• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

7950 custom cooling shenanigans

lol yeah, I figured that a flat heatspreader + heatsinks would work well enough. Just adding surface area in my warped logic :D
Besides, those flat ridged vram heatsinks from sapphire are just stuck onto the plate too.

The Alpenfohn thermal glue stuff is pretty much permanent from what I gather (EDIT: This turned out not to be true), so I spread a bit of TIM on the heatsinks and put a tiny dab of superglue in two corners.
Once they were fairly firm, I was able to clean the excess around the edges.

Those 92mm fans (Scythe Kama pwm 2450rpm) aren't the only fans at work here btw.

Cheers Greg :)
 
Last edited:
Glad i didnt go this crazy on my card :D New case has helped my temps by around 3c-4c. BF3 on Ultra 4xMSAA @ 1080p maxed my GPU temps at 61c last night after an hour of play.. very happy with those temps :)
 
Good stuff mate.

You're right, this is a bit on the mental side of things and pretty unnecessary considering the stock cooler does a good enough job :D

I'm doing it almost purely for my own amusement tbh :p Just felt like splashing out and making my rig 'my own' if that makes sense.

Teaser results (Sleeping dogs Extreme Bench):

Sapphire Dual-X with custom profile fans up to 100%

GPU- 69C
VRM1- 87C
VRM2- 64C

Peter with 2x92mm bottom intake + 2x120mm side exhaust 100%

GPU - 53C
VRM1 - 68C
VRM2 - 48C

Before I give a full report with piccies, I have a couple more things to do with the case and a couple of case fans need replacing (noisy Spectre's), especially since I broke a fan blade after my finger went astray...
 
Great work Petey, and great results as well. ive also put heatsinks on the heatspreader too, I also thought more surface area cant be a bad thing :p

Should be able to put some nice voltage through that now and give some excellent overclocks, good luck :cool:
 
Cheers fella, glad to see I'm not the only one ;)

I haven't tried too hard yet, but I'm getting the feeling that VRM temps aren't the limiting factor for higher OC's on my card :(

Even with temps in very safe zones, I still get artifacting when trying to bench Heaven at up to 1200mhz.
I think the card just doesn't like dealing more than 1.18v...
Asic score is 87.3 fwiw.

I'm also trying to figure out how to mount the Alpenfohn VRM heatsink (the tall, long one) without permanently gluing it. The screw holes don't match you see.
I think it could be very good if secured properly. If the existing sink was flat, I'd just stick it on like the rest lol.
 
Drill 2.5mm holes and tap with an M3 tapping bit, then get some small M3 hex bolts and nylon washers from ebay to bolt it on. Alternatively you could just get some thermal tape and stick it on. Good to see some old skool modding, just the sort of stuff I like to do myself. :)
 
I was hoping some fellow oldskoolers would get it ;)
Too many out of the box rigs for my tastes these days - especially ones that look like they're sponsored by Corsair lol :p
Hey, each to their own and all that. Some of those 'sponsored' rigs do look fantastic.

As for the heatsink, the PCB would require drilling and I did think about it. It's scary...

All it would need is two small holes drilled, a rubber washer on both sides and I could keep the existing thermal tape (I did take the original off to get a peek) or stick new stuff on.
The design of the Alpenfohn heatsink with it's narrow base and broad top section means you'd have to use thermal tape with very powerful adhesive or it'd just fall off. They put screw holes in the base, but the card's holes are set to the side. I could probably insulate a small piece of meccano and bridge the holes if I had any.

Bolting it on wouldn't be difficult to do, but I'd really have to gather my balls before drilling an expensive graphics card.
 
Last edited:
Oh faie enough then, dont think I would drill the PCB either, I thought it had holes but didnt match up to the holes on your heatsink.

I would just use some thermal tape with a dab from a gluegun at either end. Its removable in case you need to RMA too, which is a bonus :)
 
Glue gun and thermal tape sounds like a winner. Now I've gotta find my glue gun...

You were right, they both have holes but they don't match up. I'd have to drill holes next to the existing ones to make it fit.
I'll try and post some pics up later to explain it better.
 
Operation Hotglue has been successful!

VRM temps have dropped by 1-7C depending on fan speed and I think reseating the cooler may have helped to drop core temps by 1-3C too.

Was late, so I only ran a couple of benches. More testing needed before declaring absolute victory though :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom