Better Cooling for the 7800GTX - Page 19

You're an idiiot, but what a score

What were your temps? How many runs did you do?

Ur an idiot for saying MR. K6 is an idiot .......... GO MR. K6 you da MAN!

4338?

I said idiot with the kindest possible meaning of the word

Anyway, 55c with 495? Geez... AND a voltmod??

I got ecstatically happy when changing the heat pipe assembly for my old 6800U's one that the temps dropped to 'just' 93!

Pure wnage.

So when you guys say your 7800 GTX idles at 60/74, what does that mean? What is 60 and what is 74? GPUFanLOW/GPUFanHIGH?

Hey guys..

I'm really interested in adding some copper to my 7800GTX. Do we know at this point if the solid piece of copper is better or worse than the individual parts?

I also had another though about the airflow.. What if we put tape over the vents on the sides, and then drilled out the holes on the front where the speakers are. If you look where the sound comes out, theres a ton of holes and just the area where the speakers are goes through. If you took a drill bit that same size and drilled out all the other holes, you could pull in cool air from the front of the laptop, across all the components including the video card and have it sucked out the back by the fans. Any thoughts?

Also, has it been determined that 0.025" thick copper is the best to use for this application?

Sorry to say it K6, but an AMD guy took back the first place.

Hey guys, it looks like my local HobbyTownUSA has some .025" copper sheets. I'm going to swing by tonight and pick some up so I can play around with making a heatsink for the memory on my GTX.

Btw, is this thread dead?

You can also get some from onlinemetals.com...if you didn't know that already.

I'm doing my testing now. I made a single heatsink for my 7800 last night. I used to top out at 93c with Oblivion via the nVidia tool. We'll see what it tops out at now with both fans locked on high.

What do you think about my idea of drilling out the other holes near the speakers and drawing air in from the front, over the heatsinks/video card, and out the back?

I just made a heatsink for the ram. It's quite a bit bigger than the one that you made. So far it's not looking like it's really worth it though.

So you think that the best way to improve this heatsink is to make a small plate for the GPU itself with AS5 on both sides like you talked about earlier in this thread?

Btw, I made it out of .025 copper. I picked up two 4"x10" sheets at the hardware store on the way home from work last night.

Here is a pic of the heatsink that I'm working with. It's not making much of a difference over the long haul. It slowed the heatup process, but it still ends up near 90c. It's 89c right now and slowly climbing. I think I'll remove the whole thing and make a shim just for the GPU and see if that helps.

Btw, making that heatsink was a royal pain in the arse. I don't think I'll try that again. The shim I can handle. This thing was huge.




UPDATE: So I took this big heatsink off and made a shim out of .025" copper. I sanded it well with 600, 1200, 1500, and 2000, and then polished it a bit. Oblivion was up to 94c with both fans on high for about 40 minutes. I just don't think this heatsink is capable of getting rid of heat any faster. I'll probably take the shim back out and test the temps one more time and see if the temps change.

UPDATE: I took the shim out and ran Oblivian again. Temp still came out at 94 after about 40 minutes. I waited a bit longer and it got up to 95c with fans on high. I've also overclocked too so that might make sense for the slightly higher temps. I'll update my sig with this info.

Even with a 440/1250 overclock, should I still be hitting 94c in Oblivian after about an 40 mins, and 95c after an hour?

UPDATE: Using a plastic bag over my finger didn't work for me at all. I've spend the last two days trying to make things cooler, and I have... for the short term. These changes have just delayed the same final temp. If you wait long enough, the temps rise to what they were before. I've taken the out the GPU memory heatsink and the shim. Everything I do ends up with temps in the same range. I think the main problem is that the GPU fan just doesn't move enough air to remove the heat from the system. If the GPU fan ran like the CPU fan does, I think we'd be a lot better off. So I'm back to stock with just AS5 on my 7800GTX.

I don't think I'll be trying anything else unless it's a way to increase the airflow through the GPU radiator and/or the system case.

UPDATE: I realized that I had a bunch of stuff near the rear of my laptop and the space was cramped where I was doing my temp testing. So I took it to the kitchen table where the temp is 72F and the table is clear. It's been going for over an hour now running Oblivion and it topped out at 91c instead of 95c. I think the stuff behind the laptop was causing the warm air to come back to the laptop and make things hotter. I'll be sure to do my temp testing where I'm not conjesting the airflow.