Journey of a Watercooled GTX 260

[dadi_oh]

Having just gone through this I thought I would share a few pointers and pics for people considering WC on their GTX 2xx cards.

First thing to consider is full block vs. dedicated GPU block and discretes for memory/power. In my case I chose dedicated GPU block for a couple of reasons:

1) Re-use when I inevitably upgrade. I don't have to drain my loop and reinstall. Plus $$$ investment in new full cover.
2) Flex issues. Some full cover blocks have had issues with flexing the board and causing some bowing over the GPU contact area. Since the dedicated GPU is only attached at 4 points very close to the GPU itself I am thinking there is no chance of this happening.

So once I decided dedicated GPU cooler I needed to think about the discrete cooling of the memory and power devices. I have tons of those little Zalman blue memory heatsinks but attaching lot's of these with new thermal tape is not much fun and until the tape sets they are prone to falling off when handling the card. Also, I have heard of overheating VRM's on the GTX2xx cards with discretes so something beefier should be considered.

That's when I saw these D-Tek Uni-sinks. They cover everything at once and they bolt securely to the card so no heatsinks dropping off.

Next I made the unfortunate assumption looking at the picture of the uni-sink that the rectangular opening for the GPU would support other types of waterblock. Bad idea. I ordered a Swiftch MCW60-R because of it's excellent performance data and discovered that the way that the uni-sink is built will only accept a D-Tek Fuzion GPU block. Unfortunately NCIX has a zero tolerance, no return policy on watercooling equipment even if it is still sealed in it's package

The next part of the puzzle is how the heck do you get the original heatsink cover off this thing? In the attached photo you will see the 10 screws that hold the front and back halves of the shell together. On my XFX card they were underneath the label so I chose to cut out the label in small circles to expose the screws. Peeling off the whole label would have been quite messy. Also, this back cover gets re-used with the unisink so keeping it clean looking is a bonus. Once you remove the 10 screws there are a variety of clips around the perimeter of teh shells that hold them together. Using a wide, sharp instrument (I used a chisel) you can leverage the parts apart in the area of the clips and they just pop open. I did it without damaging any clips but some people have reported breaking them. YMMV. To remove the top half you need to use a bit of a twisting motion combined with pulling it apart to loosen the TIM (Thermal Interface Material). Once apart clean it all up with IPA (India Pale Ale)... well actually IsoPropyl Alcohol but beer sounds good too

Fastening the Uni-sink is dead easy. About 10 screws and you are done. The Fuzion 2 water block then just fastens via 4 spring loaded screws to the unisink (don't forget the MX2 or your favourite TIM.

Attach it to your loop and start benching...

With my OEM heatsink and fan at 60% and Extra Voltage at 1.06V I was OC to 756 core and 1512 shaders and was hitting about 62-64C in Furmark.

With the Fuzion2 I was able to boost the extra voltage to 1.12 and increase shaders to 1620 and core to 810. Hitting about 43C in Furmark

Overall a highly recommended solution for your GTX 2xx card.

[Xaser04]

Wow that looks like a beast of a block.

I am tempted to go fully customized water cooling for my setup (having dabbled with water cooling before with my pre built thermaltake WCS armour case).

The only issue is fitting it all (bar the radiator) into my case. (nothing a dremel can't sort )

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by Xaser04

Wow that looks like a beast of a block.

I am tempted to go fully customized water cooling for my setup (having dabbled with water cooling before with my pre built thermaltake WCS armour case).

The only issue is fitting it all (bar the radiator) into my case. (nothing a dremel can't sort )

My main driver for watercooling is actually quietness. I run the two 120mm fans on my rad at only 60% speed so overall this is a very quiet solution with a Q6600 at 3.5GHz and high 40's folding (51C Prime95 loaded) and the GTX 260 @ 810 MHz at low 40's C under load.

The overclocking is an added bonus. Plus all the heat gets dumped outside the case which keeps everything inside cooler. All around so many benefits to watercooling IMHO.

[DOM]

looks nice

wheres the scores

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by DOM

looks nice

wheres the scores

In the GTX260/280 thread

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpo...&postcount=624

[mmaakk]

Great work Dadi!

New cooling system looks very solid. Great stuff.

[wolf]

can the voltage really be increased? my experience with nibitor is that it doesnt affect a cards voltage at all, and thats testing with a multimeter on cards i vmodded...

however they were all G8X and G9X and this is my first GT200 card...

please can i really increase vcore

[Kursah]

Yes but were you testing on a GTX2xx series? :P

I did some research before I posted the bios vmod info in my GTX support thread for bios modifacations and it does in fact work, I can verify this by higher temps on air...but no difference in overclocking for my 192sp card...I've yet to even try on the 216 since it's been such a great performer I have found little need to push it beyond it's current OC. If you want hard mods, I did provide a link to those too...seemed on at least earlier gen cards to do very little good tho.

[wolf]

i really want to do a new bios for this card anyway but i dont have a floppy, and everything ive tried to do to get a usb key dos bootable has failed.

[Kursah]

did you follow the instructions I have on the OP of my GTX thread? That's all I did and I use it for more than just the GTX, I've used it for quite a few ATI and NV cards...many different rigs.

Did you go into bios and set it as the first bootable hard drive? That's the trick to get it to work...once I did that with my P5Q, when I plug it in and boot up it always defaults to the USB drive now.

I will say now don't expect much from the VMod, though modding the min fan speed to at least 70% is definately useful.

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by wolf

i really want to do a new bios for this card anyway but i dont have a floppy, and everything ive tried to do to get a usb key dos bootable has failed.

There is a great little utility from HP for making bootable USB keys. If you google sp27213.exe and download it from one of the sites I'm sure it will solve your bootable USB key issues.

[wolf]

cheers guys, got the key bootable and wacked a new bios on

1.18 extra, 702/1404/2376

total 280 killer at this speed

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Originally Posted by dadi_oh

With my OEM heatsink and fan at 60% and Extra Voltage at 1.06V I was OC to 756 core and 1512 shaders and was hitting about 62-64C in Furmark.

I find this bit odd, for my bios and every other one I've seen the default extra was 1.12, able to be upped to 1.15 or 1.18. Did you lower yours? I've had a hunch that the limiting factor was more heat than it was voltage (mine does 756/1512 too, just errors when it hits over 60c {which it does even at 100% fan})

[phanbuey]

if ur bios recognizes USB legacy, you can boot from FLASHCD (which is donwloadable at boodisk.com) and you can access the USB like a 1.44" in dos once ur in... thats how i do all me flashes

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by LAN_deRf_HA

I find this bit odd, for my bios and every other one I've seen the default extra was 1.12, able to be upped to 1.15 or 1.18. Did you lower yours? I've had a hunch that the limiting factor was more heat than it was voltage (mine does 756/1512 too, just errors when it hits over 60c {which it does even at 100% fan})

It seems that the Extra voltage varies by manufacturer. My XFX card was at 1.06V extra whereas a bunch of people in the GTX260/280 thread indicated they were at 1.12V extra. And it seems that the new 216SP versions have different selections yet again. I'm not certain if it was just the XFX XXX edition that was set to 1.06V. Maybe someone with an XFX non-XXX could comment... Maybe the XXX versions are cherry picked chips and don't require the extra voltage? Not sure.

My own experence with the extra voltage was that I would run into over voltage or over current protection when I raised it to 1.12V or 1.18V. 1.12V would kick in protection after about 10 seconds... 1.18V would kick in immediately upon entering 3D mode. I had similar OCP issues with my reference design 9600GT. That power design was very poor and any attempts to overvolt it had limited success.

However, on my GTX260, as soon as I changed over to the unisink on the power section I was suddenly able to set extra to 1.12V without the protection kicking in. My theory is that the unisink does a better job cooling the power section and moves it away from the edge of the protection cliff

Also, I agree with your comment about heat vs. voltage. From what I have seen there is very little OC headroom gained by increasing the voltage. This seems to be characteristic of the GTX2xx chips. All of my older Nvidia cards responded well to over voltage (as long as you provided extra cooling) but not this one. Maybe due to the extreme size of this die?

[phanbuey]

its amazing what extra cooling does to this chip

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by mmaakk

Great work Dadi!

My friends call me Daddio

[Binge]

I'm contemplating picking up one of these kits for my GTX. I'm just wondering... When you would use the 280 on air did you notice that it would artifact at specific temperatures? I believe I'm dealing with that issue, so I hope this would solve any issue.

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by Binge

I'm contemplating picking up one of these kits for my GTX. I'm just wondering... When you would use the 280 on air did you notice that it would artifact at specific temperatures? I believe I'm dealing with that issue, so I hope this would solve any issue.

Well mine is a GTX260 but, yes, when I was on stock cooler I would see the artifacting happening when it hit the high 60's (going from memory). The 260's run cooler than the 280's however.

With my watercooling I don't seem to see artifacting if I push it too far. Rather, I will get a driver failure error message or a reset of the whole machine. When it fails it really fails.

Funny thing is, at 810 core and 1620 shaders I can run Furmark for an hour with no artifacts or stability issue. But if I run a game like COD4 then after about 30 minutes of gaming the machine resets. So I just run at 783 core 1566 shaders (folding 24/7 when not gaming) and it seems perfectly happy.

[wolf]

same sorta issue with me, 704/1404/2376 is rock solid but....

i can ati tool artifact scan forages on 756/1512...

seems tho as it tops 60 degrees in games, she starts to shoot a few artifacts.

[Binge]

Yesterday I reapplied the thermal compound and TIM on my 280 and temps dropped by 10C. O.o

[dadi_oh]

Originally Posted by Binge

Yesterday I reapplied the thermal compound and TIM on my 280 and temps dropped by 10C. O.o

What brand of thermal compound did you use?