Legit Reviews

I am getting ready to install a second Powercolor 4870 1G video card in my machine (thanks to stollie and Corsair!) To that end it occured to me that things might start getting a little tosty and I have a huge radiator for my watercooling sytem.

That brings up a question. Most 4870's are a 512M ATI refrence design. There are a few, like my Powercolor, that are 1Gig versions. I'm not sure if my board follows a refrence design and simply uses larger memory modules or if it's a non-refrence design. If it's refrence, then my choices for water coolers are great. If not, then I don't know who will make one to work with my card. I've seen EK makes some that are for non-refrence boards like the Palit.

So I have two questions.

1.) Is my board built using the "refrence" layout?

2.) Any recommendations on water coolers?

Crack it open when you get and see?

Dan

Well I got the thing here. Not sure what the major diffrences between the board layouts are. It does appear to be a reference of the 1GB 4870. The only major diffrences I can see are there's a copper support bar on the opposite side as the mothorboard connector that runs the length of the card and there appears to be some kinda copper place on the RAM chips acting as a head sync bit they're not connected in any way to the stock heatsync and fan, they're just kinda clued on with a thermal compound.

Basically looks like this without the cooler. Except theres a row of caps and mosfets at the back near the power connectors, the RAM modules have copper plates attached, and there's that copper support bar.

Refrence:



Mine:



I could probably get away with a water block but not a whole card cooler as I think this copper support bar would be in the way. Fortunatly both my cards appear to be the same design as Powercolor did release some other board layouts that would have made after market cooling completely out of the question.

Yeah, the back end of the card does look a little different, so you're probably best with the core only block.

Dan

I'm reading a thread over on Xtreme Systems about this. Gabe from Swiftech has been posting on it. I'm hoping I can find out if I'll be ok with a pair of Swiftech MCW60's since thier custom block won't work for me.

If they'll work I'll likely install them after the CPU in the loop. So my loop will be like this:

Pump > Radiator > CPU block > GPU 1 > GPU 2 > T-Line > Pump