Delidded my GTX460...[update 9/18] results are in!

[Keysplayr]

I guess the guys that make GPUs *could* learn a thing or two from this.



I secound this notion.... why the hell is it there in the first place.

The cost of the card would go up considerably. And kiss the current lifetime warranties we enjoy now, goodbye. Not without a protective lid over the silicon. So, there are reasons why GPU manufacturers don't do this.

@Idontcare: How much time did you put into this, and how much did you spend on materials?

Your results are outstanding, nice work.

 

[ZimZum]

Thanks

For leveling I use a plate glass that is thick/sturdy enough to be the desktop to a desk of mine. Not a desk-top covering, the actual desktop itself is composed entirely of glass.

I take that plate glass desk top and I place it onto a second sturdy wood table, which I then use for polishing.

Wet or dry sanding?

 

[Phynaz]

Nice job, impressive results!

 

[EarthwormJim]

Wet or dry sanding?

You have to wet sand for grits above 700, and it helps for grits above 500.

The sand paper instantly clogs without water.

 

[mnewsham]

Do you have any higher res pics of the after action 3000 grit? say maybe 1600x900 (needs a desktop background)

 

[Idontcare]

The cost of the card would go up considerably. And kiss the current lifetime warranties we enjoy now, goodbye. Not without a protective lid over the silicon. So, there are reasons why GPU manufacturers don't do this.

@Idontcare: How much time did you put into this, and how much did you spend on materials?

Your results are outstanding, nice work.

This was actually a rather easy mod. Delidding the GPU was maybe a 5 minute endeavour, that included time to prep my work area and gather my tools from the basement.

Material cost was $3 for the four springs, but I only used two of them, so I guess the invested cost would be $1.50.

Lapping the Accelero took ~$7-$8 worth of sandpaper and ~1hr of my time.

So total incremental expenses here would be around $10 and 1hr of time/effort.

Wet or dry sanding?

Both, I'll quote myself from my Noctua NH-D14 and Corsair H100 thread in cases & cooling to avoid retyping:

Depending on what I am sanding, I do both wet and dry.

For the CPU I strictly do dry-sanding only. You do not want to risk having the copper-loaded slurry making its way into the CPU pocket that is underneath the IHS itself (there is a hole on one side of the package).

For the HSF, and only for the coarser grits (220/400/800), I do wet sanding because the paper loads up rather quick.

When I get to the finer grits (1000/2000/3000) I do dry sanding because I actually want to take advantage of the dynamic nature of the effective grit as the paper becomes loaded. The more you load the 1000 grit, the more it begins to effectively become a 1500 or 2000 grit paper near the end of the sanding.

Makes the transitions between successive grit paper much more seamless IMO.

A 10 degree decrease in temp is awesome

How do you make sure that the lap is straight(parallel to the chip) rather than slanted?

I don't bother worrying about making the planar surface be parallel to the HSF cooling stack itself for a number of reasons: (1) the springs are used to ensure the flat surfaces mate well regardless the tilt of the GPU to the HSF cooler body (within reason of course), and (2) the heatpipes and cooling fins on the HSF are not robustly parallel to the HSF cooling surface in the first-place, they are roughly parallel but it need not be exact provided the existing clearance can accomodate whatever minimal tilting is involved.

Here's a couple of cartoon drawings (don't laugh, I suck at arts and crafts )

 

[Idontcare]

Do you have any higher res pics of the after action 3000 grit? say maybe 1600x900 (needs a desktop background)

All the photos were taken at native 4320x3240 resolution. Photobucket won't let me upload them at that resolution, they automatically get down-scaled by a sizable amount.

If you tell me which one(s) you are interested in then I will happily attempt to upload 1600x900 versions of them. I think photobucket lets me upload at 2048x1536, not positive on that.

 

[mnewsham]

All the photos were taken at native 4320x3240 resolution. Photobucket won't let me upload them at that resolution, they automatically get down-scaled by a sizable amount.

If you tell me which one(s) you are interested in then I will happily attempt to upload 1600x900 versions of them. I think photobucket lets me upload at 2048x1536, not positive on that.

If possible this and this. :$

 

[Idontcare]

If possible this and this. :$

Let me know if these links work for you (I won't embed them here otherwise my limited photobucket bandwidth will get hammered from people simply wanting to read the thread).

Noctua NH-D14 1600x900

Accelero Xtreme Plus 1600x1200, 1200x900

I have more macro shots of the Accelero pic if you want to look in the album itself, you might like one of the others better than the one I embedded in this thread.

 

[mnewsham]

Let me know if these links work for you (I won't embed them here otherwise my limited photobucket bandwidth will get hammered from people simply wanting to read the thread).

Noctua NH-D14 1600x900

Accelero Xtreme Plus 1600x1200, 1200x900

I have more macro shots of the Accelero pic if you want to look in the album itself, you might like one of the others better than the one I embedded in this thread.

I thank you kindly for the artwork

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Very excellent. Glad you set out on this project. Watch, soon other nvidia owners will probably follow suit

 

[aigomorla]

aHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

delidding...

*shutters*

Gets nightmares from the days i used to delid stuff and accidentally cut off those resistors u tell people not to cut in your post and killing the cpu entirely!


:X

WOW IDC did u get a lot of free time lately?
Your posting like how i used to post in the old days.

 

[tweakboy]

Lapping voids warranty, plus you do take a risk. But Im glad to here your 2600k lap went well. What grit size did you use ? That is great your pretty technical guy I bet,

But I dont get it,, is this 460 your main video card ?

In my opinion when I had my old VC watercooled, is that GPU's dont need lapping IMO, their flatter then CPU. just put the paste on and tie the HS strong on it very tight screws. Also does this HSF cover the VRAM chips on the video card ?


Thx for the pictures

 

[Patrick Wolf]

The cost of the card would go up considerably. And kiss the current lifetime warranties we enjoy now, goodbye. Not without a protective lid over the silicon. So, there are reasons why GPU manufacturers don't do this.

Huh? AMD cards don't have an IHS. Not even this XFX 6970.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...950-graphics-card-review-the-radeon-6970.html

 

[aigomorla]

Huh? AMD cards don't have an IHS. Not even this XFX 6970.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/revie...950-graphics-card-review-the-radeon-6970.html

ATI doesnt IHS's the cores.

Instead the ring around the cores is used as a shim to prevent over pressure in cracking the die.

 

[Idontcare]

Lapping voids warranty, plus you do take a risk.

So does overclocking.

The difference is that if you are the type who is prone to committing warranty/rma fraud if you kill your GPU while overclocking then you are not going to want to lap your GPU because the physical evidence of your activity is difficult to conceal whereas the electrical damage caused by overvolting is easier to conceal.

I'm not interested in fraud, the moment I OC'ed my GPU I started down the path of having a non-warrantied GPU - lapped or not.

What grit size did you use ?

3000

In my opinion when I had my old VC watercooled, is that GPU's dont need lapping IMO, their flatter then CPU. just put the paste on and tie the HS strong on it very tight screws.

Its not a matter of having a flat external surface on the IHS, as you can see in the pics in the OP the internal surface on the IHS (that part that touches the GPU silicon itself) is extremely porous and not flat by any means.

Eliminating this thermal interface is what caused the dramatic improvement in operating temps IMO.

Also does this HSF cover the VRAM chips on the video card ?

See the cartoon diagram I drew for post #56, notice the vrm heatsinks are separately attached.

 

[mnewsham]

What TIM did you use here? Did you compare AS5, and NT-H1 like the other thread? I would be interested to see if there is an improvement there.

 

[AdamK47]

Very nice results. I need to do something similar to my system. The Folding@Home projects 7620 and 7621 are the most demanding things I have every run on my GPUs. I need to find a way to vent the heat from my furnace (system) a bit quicker.

If you're up for it, I'd like to see how well your mod does with folding these. These folding projects make for a great stability tester too if you want to try out some overclocking.

 

[Idontcare]

What TIM did you use here? Did you compare AS5, and NT-H1 like the other thread? I would be interested to see if there is an improvement there.

I used NT-H1 for this, didn't mess around with the other TIMs as I pretty much expect them to be inferior.

Honestly I am so delighted at how well it all came back together, with so little issues, that I just don't want to press my luck at this point.

I'll delid my other GTX460 at some point, maybe then will be a good time to get some of the other modern TIMs and do a comparison.

Very nice results. I need to do something similar to my system. The Folding@Home projects 7620 and 7621 are the most demanding things I have every run on my GPUs. I need to find a way to vent the heat from my furnace (system) a bit quicker.

If you're up for it, I'd like to see how well your mod does with folding these. These folding projects make for a great stability tester too if you want to try out some overclocking.

Dang that is hot! I have no problem trying out this test but I've zero experience with setting it up to run right.

Is there any kind of a "easy installer", the equivalent of OCCT or LinX, for the sole purposes of running this specific furnace generator portion of F@H?

 

[AdamK47]

Dang that is hot! I have no problem trying out this test but I've zero experience with setting it up to run right.

Is there any kind of a "easy installer", the equivalent of OCCT or LinX, for the sole purposes of running this specific furnace generator portion of F@H?

PM sent. Not only can you stress test, but you can also help Team AnandTech

 

[ibex333]

Great! Now some game benchmarks would be nice.

 

[Idontcare]

Great! Now some game benchmarks would be nice.

LOL, sadly I suck at benchmarking GPU's

Ryan Smith has nothing to fear from me

If you can give me a link to download a program that is literally as easy to install and run as 3DMark is then I will be happy to indulge the audience

The games I play are unlikely to be of much relevance to the moderately younger crowd here. I play a lot of Alpha Centauri, MOO2, Lords of Realms 2, Defender of the Crown, Civ IV Colonization, and recently I stepped into the 21st century with Dragon Age of Origins.

I've got an unopened retail box of Oblivion in my basement that I just know I'm going to tear into come 2012 or 2013. Its been on my to-do list for some 3 or 4 yrs now

 

[superccs]

OK after reading this post, I think all of our 460s are in danger of losing theirs lids

great work I am glad you didn't get this result.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2261219

 

[chris89]

Hi I was checking out your delidding thread and I was curious if you have been brave enough to have a solution for stock 480 cooler to Core Die?

My IHS came off and I used 17w/m K fujipoly pad 0.5mm between the die ihs and heatsink and temps among pressure may be lacking.

I'd like to mount the die direct to the stock cooler but the 2-3mm gap is preventing this I guess, I have yet to see the exact reasons.

Any advice?

Thanks

 

[Techhog]

Hi I was checking out your delidding thread and I was curious if you have been brave enough to have a solution for stock 480 cooler to Core Die?

My IHS came off and I used 17w/m K fujipoly pad 0.5mm between the die ihs and heatsink and temps among pressure may be lacking.

I'd like to mount the die direct to the stock cooler but the 2-3mm gap is preventing this I guess, I have yet to see the exact reasons.

Any advice?

Thanks

You just bumped a 4-year old thread...

The cost of the card would go up considerably. And kiss the current lifetime warranties we enjoy now, goodbye. Not without a protective lid over the silicon. So, there are reasons why GPU manufacturers don't do this.

@Idontcare: How much time did you put into this, and how much did you spend on materials?

Your results are outstanding, nice work.

Well, at least this bump brought up this post, which is hilarious in hindsight!