Radeon R9600 XT - better cooling

I bought the nice Thermalright HR-03 Rev. A cooler, because this older suxxka support 2 holes GFX cards, like most of the old AGP ones are. As well, as the Radeon R9600 XT from HIS.

I wanted serious, but quiet cooling, so I also wanted to stick a 120mm Noiseblocker 1000 RPM fan, but the clips supported only 92mm fans. I was considering many possibilities, but when I get the Noctual NH-C14S cooler for my experiements, there are clips for second 140mm fan, witch are just great to use... and I get THIS idea:



And it worked! Easy to install, possible to remove (replace fan, for example for something powerfull, when need maximum cooling for overclocking) the fan and it looks reasonably as well.

A "bit" costy clips, but they do the job more that well. Another material was used from older Thermalright clips that I have plenty of spare ones from old Socket A coolers. Quality steel, hard to cut, but easy to work with.

The only problem I have is, that I did not believe that the contact on the die is as good, as it can be. That is because the die protection rubber, that I stick on the GPU naked small core, is IMHO too high. When I pressed on the heatsink against the core as hard, as I can, I get only a very tiny track of the core on the cooler, so I probably need to take a sand paper and shave the rubber a little down, that the contact is good.

Temperature in iddle after power-on is 29.5°C, under load it go to 43, 44.5°C with is IMHO proving my point about bad contact. R9600 XT cannot run that hot with THAT overkill cooler.

 

Adrian Wong -

Yep, and I'm still not satisfacted with the temps. The rubber shim that was supplied with the Thermalright HR-03 Rev. A had to be cut on the left side (looking from the AGP connector up on the card), because there are components (little SMD caps/resistors) that prevent it's install anyway:

ATI Radeon 9600 XT | techPowerUp GPU Database

And despite the pale 22W TDP the card does heat up pretty much. Time to sandpaper "lapping" on the rubber shim to make it thinner, hence get good contact with the die.


Chai -

Wow, that is... cool But it make me angry, because I was trying to get hold of the the Thermalright SI-97A, but I cannot find it anywhere and no request for buy was ever worked for me yet:
PCTuning • PÅ™ihlášení
ExtraHardware.cz • Prohlížení inzerátu
K: Thermalright SI-97A - PC-HELP.CZ
Thermalright SI-97A
SPCR • View topic - Socket A CPU top-down heatsink
Socket A CPU top-down heatsink
Overclockers Australia Forums
...

Or at least get the K7 brackets:
Overclockers Australia Forums

But nothing. So seeing wasting a Thermalright (yes, not the "A" revision, but still) was a bit sad experience. But thx for the link! Thermalright HR-03 Rev. A I still can buy and I can use it with 120mm fan. That beat out everything else


Adrian Wong -

Not THAT old, but yes, pretty much very old. I'm surprised too, that it works. It have all bad caps on her and they need to be replaced for quality polymers! Then overclocking could resume... But first the cooling...