watercool an R7 240 4GB card for HWBOT

Ross Thomson · 19 Feb 2019 at 10:45

I've been overclocking this card with an arctic accelero turbo II cooler and it's been doing well up to a point. As it only gets power through the PCI slot I'm limited in the amount I can throw at it with a modded bios. The memory is also at its max frequency. This has stalled my attempts to get the firestrike record on HWBOT (first with firestrike ultra at an amazing 0.9fps on the combined test LMFAO) . The arctic cooler is silent for normal day to day on most low powered cards (currently on an RX 460 4GB in the system).

can only get down to about 30c on the GPU at full fan speed when its cold so need something more. I can use this on my other cards for HWBOT as well. The idea is to submerge the rad in an ice bucket.

magicool 450 pump (cheap - will get a decent pump when I put the stuff in a proper loop)
Magicool 240x45mm rad
freezemod water block - has the important 43mm spacing)
arctic P12 fans that I've taken on the system just to test it.

waiting on some bits and bobs coming today before I can properly build it.

Armageus · 19 Feb 2019 at 11:32

Ross Thomson said:
As it only gets power through the PCI slot I'm limited in the amount I can throw at it with a modded bios.

Can the VRM be hard-modded (or pencil modded) to put out more voltage?

Ross Thomson · 19 Feb 2019 at 12:15

can only get 75w through the PCIe slot . With the memory taking 1.5v I'm limited in the amount of volts I can throw at the GPU before power limit of the PCIe slot is reached.

Yutang13 · 19 Feb 2019 at 13:27

Ross Thomson said:
can only get 75w through the PCIe slot . With the memory taking 1.5v I'm limited in the amount of volts I can throw at the GPU before power limit of the PCIe slot is reached.

Powered PCIe riser? That should solve that issue.

Armageus · 19 Feb 2019 at 13:30

External VRM?

https://www.overclock.net/forum/189...ral-gpu-voltmod-external-vrm-information.html

Some potentially useful info here:
https://community.hwbot.org/topic/98990-sapphire-r7-240-1gb-vgpu-and-vmem-mods/

Ross Thomson · 19 Feb 2019 at 14:22

That **** is too extreme for me lol

at the moment in push pull it is 16c idle 23-24c running firestrike

LuckyBenski · 19 Feb 2019 at 19:11

Ross Thomson said:
That **** is too extreme for me lol

at the moment in push pull it is 16c idle 23-24c running firestrike

Your room is below 16°?!

I daresay you should cool the card too. VRMs aren't under the block are they? Lower temperature leads to less power consumption due to improved resistance and also some silicon behaviour.

Ross Thomson · 19 Feb 2019 at 19:21

LuckyBenski said:
Your room is below 16°?!

I daresay you should cool the card too. VRMs aren't under the block are they? Lower temperature leads to less power consumption due to improved resistance and also some silicon behaviour.

Had window open and temp outside was about 8-9. Vrms don’t get hot as far as I can tell. I have heat sinks on top and bottom. Top get hotter hence the fan. Could try putting fan next to the heatsinks on bottom.

Ross Thomson · 20 Feb 2019 at 21:28

managed to get first on firestrike by 2 points lol

Ross Thomson · 23 Feb 2019 at 17:37

Armageus said:
Can the VRM be hard-modded (or pencil modded) to put out more voltage?

found the IC for the memory so will give that a go. frequency is good so if I can get the memory up a bit I should drastically improve my scores.