Stock coolers suck and that’s true for most graphics cards. Overclockers looking to push the limits will have to replace the puny stock coolers. But what if you cannot afford expensive GPU coolers? Is that the end of your overclocking journey? Not necessarily! You can always go the cheap route! Today, Chai will show you how to mod a CPU cooler onto an ATI Radeon graphics card to create the ultimate free cooler upgrade! Link : The ATI Radeon Cooler Mod Guide
High performance videocards sure do put out alot of heat, hopefully they will put the gpu on the TOP of the videocard...unless its an emi interference issue with the ram/cpu,hmm. The mod may work out better better/less pci slots lost if a small blower was used and blew across the card lengthwise. It may not be an issue for alot of people to lose pci slots but eh, it may for some. Blowing the air along the card in a duct could lower temps and cool the whole card more. Nice job on drilling that heatsink though, I have to get a small drill press. It will be so much better than dremel stuff for drilling!
Actually, even if I don't use a fan, it will still block 2 PCI slots, or 1 PCI slot on my board. So using a blower fan style is not really a good idea. I do have 2 blower type fans with me, but it's rather huge, and it virtually impossible to find it here. I have to order these fans from the US. The AMD stock heatsink comes with a lower profile fan, if I didn't swap the fan, it will block the same amount of slots as without a fan on it. And regarding the drilling, actually I made a very big mess. I drilled a few mm off the spot, and the heatsink wouldn't fit properly! So I ended up drilling a bigger hole, and slant both the bolts and forced the heatsink to fit! But fortunately, it still works!
I think it was a nice article, but wanted to make a few suggestions... A picture or two of the actuall installation would have been nice. I assume that you 'Tapped' out the drilled holes and tightened the screws right into the heat sink with the use of any nuts. This is only an assumption though because of the lack of mounting description and/or pics. I also would am REALLY interested in how well the new heat sink works with the STOCK fan! With such a huge HS, I doubt the need for such a HUGE fan. I think that the original AMD fan (that came with the AMD HS) would be more tehn adequate and would achieve the SAME amount of O/C'ing. At the same time it would most certainly be quieter, take up less room, and mabye even last longer. Thanks again for a GREAT cooling idea and article. I am debating doing the same mod with the stock copper cored HS/F from a AMD 2400+ to my ATI 9800 Pro.
Yup, I didn't use any nuts since I've made that 'thread'. Er...Adrian asked me the same question before the article was posted. But I broke the fan in a totally different incident. But since most AMD stock cooler now comes with the same fan size as the one I'm using now, so I thought it's fine. Yup, it's more than adequate with the stock AMD fan, but since I broke it, I have to use an alternative. But I don't run at 12V, I normally undervolt is to 7V or even 5V for quieter operation. These ATI Radeon cards are extremely hot, no doubt about it. So even if you have a big heatsink like this, you will still need to make sure there's some decent amount of airflow across the heatsink. Even that, the AMD stock fan at 12V is more than sufficient for the cooling job though.
I thought of volt mod before, but I don't know whether I want to take the risk or not. This moddable R9500 is so rare, cannot find a replacement for it.
In the review you mentioned hacked drivers to turn the card into a 9700, the only hacks I've seen are hacked BIOS flashes and not simply drivers. Could you please elaborate on that? And maybe provide a link? I have the exact same card (Powercolor 9500Pro) that I purchased about a year ago. Thanks.
Nope, it's not Radeon 9500 Pro. It's the regular 9500 Non-Pro version. But since you asked, you can check here, http://www.omegadriver.com Only the regular Radeon 9500 can be modded into something. Radeon 9500 64MB to a Radeon 9500 Pro 64MB, or Radeon 9500 128MB to a Radeon 9700 128MB. Mitz: Yeah, I lose a more overclockable Radeon 9500 too...
Email from Peter: Ok, this is a good question, which is brought up by Tungstenboy as well. Even though this heatsink is rather light, probably about 150 gram, but for AGP card, it's still a little too heavy, so there's some slight bending on the card. It wasn't too serious, and it didn't worry me much. I took a picture of the card in action. This is a tough shot, so I'm sorry about the quality. As you can see, there's a small gap in between the PCI slot connector and the heatsink. If you want, you can use a solid object and place it there. This is a simple and effective solution. Hope that answered your question.
Nice article, but I'm afraid I beat ya to it: http://www.short-media.com/forum/showpost.php?p=54515&postcount=2 You may want to add a note to your article that bolting the cooler to the card is a real good way to kill the card if you're not careful. If you overtighten those bolts, you risk killing the card. I tried to make a mounting system that's similar to the setup used by the SLK-x00U heatsinks, and other heatsinks that mount directly to the motherboard, but unfortunately, I could not find compression springs that were both small enough to not interfere with SMD components on the back of the board and strong enough to hold the cooler firmly onto the GPU. Also, I'd recommend that people not only stay away from heatsinks that are much larger than 60x60mm, but also from heatsinks that are smaller than that. A 50x50mm square heatsink may not handle the GPU's heat output. Since ATi won't release the thermal dissipation specs of their GPU, I don't know that for sure, but I for one, am not willing to risk killing one of my 9700 Pros to find out. The only other thing I saw is that there was no mention of the weight of the heatsink assembly. That aluminum thing is fine, and even the aluminum & copper hybrid heatsink I used is fine, but someone may try to attach a solid copper heatsink to it, which may be heavy enough to snap the PCB. I'd recommend that people use heatsinks that weigh no more than 400g, which is how much Zalman's ZM80A-HP weighs. Other than that, though, it looks great.
For blowers I was meaning those smallish blowers like a nidec gamma 28 or 32...those are the model numbers I beleive. The heatsink really isnt too heavy. Its just aluminum, if you stuck somthing like a large thermalright heatsink on it though....yes I have seen it before, then maybe a little support would be a good idea.
Cooling mod is the first thing I did with my Radeon 9700 Radeon 9700 Pro This mod got me 350/650. I don't think this is a huge gain, but my card was heating up the whole case. Just the fact that my card is now running literally cool, I am happy. I did not use as big of a fan and I permanently affixed the heatsink with artic silver epoxy. Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9700 Pro
Ok, this is wildfrogman's idea, but it looks extremely similar to FX5800/5900 Ultra cooling design! Who cares! But this fan is quiet, so it's far from being a dust buster! And it blocks 1 PCI slot on Abit NF7, or 2 PCI slots. And yes, the fan is quite heavy, and the metal supporting bar bends a little!
