Gfx cooling and oc'ing without fan

[Egrimm]

Just found an article where it is described how to mod your DragonOrb to fit on a gfx-card: DragonOrb + Gfx-card mod
The article is in danish though, but you should be able to understand what is done by the pictures.
Even without the fan and only the base from the DragonOrb (he uses the DO3, the copper-base version) he was able to oc his Ti200 to 240Mhz core, quite a good oc especially considering the there's no noisy fan. The heatsink is so large though that it takes up 3 pci-slots
Hmm, I have a DragonOrb3 that I don't use, if it just didn't takt up 3 pci-slots (i use 4 out of five) I would make one myself.

If any of you intend to do this mod PM me, and I can translate the article for you (I'm a Dane), just to make sure you don't destroy your card.

 

[Egrimm]

There must be someone who find this interesting other than me. Come on guys, you always talk about big heatsinks on your cpu's, doesn't anybody have a comment on a big heatsink on a graphics-card?

 

[OverDose]

that'd be cool except then you can't use any of your pci slots because their overlapped with this huge heatsink

 

[Egrimm]

Yeah, but for those people who don't want ANY fans in their system, and who claim to be able to hear the fan on the graphics card, it should be interesting as it cools well without a fan. It's especially interesting since it's a quite hot card (Ti200) that's being used, you would think that such a fast card would need active cooling but a large heatsink is enough. I wonder how large the sink would need to be if one wanted to cool an Athlon passively? Just joking, but it would be cool... (no pun intended)

Now, if I were going to build a rig with sound and nic onboard (maybe an N-Force mobo but with a agp-card) I definitely would try this mod.

 

[oldfart]

I'm a big fan of a quiet system and have done much to ensure mine is very quiet. A passive HS on the GPU is a great idea, but I'm sorry, that is quite a hack job. The wrong HS for the application. A wider, flatter design would be much better. Also, why use a hollow in the middle ORB design when you aren't using a fan? Makes no sense.

 

[CStroman]

That's why I want video-card makers to put the core on the other side of the pcb.

 

[Egrimm]

The good thing about the DragonOrb is that there's space between the copper-base, round aluminium sides and the ram-chips so that you can use large heatsinks on the ram-chips whil using a large heatsink. That will not be possible with a more square heatsink, especially if it's large.

I agree that the DragnOrb isn't the best heatsink, but it seem to fit a graphics-card quite nicely. Now, if one could mod an Alpha PAL8045 to fit a graphcs-card that would be much, much better. But that would require some serious modding, the DO doesn't seem too bad, considering that you don't need to drill any holes, just tie some wires through the hetsink and the holes in the card.