'd say they were voltage regulators. Anyway, after I put on the AS5 and put the heatsink back on I noticed that there was a gap between the heatsink and the chips. I had to sand down the two posts of the heatsink until it was short enough to fit. I didn't really like the idea that it wasn't touching the heatsink without that thick pad. Sorry, I didn't take any pics.

I have a BFG, so I didn't really notice a big change in core temperatures afterward. I haven't really tried to push the memory much more yet. I still can't get the core much higher than 400. At least I got the peace of mind in knowing that I got rid of those awful pads.
 
I have a Zalman ZM80D-HP on mine right now sinks are the ones that came in the package, no advantage to em, also before I put this on I had ripped it all apart, put shin on the core and good white thermal grease on the memory, wasnt getting any higher clocks out of memory but i did get a 6 C drop after a week of cooking the Shin on the core.
 
yeah the high spec TIM's like shin etsu and AS5 take a good while to cure, and that process only happens are high temps really...so it can take a while to see some real drops...
 
I actually don't notice a temp drop after letting AS 5 set in on my CPU but I do on the Shin. Personal observation more than anything but I haven't been too impressed with AS 5.
 
Sniper_Merc said:
I actually don't notice a temp drop after letting AS 5 set in on my CPU but I do on the Shin. Personal observation more than anything but I haven't been too impressed with AS 5.
Click to expand...

A few people have the same opinion actually...i use AS5 at the mo but i am going to try out some Shin the next time i need to buy some TIM.
 
How hard is it to remove and reattach the stock HSF?
Taking it off and putting some AS on it seems like a good idea, but I wouldn't want to mess with it if it's going to be a pain (like if the thermal compound they use is like a glue instead of a paste).

Also, is buying a Vantec pci fan a good idea to blow additional air on the HSF? Removing the face plate and having a lot more air onto it seems like it would be very beneficial. Anyone do that and notice a decent drop in temperatures?

edit - Would AS 3 be okay? It's all I have laying around and newegg is out of AS5.
 
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