Originally posted by: crazylegs
Hi all,
I have posted this in another topic but thought it pretty important!
Anyway was looking at extremeoverclockers and found this:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=219950&highlight=7900
seems quite a lot of people have had trouble with the VMEM pencil mod... luckily i have not tried it yet... was consolodating the core first... and MEM seems to go pretty damn high with no VMEM increase!
Anyway hope it helps a little...
Cliff Notes:
Here is the original context of the claim:
"Bad vddr regulation will blow the mosfet 9 out of 10x's with vddr mod + 900+ on the ddr."
Here is the reply:
"Thanks for pointing me here Duke, but if you read the mem vmod section of my guide the warning is there. Yes the vmem regulators have been blowing due to people vmodding, but certainly not 9/10 times. That's bull. I've seen over a dozen people succesfully vmod the mem at xtremesystems plus more people here and only 3 or 4 that have blown the vmem regulators. All you need is a heatsink on the vmem regulators and care not to increase the voltage too much. I'm running with the mem vmod myself without a heatsink on the mem regulator and my card hasn't died, but my cpu fan is blowing air over it aswell.
As my guide states, don't do the mem vmod until you absolutely have to and then only a small amount as needed. There's no reason to stay away from it completely. One just needs to be careful. If you don't have a fan directly cooling the vmem regulator put a heatsink on it. I intend to put one on there soon even though my cpu fan is cooling it. The mem vmod section of my guide has a picture of what happens if you go too far in voltage and shows which chip needs the heatsink. Guide in sig."
I will add two points. 9/10 people blowing their MOSFETS is absurdly high and somewhat deceiving. Secondly, I would not recommend you do the VMEM unless you are going near or over 700MHz Core freq, as DDR is not bandwidth restricted until then. Getting 800-850Mem on stock voltage should be more than achievable. And even if you did go through with it, you DO NOT need to do it to extreme 2.25V or so...2.1V or what not should be more then sufficient, and not entail any heatsinks or otherwise.