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didn't think about taking pics till after i put the card back in, and the case back into place. and i'm lazy so next time i have the case out i will snap a few.
i managed to get my temps of the card to plumit. both GPU core and GPU board temps are down by >10*C idle and >20C under load!
GPU core temps:
idle: 52C, down to to 38C.
load: 74C down to 52C
(80C in BioShock, down ??C i still need to test it out)
the above temps were read with a 30 minute timeframe where i took the card out to preform this mod, A/C was cycling on/off every 20 minutes or so, so temps were pretty stable and accurate to the best of my abilities.)
(edit: bioshock looks like it really takes advantage of this card, and uses every last bit it can pump out. it must be using every transistor on the board! i spiked out at 66.0C! while i was hitting around 52.8C scanning for artifacts just minutes before and idling at 40C. BF2 and 2142 seem to spike around 52C as well. if i crank AA and AF in RavenShield i hit around 52C Also. room temp seems to be a a couple degrees warmer today despite not changing the A/C settings...)
according to sapphire this is within safe limits, but always seemed kinda high to me. no artifacts, and the card still OC'd a little just fine.
the mod:
mount/fab 2 92mm fans to the pretty big x1950 pro heatsink.
sapphire did a very lousey job cooling the AGP x1950 pro. they eventually released an "extreme" or whatever version with IIRC a Zalman high performance copper GPU heatsink (costs somewhere around $50 or so shipped). this drasticly reduced the temps by quite a bit. in order for me to put this same heatsink and fan on i would void my warranty, which i didn't want to do just yet with the early history of the x1950's overheating. well, this mod kind of voided my warranty, but i had already taken this part of the heatsink off a few months ago to clean out the very packed in dust, at the recomendation of a sapphire tech via email. i can easily change it back to stock at will in the ammount of time it takes to take the card out, and unscrew and replace 6 screws. i had some extra, kind of longish, small diameter screws. like the ones in reading glasses only a CM long. they just happened to be the SAME diameter/thread of the screws on the x1950 pro heatsink well, this is sapphires heatsink...
its a CM thick aluminum plate, with thin aluminum(or most likely steel by the feel of them) channels running down it under the blue plastic cover, and a small copper "core" in the center. everyone has complained that it sucks, which it really does. i only went with the sapphire because at the time it was the only 512mb AGP x1950 out there, and still was for several months after i bought it. and in benchmarks beat out its compeditor (6800 OC) by quite a bit. both costing $200, and good experience with ATI for my last card (9800 pro) i went with the sapphire even if it had sub-par cooling because that can be fixed. the early PCI x16 versions overheat easily without a well vented case, the AGP versions were in the same boat. i have 5 80mm fans total:
2 front intake
2 rear exhaust
1 side intake (right over the video card\northbridge, better cooling with it blowing in than out).
i also had a dual-80mm PCI card mounted fan blowing on the card which lowered temps a few more degrees. a friend gave this to me because it quit working. a wire melted, so i soldered in a new one 4 years ago, still holding up.
i took that blue plastic cover off the heatsink, and used the longer screws, a .5mm drill bit, probalby smaller, no clue where it came from, it was in with some OLD computer stuff from the 80's along with some real 5 inch floppys, and also used the 6 existing screw holes and lined up the 92mm fans, drilled a few holes in the frame and they fit nicely. the fans are not tightly attached, but sag on the scews about .5cm down from the heatsink. but they aren't going anywhere. i also attached the fan controller from the dual 80mm fan and can increase/decrease the fan, thought about splicing the 2-92's into the existing x1950 pro fan controller, but i don't think the card would want to spin 2-92's and the existing fan on the heatsink.
i was going to take the dual-80mm pci mount fan and move it as close to the x1950 as possible, but then i noticed something i noticed before, which is why it was spaced 2 CASE slots down. my mobo is set up for a dual slot AGP card/cooling solution, so there was no PCI slot to put the fan card into.
going to try OC'ing next.
stock speeds: 580/1404mhz
max OC: 607/1471 (first sign of artifacts after fully warmed up)
i managed to get my temps of the card to plumit. both GPU core and GPU board temps are down by >10*C idle and >20C under load!
GPU core temps:
idle: 52C, down to to 38C.
load: 74C down to 52C
(80C in BioShock, down ??C i still need to test it out)the above temps were read with a 30 minute timeframe where i took the card out to preform this mod, A/C was cycling on/off every 20 minutes or so, so temps were pretty stable and accurate to the best of my abilities.)
(edit: bioshock looks like it really takes advantage of this card, and uses every last bit it can pump out. it must be using every transistor on the board! i spiked out at 66.0C! while i was hitting around 52.8C scanning for artifacts just minutes before and idling at 40C. BF2 and 2142 seem to spike around 52C as well. if i crank AA and AF in RavenShield i hit around 52C Also. room temp seems to be a a couple degrees warmer today despite not changing the A/C settings...)
according to sapphire this is within safe limits, but always seemed kinda high to me. no artifacts, and the card still OC'd a little just fine.
the mod:
mount/fab 2 92mm fans to the pretty big x1950 pro heatsink.
sapphire did a very lousey job cooling the AGP x1950 pro. they eventually released an "extreme" or whatever version with IIRC a Zalman high performance copper GPU heatsink (costs somewhere around $50 or so shipped). this drasticly reduced the temps by quite a bit. in order for me to put this same heatsink and fan on i would void my warranty, which i didn't want to do just yet with the early history of the x1950's overheating. well, this mod kind of voided my warranty, but i had already taken this part of the heatsink off a few months ago to clean out the very packed in dust, at the recomendation of a sapphire tech via email. i can easily change it back to stock at will in the ammount of time it takes to take the card out, and unscrew and replace 6 screws. i had some extra, kind of longish, small diameter screws. like the ones in reading glasses only a CM long. they just happened to be the SAME diameter/thread of the screws on the x1950 pro heatsink well, this is sapphires heatsink...
its a CM thick aluminum plate, with thin aluminum(or most likely steel by the feel of them) channels running down it under the blue plastic cover, and a small copper "core" in the center. everyone has complained that it sucks, which it really does. i only went with the sapphire because at the time it was the only 512mb AGP x1950 out there, and still was for several months after i bought it. and in benchmarks beat out its compeditor (6800 OC) by quite a bit. both costing $200, and good experience with ATI for my last card (9800 pro) i went with the sapphire even if it had sub-par cooling because that can be fixed. the early PCI x16 versions overheat easily without a well vented case, the AGP versions were in the same boat. i have 5 80mm fans total:
2 front intake
2 rear exhaust
1 side intake (right over the video card\northbridge, better cooling with it blowing in than out).
i also had a dual-80mm PCI card mounted fan blowing on the card which lowered temps a few more degrees. a friend gave this to me because it quit working. a wire melted, so i soldered in a new one 4 years ago, still holding up.
i took that blue plastic cover off the heatsink, and used the longer screws, a .5mm drill bit, probalby smaller, no clue where it came from, it was in with some OLD computer stuff from the 80's along with some real 5 inch floppys, and also used the 6 existing screw holes and lined up the 92mm fans, drilled a few holes in the frame and they fit nicely. the fans are not tightly attached, but sag on the scews about .5cm down from the heatsink. but they aren't going anywhere. i also attached the fan controller from the dual 80mm fan and can increase/decrease the fan, thought about splicing the 2-92's into the existing x1950 pro fan controller, but i don't think the card would want to spin 2-92's and the existing fan on the heatsink.
i was going to take the dual-80mm pci mount fan and move it as close to the x1950 as possible, but then i noticed something i noticed before, which is why it was spaced 2 CASE slots down. my mobo is set up for a dual slot AGP card/cooling solution, so there was no PCI slot to put the fan card into.
going to try OC'ing next.
stock speeds: 580/1404mhz
max OC: 607/1471 (first sign of artifacts after fully warmed up)
