6800LE cooling mod with Thermalright SI-97 (56k warning!)

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sbohdan
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6800LE cooling mod with Thermalright SI-97 (56k warning!)

Post by sbohdan »

Ok, so here we go. this is my first mod that I'm documenting and trying to disclose, so forgive me if it's not perfect. I was preparing for this mod for a while and when I had everything together- my camera broke. so little late, now let's get to it.

I decided a while ago upon seeing a cooling mod ( http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.asp ... 246&pgno=0 ) involving a use of a thermalright SI-97 Socket A heatpipe cooler and a 9800pro that I will try to do the same - except with a different card.
my plan was to get a 6800LE and first try to open the pipes with riva tuner and if that was a success, then get the SI-97 and go ahead with the mod.
I bought an Inno3d 6800LE. I chose this particular card because it has the same exact PCB and reference nvidia cooler as the 6800GT, so it is actually a 6800GT in disquise having the same gddr3 256MB 2.0ns memory and running at 1000mhz ddr.
when I got the card, ran a 3dmark05 benchmark to see what is the performance at default. it was as I expected 2900 points at default speed of 300/1000. then I proceded with opening the pipes with riva tuner and was glad to see that it was a complete succes.
I ran 3dmark05 to see what is the difference : 4310 points at default speed. next I OC-d the card to GT speeds and checked for any artifacts. non found. so far so good. at the default 1.1V for 3D I wasn't able to go above 385Mhz on the core so the next thing was to try and make a little voltmod, to change 3D volts from 1.1V to 1.3V as in the GT version. for that I had to save my own cards bios and with a little app. called Nibitor change the volts and then save the modded bios and reflash my card. at this point i still had no idea how to do this, so I went MVKtech forums that specializes in video cards ( http://www.mvktech.net/index.php ) and got all the help on how do all these steps. I want to thank for all the help I got there especially to Mavke and Jutthope21.

now that I was sure my card can operate at GT speeds and above, I was ready to flash my cards bios with an Inno3d 6800GT bios. I was hoping to get the temperature readings in control panel that is enabled in the GT bios and not available with my LE. after flashing with the GT bios, I still had no temperatures displayed in control panel and despite trying and flashing with different bioses, to no avail. since knowing the temperatures of the core is essential when OC-ing a GPU, I had to get a little display with a sensor and install it on the core. I checked the temps with the reference cooler installed and OC-d the card to 425/1100 running 3dmark05 with no artifacts and a great score of 5696! . at this point I wasn't trying to push with OC, just wanted to see the temps.
my idle temps with stock cooling were:34C
at full load running 3dmark05 the highest temp was 59C, which isn't bad considering I was 5mhz passed the Ultra speeds.

now I was ready to proceed with the mod:



Image
here are the ingredients:
Inno3d6800LE card, thermalright SI-97, zalman OP-1 fan, arctic silver5, 4x 3cm screws, temp. display with sensor.

I wanted to use as many of the original parts as possible, without having to cut or modify any of them, so that I would be able to change everything back to stock in case of wanting to sell the card in the future. the beauty of this mod is that I can return everything to original and keep the SI-97 for my next victim (card) :)
so I decided to use the original fins and the bottom retainer to secure the new cooler. all I had to do is get longer screws that can do that. my measurements showed that I need them to be 3cm long and 2mm thick. the original screws are not metric and 2mm metric size screws are just slightly thinner so they can pass through all the holes without having to make them bigger. I had to get 4 screws, 8pc. nuts, and 12 washers.
here is the next step:


Image
David and Goliath (who do you think will win this time? :P ) + the back bracket.

Image

I recommend putting nuts as well on the other side to hold the screws in place.

next I had to attach the temp sensor and put a thin coat of arctic silver on the GPU (be carefull- the little sensor ending cannot go between the GPU and cooler, because it gets squashed and become useless- instead I put the little plastic ending on the GPU and the sensor is touching from the side) :

Image


next assemble the top fin with the back bracket using the 3cm screws (with all the washers. make sure there is enough space between the GPU and the top cooler to put in the base of the SI-97 between them:
Image


slide in the SI-97 as far as it can go in hitting the ram cooler. if not all the way in, there will be not enough space to install the card in the AGP slot. in fact even like that the heatpipes are sitting on the PCI slots:

Image

secure the cooler with the nuts making sure you just hand tighten them. the back bracket isn't rigid. it works like a spring so tightening the screws too much would bend the card -thus damaging it.

next I used the original top cover of the cooler to draw a smaller one that can fit over the original litle fan just hitting the base of the SI-97 . it still can channel some air on the ram and also on the base of the SI-97. I used the seethrough cover of the zalman OP-1
:) :
Image

Image

Image

next I installed the Zalman fan (which I chose for being slim and very quiet, also for having a little power splitter with 2 5V and 2 12V dongles)
I had to bend the wire fasrtener of the SI-97 because it was made for a standard 9 or 8cm fan and wasn't exactly matching the zalman.
then I connected the two 5V connectors to the zalman and the little original noisy cooler, which now running on just 5V, became noiseless :P :


Image

so here is a couple of pics of the ready cooling monster :mrgreen:



Image

Image

Image

as you can see here there is barelly any space left above my sound card
:(
Image

this is how it looks overall in my rig:
Image

after I was ready I checked the temps again at the same OC of 425/1100 (this time I had the new official 81.85 drivers. the new drivers raised my score to 5799p. in 3dmark05)
my idle temps went down to 26.5C !
the full load temp went down to 40.1C !

:finga:

now to more OC. went up to 435/1100. my computer froze! :( :evil:
no matter what I tried, nothing worked. after a long time of reinstalling drivers, trying all kinds of troubleshooting and reading info on the net, I discovered the problem! it was my PSU. nothing wrong with it, just doesn't have enough juice for the combination of my prescott 3.2 @ 3.5ghz + the card exceeding at ultra speeds. I read that the prescott itself is using about 200W and the real ultra needs about 275W! my chieftec is only 420W. I took out one of my ram sticks, disconnected the dvd rom and the second HDD. tried again: went up to 444/1100 with little artifacts and got 6012p. in 3dmark05!

Image

I past the 6K with only 512MB of ram running in single channel! I comnnected the second HDD back and checked again with the same setting : 5985 points. disconnected the HDD again : 6012p. again! so it seems I'm PSU limited :( I also changed the 3D volts to 1.4V and this was a disaster. my card would freeze even at 370mhz of GPU! and its not the temperatures as you see. now I have a dilemma: I'm suppose to put together a new rig with the P4 M that I have won, so I didn't want to buy a new PSU for my present computer, which I intend to sell. on the other hand I'm curious how far could my 6800LE go with this kind of cooling... :shock: even like this I wa able to more then double my cards performance: to be exact- 207% of the original score, at the same time the excruciating noise from the original fan is gone and my load temps are down 19 degrees celsius! the mod is very easy to do, pretty cheap (considering the performance (the SI-97 costs close to the price of arctic silencer5 which besides making the card silent isn't better then the reference cooler) so I'm pretty happy with the results :) :finga: :drinkers:
Last edited by sbohdan on Mon Nov 14, 2005 10:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by gvblake22 »

HOLY CRAP, that is really really cool, nice job!!! =D>

So that small silver heatsink that you used to hold down the SI-97 is just the stock heatsink from inside that shroud? Very good idea!
And those temp drops are impressive! That's one hell of a card ya got goin there! Thanks for sharing your ingenuity with us. It's always fun to see some crazy new cooling mods! :)
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Post by sbohdan »

gvblake22 wrote:HOLY CRAP, that is really really cool, nice job!!! =D>

So that small silver heatsink that you used to hold down the SI-97 is just the stock heatsink from inside that shroud? Very good idea!
And those temp drops are impressive! That's one hell of a card ya got goin there! Thanks for sharing your ingenuity with us. It's always fun to see some crazy new cooling mods! :)
thanks gvblake. yeah, that is the original cooling shroud. the reason for documenting the whole mod despite the fact someone else have allready done it, is that I have a different card and there is a possible issue of the SI-97 possibly not fitting on certain cards (smaller PCB or less distance between GPU and the AGP connections), so this proves that it can be actually done with any 6800 card and to show how simple the mod is - thus anybody can do it. if I ever change to something like a 7800, the SI-97 will most likely fit on that one too (also large PCB, might have to make a different bracket to hold the cooler)
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Post by gvblake22 »

Cool, well I'm glad you posted it!
Good idea with putting that stock heatsink blower fan on there at the base of the heatsink. I never would have thought of that!

Except I did just notice one error. You called it the "Thermaltake" SI-97; this cooler is made by Thermalright, not Thermaltake...
:P
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Post by Apoptosis »

Great mod and thanks for sharing. Is the performance increase worth the time or money involved?
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Post by sbohdan »

gvblake22 wrote:Cool, well I'm glad you posted it!
Good idea with putting that stock heatsink blower fan on there at the base of the heatsink. I never would have thought of that!

Except I did just notice one error. You called it the "Thermaltake" SI-97; this cooler is made by Thermalright, not Thermaltake...
:P
my ere lol. you are right. it's thermalright. just being to tired I guess :?
the stock blower fan wasn't supposed to be there originally. I started the mod about a week ago and only put the fan on 2 days ago. I figured it would help with the ram and also blow over the base of the SI-97. after installing it it lowered my idle temp another 1.5C and the load temps by 3C. I just didn't want to make the post longer by going into details of different issues. it also stabilized my ram temps. the ram fins have a little heatpipe that connects them, therefore it doesn't really matter, that the air is only blowing on the partial section.
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Post by sbohdan »

Apoptosis wrote:Great mod and thanks for sharing. Is the performance increase worth the time or money involved?
yes, I definitelly think so! as I said in the post the SI-97 costs about the same as the arctic silencer for the 6800, which is a popular choice as an aftermarket cooler. it cost me $39 including tax + $10incl. tax for the zalman fan (US dollars). As opposed to the arctic silencer it doesn't just reduce the noise (read quite a bit of reviews about the silencer, where all of them said it was reducing the whining noise of the reference cooler but wasn't really reducing the temps). as a matter of fact I'm not aware of any VGA cooler on the market that would reduce temps so greatly (19C under full load. also notice that I connected the zalman fan to 5V which is the lowest setting spinning at 1400rpm. connecting to 12V would lower the temps even further!), not even close. to get this kind of temp drop you would have to go with an expensive water cooling. as for the time: it took me a little time to figure out how to fit the SI-97 but once done it takes about 10min. do assembly the whole thing :)
Main rig: NZXT Phantom modded case with Danger Den WC, Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite, Ryzen 5800X @ stock, 32GB Patriot Viper DDR4 3200Mhz 16-18-18-36-1T, AMD RX 5700XT + AlphaCool WC, ACER Nitro XV2 27", SP 1TB nvme PCiE GEN3, Samsung 2TB; Cooler Master MW Gold 650W, Win10 Pro 64
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Post by Moloch »

humm.... :shock:
very nice job
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Post by sbohdan »

Ok, here we go again: I wasn't totally satisfied with the mod. I kind of felt, that I should come up with a more radical solution for the memory(even like this the base of the SI-97 was touching the stock cooler for the memory which has a heatpipe connecting all the chips thermalwise, so the solution so far does work for the memory also and is simple - but still...). I just wanted something with a bigger bang that would match the GPU cooler in looks and possibly lower the temps on the memory further more. so I went down to a used computer parts store nearby and got myself an older pentium CPU cooler for $1 and then proceeded to cut it up with a saw. when I was finished with the 4 coolers it was time for lapping the bottom for each with sandpaper. I used grade 600, 800 and 2000 for the finish, pouring tap water as I sanded. I did not want to use arctic silver thermal adhesive, because that would make my mod permanent (no removal of the coolers from the ram chips possible) and I also did not want to use thermal pads (not as good for heat transfer as the AS5 compound), so I just turned to a homemade solution, which isn't very professional but is effective in my opinion. since the new coolers are covering the mem chips in pairs, I put AS5 on both chips, leaving out only one little corner of each chip on the opposite corner and I put a tiny bit of crazy glue there. this was enough to hold the cooler fins and still gave me the benefit of AS5.

so here is the finished product:

Image

Image

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as you can see the mem coolers are allmost as tall as the space underneath the SI-97, so the zalman fan as it's blowing through the SI-97, also cools the memory. I cut the coolers as wide as it was possible without interference with other components. the new coolers are 1.5x wider and about 3x taller then the stock is, which gives them quite a big cooling area :P I also had to remove the original little fan from the base as it was interfering with the new memcooler :(

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and this is how it looks in my rig :P
I'm planning to add a hardware digitalizing TV tuner card underneath my video card - for that I will have to remove my sound card and use onboard sound from now on :rolleyes: :(

keep in mind that I have an 80mm fan blowing directly on the ram coolers and the base of the SI-97 from the side of my rig.

Next I wanted to see if I could squize any more out of the memory with the improved cooling. Unfortunatelly since I'm PSU limited, I wasn't expecting much more - still, cooler running memory is more stable and more efficient. The cards longevity is also extended.

I tried to raise the speed and actually was able to raise the memory by 30Mhz which is totally stable but due to my power limitation that was all. this with the settings of 444/1130 gave me 6055 points in 3dmark05:
Image

well not much more but the memory runs a lot cooler and is more stable. (actually tested it with 3dmark05 running in loops for 3.5 hours and then without a reboot - quake4, playing for 3 hours with no problems). I'm happy with the results, although I'm curious what would be the limit of this baby with a bigger PSU (at least a 500W but preferably 600W)
:shock:
still, i bought a 6800LE and got myself a GT which way outperformes the ultra with 108.8% performance boost from what the stock was and is runnig much cooler and quiter at the same time (the zalman and side blowing fan running on 5V instead of 12V and the asus star ice blue running on 60% of its minimum rpm. still my system is cool and all stable now.
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Post by gvblake22 »

HELLZ YEAH BOHDAN!!!!!! That's frickin' awesome man!!! That is an excellent way to round out that extreme mod! I like it a lot, very nice work. Good deal on that Pentium heatsink too!
You have an amazing card there, you should be proud at how much you kicked that thing in the arse and got an LE running at GT!! :rolleyes:

But just you wait until the end of the month when I get my 6800GT and my cooling mods!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :finga:
Won't be quite as good as an SI-97, but will still be pretty sweet... I'll be goin' ALL COPPER and 92mm fan baby, YEAH!!!

oh, btw, it looks like your SI-97 is on a slight angle in that second pic. Did you make sure it's still making good contact?
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Post by sbohdan »

thanks gvblake. post back when you do your mod. can't wait to see :P
the SI-97 is actually at a slight angle but its the top part. the buttom is alligned well. I wonder what you can do with your GT? actually if you need any help, just let me know (like voltmod, bios flashing etc.) I've got the first hand experience now :mrgreen:
you will not be disappointed. this is an awesome card. it is just so sweet to be able to crank up all the candies in the newest games instead of compromise and strugleing all the time :ANAL:

Oh and BTW I got my LE surpass the stock ultra (they have like 5600-5700 points 3dmark05 in a good setup...)
Last edited by sbohdan on Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by gvblake22 »

sbohdan wrote:thanks gvblake. post back when you do your mod. can't wait to see :P
the SI-97 is actually at a slight angle but its the top part. the buttom is alligned well. I wonder what you can do with your GT? actually if you need any help, just let me know (like voltmod, bios flashing etc.) I've got the first hand experience now :mrgreen:
you will not be disappointed. this is an awesome card. it is just so sweet to be able to crank up all the candies in the newest games instead of compromise and strugleing all the time :ANAL:
Cool, that's good to know. I was a little hesetant about buying this card, but I got a good deal on it so it was hard to turn down. Running the latest games with full AA and AF eyecandy was exactly my intentions too, so I'm glad you are having a good experience with it!
And don't worry, I'll definately be making a thread about my custom 6800GT cooling adventures!

Hey, just out of curiosity, what are the chances of running the 6800GT passive? Like maybe with a heatsink like this one:
http://www.pcextreme.com/catalog/sku/cpu-alp-04.html
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Post by infinitevalence »

With all that cooling, its time for a volt mod!!! get out the DMM and soldering iron and give that sucker some real voltage.
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Post by sbohdan »

infinitevalence wrote:With all that cooling, its time for a volt mod!!! get out the DMM and soldering iron and give that sucker some real voltage.
well right now I'm running 1.3V which is a raise from the default LE 1.1V. with the 6800 line it's fortunate that you can change the voltage in the cards bios - no need for soldering (save your own and load it in Nibitor - change the voltage for 3D - save new bios -reflash). there is the option in nibitor to have 1.4V or even 1.5V for 3D, unfortunatelly my PSU is holding me back. its only 420W and I would need at least 500w to be able to push it further :(
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Post by sbohdan »

gvblake, did you get the 6800GT? how is your mod coming? BTW, I just noticed your question in the last reply about the passive opteron cooler :?
well, it might work in passive mode at stock but if you want to give it more juice and OC, you will definitelly need a fan. I guess something silent (I assume the reason for asking about a passive cooler is need for silence :P )
I'm in progress of further modding my chieftec case. it will be cut out and a glass put in. I will cut a 120mm hole on the glass where the vid card is, so it can blow right on the card with the GPU and mem coolers. I will take of the zalman fan (it will be quiter and hopefully cool better) and another hole for a 80mm antec fan on the side with an air duct channeling the air to the asus starice CPU cooler. I will post back with pics as soon as it will be ready.
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Post by gvblake22 »

sbohdan wrote:gvblake, did you get the 6800GT? how is your mod coming?
LOL, I totally didn't even see this post! Anyway, my heatsink(s) have been ordered, shipped, and delivered. I would have gotten this mod done over thanksgiving, but the delivery was too slow and I didn't get them in time. So I will be doing this in the next few weeks. I'm soooo pumped!!!
Here's the heatsink:
Image
Image
Image

Here's the fan:
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/de92trbllows1.html

And here's the card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150091
Image

I got a total of 3 of those Xeon heatsinks so I'm gonna use one for the GPU, cut up the other for the memory chips and power regulating chips, and I have the last one as a backup/spare in case I mess somehting up along the way :)
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Post by sbohdan »

right on. can't wait to see the mod. I would add though that the advantage in buying the LE version was getting a bargain price ($147).
of course I realize that you had no choice having PCI-E, 'cause on those the pipes can't be opened :( (only AGP is modable)
it seams the advantage of your mod is that it will be slim, taking up much less space and thus you be able to have it in SLI. now I wonder how much better the cooling over stock will be, so post your results. this way others will have an option where not useing SLI but getting the max out of air cooling and another one where space and SLI capability is an issue.
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Post by gvblake22 »

Well, a few things to clear up:
1) I bought the card used with a Zalman VF700-AlCu for $200 shipped :)

2) The mod will be "slim" only compared to your SI-97! :P I probably won't be able to put it in SLI with sthe 25mm thick fan on there and it will probably still take up about 3 slots. And I don't think I'll be doing SLI anyway.

3) I saw someone else that did this mod with the same heatsink on a 7800GTX and their highly overclocked load temperatures are in the mid to low 50ºC range, and he was using a tiny 60mm stock AMD fan! This will have a MUCH more powerful fan and better mounting/ducting, so I am expecting very good results even though it is a "low profile" heatsink.

Look for a thread the next couple weeks :D
This excitement is KILLING me! I have been waiting a month to do this mod :axe:
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