TitanX – External Power Guide By der8auer.
http://overclocking.guide/nvidia-gtx-titan-x-external-power-guide/
Nvidia recently released the new GTX Titan X which is a very powerful card based on the Maxwell architecture. Unfortunately these graphics cards are not meant to be overclocked. The power
design is quite weak and the VRMs will most likely blow up if you overvolt them a bit. For extreme overclocking we need a powerful voltage supply so here is a guide how you can hook-up
an external power device such as EVGA E-Power, ASUS Power Card or GIGABYTE G-Power to the GTX Titan X.
Things you need:
?Powerful soldering iron (minimum 80 W. 150 W is recommended)
?Copper sheets with 0.5 – 1.0 mm thickness
?Thick full solid copper wires
?High quality soldering tin (I use Sn95,5AgCu0,7)
?Hot glue gun
?Grinder
?Multimeter
?Patience
1. Unmount the cooler.
Take off the cooler and take a closer look at the PCB.
The theory is simple: Remove the inductors of the GPU (red, marked R22) to disable the stock VRM and hook up the power board. Usually you don’t need to E-Power the memory (yellow) so we
will keep the original memory VRMs. However, the GPU controller (blue, NCP81174) will prevent the GPU from powering on if we remove the GPU inductors. So…
2. Cut the VR_READY trace.
Pin 3 of the Onsemi NCP81174 is the VR_READY input which will check if all VRMs are working or not. Simply cut the trace at the marked spot to disable the monitoring. The trace is really small
so take a sharp knife and be careful not to cut too deep or anything else. If you can’t cut the trace or if you cut too much you can simply remove the whole IC.
3. Unlock the Power-Target.
After cutting the trace of the NCP81174 I recommend to unlock the power target. You can just solder across the 3 shunt resistors to unlock the full power target. (If you want to know more about
this topic, check here:
http://overclocking.guide/increase-the-nvidia-power-limit-all-cards/)
4. Remove the GPU inductors / prepare soldering spots.
Now remove the stock GPU inductors marked with R22.
Afterwards check the resistance from vGPU to Ground. The resistance is quite low and will also depend on your multimeter. Usually you will have values around 1.5 – 3 ohm. Everything below
could be a result of a short circuit which means you either connected something wrong or something is broken. In this case recheck everything you did before.
In my case I measured 1.881 ohm from vGPU to Ground. Measuring from the Ground of the 6-Pin connector to another Ground spot I had 0.127 ohm. So if you have a different multimeter and
measure e.g. 0.9 ohm from Ground to Ground it could be that you will measure 3 ohm from vGPU to Ground.
If everything is fine – move on.
To increase the soldering surface I recommend to grind around the soldering pads of the inductors as you can see in the following picture:
Be carefuly not to grind too deep or you might damage other layers or cause short-circuits.
5. Memory FB-Mod.
Since we are using the stock memory VRM you can just apply a normal FB-Mod to increase the memory voltage. Replace the resistor in the picture above with a 10 kOhm trimmer set to
3.09 kOhm. If you increase the resistance it will increase the memory voltage.
Removing the small resistor you should have a resistance in circuit of about 17.4 kOhm. Just for reference.
Now take your trimmer and set it to about 3.09 kOhm. If you got that – solder it on.
6. Hook up the power board.
Now it’s time to attach the power board to your card. Make sure you use as much ground and vGPU as possible. The more – the better. I used 0.5 mm copper sheets to connect everything.
I marked some Ground spots on the front which are quite good to use. You can also use all mounting holes on the back of the card.
Afterwards re-check the resistance between vGPU and Ground. The resistance should stay at about the same level as before. Again, if you have a resistance below 1 ohm recheck everything and
don’t power up the card. Otherwise you might damage something.
7. Attach measuring cables.
GPU voltage point:
Memory voltage point:
8. Mount the pot and break records!
http://overclocking.guide/nvidia-gtx-titan-x-external-power-guide/
