Need Radeon card cooling.

[elkinm]

I have an old Radeon 32 MB DDR and I have some strange problems with it. It has an attachemnt in the middle which is soldered at the botom and has three metal fins coming out of it soldered to the board and it labeled AMS, 1084CMA, 0029; I believe this is the voltage regulator or something. The problem is that it seems to get very hot when playing 3D games like UT2K3, and often freezes. It never was very stable and it realy likes a good +5 voltage but nomatter what if it gets hot it has problems.

I put a spare low noise case fan in the case by the card to provide just the slightest bit of airflow. This just barely cools the chip and the board but the results are amazing. Before things were sometimes so bad that my system would freeze after running only 2 benchmarks from UT2K3 but with just the slight cooling I can run the benchmark of UT2K3 or Unreal 2 for hours or untill there is a software crash but there have not been any hardware issues. I also have a backup Radeon LE which exibits the same problems.

Can anybody confirm if this is the voltage regulator or what it realy is and exactly why it overheating is effecting me so much.

And I would like to put some heatsink on it that I can either find or use an old one I may find. Also can someone suggest a good and cheep thermal adhesive like the AS adhesive that I can use to efficiently attach the sink.

Thanks
elkinm

 

[elkinm]

I'm quite sure it's the voltage regulator. The 9800 Pro has a heatsink on it. Anybody know were I can find good small and cheep eatsinks that would be good or maybe make one of my own, and any place were I can find cheep thermal adhesive?

Thanks

 

[OulOat]

bestbyte for cheap stuff and a 5 buck flat shipping fee (unlimited small items). If you have the room, just get a Thermalright SK6+ for $10, no fan. Should be more than enough cooling.

 

[elkinm]

I could not find any realy small heatsinks for a graghics adapter. The heatsinks listed are CPU and chipset heatsinks which are much bigger then the typical graphics ram and voltage regulator heatsinks. Eve cut up they would be big.

I like the SK6+ though. I used to have a Volcano 5 on my XP 1600+ and my motherboard read 58-60 C. I believe that that is incorrect as I can touch the heatsink base and it is cool and I am sure it is connected properly. I tried the GC68 from SVC and found that it ran at least two degrees hotter with the stock 32 CFM 80 MM fan. I tried the YS Tech 48 fan and with it my temps are about 5 degrees lower then with the volcano 5 and at least 7 degrees lower then with the stock fan on the GC68. But the temps with the GC68 sometimes go up to volcano 5 levels while the V5 usualy never goes above 60-61 C.

I was just wondering if it is normal for the old Volcano 5 without even the copper one bottom like the volcano 6 to outperform the GC68 which I tohugh was supposed to be the ideal low cost solution and in some review it compares to professional heatsinks more then 3 to 4 times it's current price.

And if this is my experience with the GC68, would I see a noticalble drop in my temps if I use the SK6+ with the Volcano 5 fan or possibly the YSTech rotated 90 degrees, or should I just stick with what I have?

Thanks

 

[OulOat]

Yes, you would have a drop in temps, but your temps are fine right now.

I would still recommend the sk6+ if you have the room (no other cards in the PCI slots below). I use an old P200 hs (big) from a HP as my passive GeForce 3 TI200 hs. Takes up 2 PCI slots, and had to do a little cutting with the base to make it fit, but it's now cooling my TI200 fine. I'm sure with a little cutting you can get the sk6+ to fit. If you insist on getting a small hs, the zalmon chipset hs might work, but you are risking system stablity

 

[elkinm]

Thanks, but I don't need anything as good as an sk6+ on my video card. I have some small Pentium HSFs which would be more then enough if needed. The SK6+ would be good for my CPU though.

 

[Bluefront]

A slot fan and a DIY duct works for me.....AIW7500. I run the fan at 1/2 speed using a Zalman fan controller so it's pretty quiet.

Slot Fan For Video Card