Water Cooling the New 8800GT and 8800GTS 512MB

[ionoxx]

Well for those out there with an 8800GT or 8800GTS 512MB, here is a way for you to water cool them!

As a lot of you have heard, you are supposed to be able to use a 7800 or 7900 series waterblock on your 8800GT(S). This is true, but there is one thing that has been neglected while doing this: the VRMs.

This I found out as I removed my stock cooler from one of my 8800GTS'. So I decided to get some BGA ramsinks and cover them myself. Now I haven't tested this whole thing yet, I have to take appart my 2nd card and flsuh and rebuild my loop. My question is... will it be enough....

The bare card

The bare card with the BGA ram sinks on the VRMs

The card with the Thermaltake ND3 on it.

Now the ND3 comes with 4 BGA ram sinks, the silver one on the picture. The blue ones are Zalman. There were six contact points with the stock cooler.

So... will it be enough for the VRMs?

 

[ionoxx]

Well, for those who want to know.... she works! After watercooling the cards... 10C drop in temperatures. The VRMs seem to be properly cooled. According to Everest idle temps:

GPU1=35C
MEM1=27C
GPU2=37C
MEM2=29C

This is with the Thermaltake TMG1 radiator in between. The CPU is before the GPUs in the loop:

Core1=32C
Core2=32C
Core3=33C
Core4=26C

Load temps don't get much higher!

Loop picture...

 

[Cabages]

Very nice system. Im jealous!

Could you tell us how well it overclocked before compared to now with the water cooling?

 

[ionoxx]

Thats hard to tell.

I didn't overclock much before water cooling. My CPU has been water cooled since I built this machine a month ago. The video cards confuse me a little.

Before watercooling them, I overclocked them and would get lower frame rates, so I just left them stock (C:670/S:1674/M:972)

Now, I tried overclocking them last night and got odd results:

I started with memory, I don't remember the scores exactly

C:670/S:1674/M:972
C:670/S:1674/M:1001
C:670/S:1674/M:1051

and as I overclocked I would get lower and lower scores in 3Dmark06. Then I tried to overclock the GPU, keeping the shaders linked. There again, I have the core to 700 and then 720 and lower scores. I'm using RivaTuner to overclock and GPU-Z to monitor the core speeds. All seems fine except the scores. At all of these overclocks, I never got any artifacts, just lower framerates.

Any ideas?

As for CPU, I had it running 3.0GHz before, I haven't had time to tune it yet.

 

[PCTC2]

That's a cool little trick.

I just went and bought the EK Full Cover G92 block (EK-FC88GT). Here it is: 8800GTS w/ EK Block.
I have no clue about your problem though. I had mine @ 780/1950/1000 and I got a pretty decent fps increase over stock.

 

[ionoxx]

The lower fps when overclocking the memory I could undertand, the GPU probably increases the latency. But the lower fps after increasing the clock speed on the GPU... that just doesn't make sense to me.