My NV5 Installation

[jamesbond007]

Well, tonight was not a totally fabulous night. There were some bumps in the road, but my buddies and I managed. I purchased a NV5 rev3 early this week and went to install it tonight. Everything fits fine, the RAM and GPU have great contact, and all was well. HOWEVER, I soon noticed that the cooler was about 1/4" or so too long! I tried to fit it through the next open slot to see if it could 'dangle' out and about side my computer case, however, it wouldn't fit at all. We figured we could unscrew the bottom part of the exhaust, since it was only a TINY bit too fat to fit through the open slot in my tower.

SO, my buddies and I go to try and pry off the cooler - IT WASN'T GONNA HAPPEN! The thing was freaking stuck like a fat lady on a box of donuts. I have heard bad stories of people ripping off the BGA memory chips from their videocards when using aftermarket products. I didn't want to risk this happening and it was exceeding our threshold of 'firm, but not too excessive' pressure that was needed to get the thing off. Out comes the dremel!

About 15 minutes later, using a dremel, some steady hands, compressed air, and a little skill, we turned the cooler into my own custom NV4.8 Silencer! It works very well, it's closer to the exhaust plate than my friend's who installed his onto a 6800GT (no modding) so there's possibly less leakage of hot air, and the card still works! I was kind of worried about all the vibrations and handling that was required to do the job, but skill and a little luck gave us a great outcome.

Has anyone else ran into this situation?

By the way, my card stock (325/600) ran at ~57C idle/46C ambient. Now, it runs my OC (425/800) stable at ~44C idle/36C ambient and 51C load after ~35 minutes of cs_militia, which is a nice and intense HDR map for Counter-Strike: Source. Prior to the NV5, it would run 3DMark2006 just fine, but the HDR maps killed the system.

My 3DMark2006 scores went from 2249 stock to 2864 with the OC. I am not going to try to push the card any farther since I'm totally happy with the ~32% increase in speed. Plus, now I can run the card for another year at least, since I don't have to turn down any settings on any game...with the exception of FEAR.

Just thought I'd run my experiences by everyone to see if y'all have had something similar.

Thanks!

 

[JasonSix78]

Nice. I installed an NV5 Rev2 on my 6800GS and it wasn't long enough to exhaust the hot air out the back properly, go figure. They're a pain to get back off after you've seated them, I had to remove mine because a thermal pad wasn't making good contact with the end ram chip. It's cool that you got it to work though!

-Jason

 

[jamesbond007]

Wow, they don't even fit a GS? You'd think they would consider making some shorter ones for us that can't afford the GT/GTX/Ultra models. Ah well!

 

[CKXP]

that's odd, i had rev. 2 that fitted a 6800nu agp/6800gt agp/6800gs pcie and now fits my 7800gt, i also purchased a rev.3 for just in case...my rev.2 has been put through a lot of use. as far i a can tell, dimension wise their identical and for as being too short that's why they come with a slotted backplate.

btw: is your 6800nu agp or pcie

 

[jamesbond007]

6800nu PCIe

 

[JasonSix78]

Even with the slotted backplate mine is still about a 1/2" too short. It's probably due to the card manufacturer's mounting locations on the card. Mine is a Evga 6800GS Superclocked PCIe.

Here's a pic: Text

-Jason

 

[CKXP]

correct if i'm wrong, but don't all of NV board partners' use a reference PCB design set by NV. i see your point about the NV5 silencers being a little short, but i guess i never really noticed it.

 

[JasonSix78]

Originally posted by: CKXP
correct if i'm wrong, but don't all of NV board partners' use a reference PCB design set by NV. i see your point about the NV5 silencers being a little short, but i guess i never really noticed it.

Yeah, you're probably right. That's the only reason I could see that the NV5 would be too long on one card and shorter on others. Other factors could be mobo/case mounting I suppose.

-Jason

 

[jamesbond007]

Well, I compared my card to my friend's 6800GT AGP and mine is still considerably shorter. His stock HSF was much larger than mine as well and my card doesn't require an extra power source.

Jason, your card looks like the precise length that it's suppose to be and the distance from the backplate looks to be about the same as my friend's 6800GT AGP and my other friend's 7800GT.

 

[PingSpike]

Couldn't you just extend the duct with either some kind of tape, some thin plastic or something else, Jason?

 

[Shmalls]

just to point out, I did the dremeling, SKILL!

 

[JasonSix78]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Couldn't you just extend the duct with either some kind of tape, some thin plastic or something else, Jason?

That would be a good solution Ping. I'm not too concerned about it because a majority of the air is exiting the back like it should. I might rig up something later on.

Originally posted by: Shmalls
just to point out, I did the dremeling, SKILL!

:laugh: You did a fine job!

-Jason

 

[Shmalls]

Originally posted by: JasonSix78

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Couldn't you just extend the duct with either some kind of tape, some thin plastic or something else, Jason?

That would be a good solution Ping. I'm not too concerned about it because a majority of the air is exiting the back like it should. I might rig up something later on.


-Jason

I thought about this myself. As mentioned in the OP's post, on my eVGA 6800GT (AGP) thier is a small gap between the end of the air duct and the back of the case, maybe a half inch tops. I was thinking about how I could close that gap and the easiest solution would be tape. If your going to use tape, "duct tape" would be best, but not ordianry vinal duct tape, get REAL duct tape, that shiney stiff metal duct tape would work good (I would think)

~Dave