I got a system for $40 which included a busted down old GTX 470.

[BallaTheFeared]

I have a weakness for GTX 470s, as I'm sure some of you know. This is my 6th one :sneaky:

This one however was really abused, never having a good home, a smoker owned it. I got it with several other parts, including a 555 Phenom II and some crappy DDR2 board.

Once I got it home I decided to inspect it further, I already knew it worked because I saw him running it when I got there to pick it up. However I was surprised to see it was secured with just one screw. I don't have any extra screws so I used the next best thing, electrical tape to secure the entire shroud and base to the PCB :\

Before taping it up though, I decided it would be a good idea to get in there and clean all the smoke residue out and inspect the thermal pads. When I got in there it was a mess, I cleaned it up and removed the heat sink interface with the PCB to discover the pads were all degraded and broken apart. This wouldn't do, and I have no pads myself. So I broke out the trusty shin-etsu <3 and procided to apply it to the vrms and ram to see if it would work, it didn't, lol, so I had to mod it slightly to allow contact. After doing so I then replaced everything, screwed the stock heat sink back in and taped it all together.

I fired up the system, installed Windows 7 on it, and transferred Diablo 3 over to it. After getting the system updated and all the drivers installed I ran MSI Afterburner and proceeded to overclock it slightly to factory overclock settings of 625MHz, and undervolted it to 0937mv. I then set up a custom fan profile, and OSD. After doing all that I loaded up Diablo 3 with AO set to Quality.

After running Diablo 3 for about 25 minutes I was very happy with the results. The ambient temp is around 73F, the CA runs from time to time to keep it around that temp. With a custom fan profile set for low noise (hate blower fan noise) I was able to effectively keep the fan speed around 46 which is barely audible, while the temp sat around 78C with a peak of 80C which is well within reason for these cards.

Here is the monitor readings as well as the fan profile for MSI Afterburner:

Here is a shot of me IG:

The system is not without it's problems, it currently only has 2x1GB DDR2, and the board will not operate in Dual Channel mode. I was thinking about giving the cpu/mobo to a relative and getting an extremely cheap AMD DDR3 board and quad core proc for a backup machine as well as something my son can start to use in a few months.

Just thought I'd share, it seems I have great success with these cards ()

tl;dr Balla is a 470 fanboi :thumbsup:

 

[Don Karnage]

Is Quad SLI in the cards?

 

[Magic Carpet]

you sure it was only $40?

 

[The_Golden_Man]

$40 bucks is a steal anyway for that system.

Well, well... I've gotten a taste for GTX 670's... Have 3 of them now...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

you sure it was only $40?

$40 for all of it

Won't be $40 to run it though, heh.

470's can't do Quad SLI, and I already have an overkill machine. This would be part of a more practical setup that is dirt cheap.

Edit: I might see if I can dip into a frys deal or something and get a DDR3 board with 4100 bulldozer, for the lulz.

 

[Don Karnage]

$40 for all of it

Won't be $40 to run it though, heh.

470's can't do Quad SLI, and I already have an overkill machine. This would be part of a more practical setup that is dirt cheap.

Edit: I might see if I can dip into a frys deal or something and get a DDR3 board with 4100 bulldozer, for the lulz.

Thanks Nvidia. I wanted to see some quad 470 SLI numbers

 

[BallaTheFeared]

200x4 @ stock, lol

Quad pretty much pointless, even tri is vram limited for the most part.

 

[Magic Carpet]

$40 for all of it

Won't be $40 to run it though, heh.

Does it matter to you? As long as it runs cool and quiet. You can probably shave off another 10c just by sanding it

 

[Don Karnage]

200x4 @ stock, lol

Quad pretty much pointless, even tri is vram limited for the most part.

Games are Irrelevant. Only care about 3dmark and heaven

 

[Rambusted]

40$ wow that is a steal grats! I have never payed that little for a gpu even the really useless ones I have had.

 

[thilanliyan]

Oh no...now we're going to be hearing about the 470 that rose from the ashes like a phoenix to conquer all it surveyed lol

Jk, that is definitely a steal...and you might as well try quad sli.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Nvidia won't allow it with my board, I can do quad fire, but not quad sli. Perhaps if I can find a good deal on four 6950s I'll give it a shot.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

You should really sell all those GTX 470's and get 3x ASUS GTX 670 DC II. They are awesome. Now is the time to move on in your hardware life :hmm:

 

[borisvodofsky]

When you say "smoker", do you mean he's a crack addict, and you took advantage of him for $40 D:

Only an idiot would give up that whole system for $40. the DDR2 alone is worth at least $20

 

[Rvenger]

If the hardware has been contaminated by smoke, you can spray some simple green on the mobo and videocard and rinse them with water. Let them dry out and they will be like new. Remember to remove the CMOS battery on the mobo or it will fry.

 

[Agenesis]

Nice catch. 470s are my favorite cards too. Heavily underclocked out of the factory with massive headroom, and the market price for them are going crazy low for the performance they give. With a nice OC these cards can give 570s or 580s a run for their money.

 

[Kaldorine]

Thats a good score.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Nice catch. 470s are my favorite cards too. Heavily underclocked out of the factory with massive headroom, and the market price for them are going crazy low for the performance they give. With a nice OC these cards can give 570s or 580s a run for their money.

Yeah I've been running my Tri at 875 core for the summer, enjoying not having that heat put directly in my mancave

I bumped it up to 0975mv which took me to 725 core with the same fan profile I was using before. Hit 83C in Unigine, with a top fan % of 50 with this profile. That popped right at the end, before that it was doing 82C @ 47% fan speed.

Decent enough considering the entire HSF and shroud assmbly is being held on by electrical tape D:

It's not too bad actually, my other cards were clocked higher though on air, around 850 core I believe which is probably why I got jaded by the turbo fan noise that would create.

The tinfoil AMD HSF for the 555 is actually louder at idle, and I didn't pay much attention, but even at 47/50% I didn't notice it over the benchmarks built in noise.

 

[SickBeast]

Balla just water cool that thing.

 

[SlowSpyder]

The way you get 470's makes me kind of wish I would have kept buying 5870's. My 790FX board has four PCIE slots, I could have run some 4x5870 goodness. Of course 1GB of vram is a killer.