Best cooling solution for ASUS Radeon 9550GE 128MB 128-bit (5.0 ns)

[Dark Ride]

Title says it all.I want to OC the 9550GE even more than I already do, so I seek for a better cooling solution than the stock ASUS cooler.

I overclocked it successfully from 250/400 to 460/540 with ATiTool and no artifacts for over 2 hours.
I think ... well, I hope I can overclock it more than that.I like playing arround with it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[FenrisW0lf]

Hi, do you have any water cooler? If so, get a vga water block. If not, use a thermaltake CL-G0003, I think that's a good cooler (to maximize it try to get a way to put your vga fan on the cooler). I have a question, I have the same card, but mine is a9550 ge/td 256 with infineon memories, and when I flashed it to an ATI 9600pro it stopped working, I tried to restart the pc, but it didn't boot... Have I damaged my card? or I can simples reflash it using a pci card?

 

[FenrisW0lf]

Forgot one thing , if you will use the water cooler on your vga card also put some memory heatsinks (copper are the best ones, of course...) on the card's memories. thermaltake also sells those, and they're really cheap, (here in portugal the al heatsinks cost 4.9 eur, and the cu ones cost 5 eur)

 

[AceFactor]

To FenerisW0lf: give it a try with the PCI graphics card, and just flash back to your original bios backup

To Dark Ride: Buy a decent cooler for the card before you do anything else, Artic Cooling do great coolers, and Zalman make other aswell. Whateever you do, steer well clear of Thermaltake Cooling products, they are all crappy, and end up wrecking your hardware! Tried and tested, take my word for it. Btw, Zalman make ram heatsinks. .they are Blue in colour, and are very good. .i used to have them on my old 9800pro <flashed> xt

Adam

 

[FenrisW0lf]

Thanks AceFactor, i like thermaltake , but also I like other person's opinions, and I didn't know that zalman produced ram heatsinks. humm, the heatsinks that are painted in blue aren't the aluminum ones?

 

[AceFactor]

LMAO, i suppose i am slightly biased abut thermaltake. .all though i might get one of their power supplies

The Zalmam Ram Heatsinks are blue anodised aluminium

-Adam

 

[FenrisW0lf]

ah ha, , I'd rather prefer the copper heatsinks from thermaltake than the aluminium ones from zalmam... thermaltake psu, hum, mine's a 650W q-tec. and... it costed only near 20eur!!! but I think that a 550W Tough Power Series W0096 or a 680W Pure Power W0049 would be GREAT choices... changing of subject, a f****** wasp bited my tongue this morning!!! I can't eat, I can't kiss my girlfriend, dass (portuguese abreviation of f***)... do you know any mod to my brain to stop the f****** pain?? (i don't want any more whisky) lol

 

[FenrisW0lf]

my mobo lets me change the vddq from the bios, but i only can change it from 1.5V to 1.6 or 1.7, well, I need some explanation, what are the vdd and vddq? if we were talking about vcore I would logically know that it refered to the voltage of the processor core.. but here there are too parameters, vdd and vddq, they refer together to the gpu voltage? or they point to the gpu voltage independently? and, how can I raise my card's vmem?

 

[AceFactor]

Btw, Q-Tec PSU's are junk. . you should check your voltage rails. .they shud be with 5% of what the rail shud be!

I'm throwing mine in the bin. . . or selling it to an unsuspecting fool

-Adam

 

[FenrisW0lf]

can we get back to the vddq question? , I still need an answer , ( hey Ace, have you noticed that we're the only ones in this forum? where have Dark Ride gone?) lol

 

[AceFactor]

Yeh. .these guys rae like that, within like 2 days you willl have like a million replies

-Adam

 

[FenrisW0lf]

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!! i'm gettin mad , wtf are the vdd and vddq?? the curiosity is killing me

 

[D_o_S]

Title says it all.I want to OC the 9550GE even more than I already do, so I seek for a better cooling solution than the stock ASUS cooler.

I overclocked it successfully from 250/400 to 460/540 with ATiTool and no artifacts for over 2 hours.
I think ... well, I hope I can overclock it more than that.I like playing arround with it.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

Unfortunately, according to Zalman's compatibility list, your 9550GE is not compatible with the VF700. That means the VF700 is out of question (unless you do some modding to it so that it fits). Another one of Zalman's products, the ZM80D-HP, might fit. As Zalman does not have a compatibility list for this heatsink, I am not 100% sure about it. The ZM80D could be good, especially if you put something like a Vantech Tornado on its side (not sure that you will be able to close your case).

Artic Cooling's ATI Silencer 1 (Rev. 2) should get the job done too.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

LMAO, i suppose i am slightly biased abut thermaltake. .all though i might get one of their power supplies

-Adam

I've seen a lot of cr@p come from thermaltake over the years, and have/will always hesitate to purchase anything from the TR ripoff.

Definatly look at the artcic silencer and zalman heatsinks.

If its BGA ram, get good ramsinks the first time. and don't plan on taking them off without risking killing the card.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!! i'm gettin mad , wtf are the vdd and vddq?? the curiosity is killing me

Volt mods. VDD is ram voltage, and VDDQ is the voltage for the input/output of the memory. Basicly the voltage for the bus between the GPU and memory itself. (DQ bus voltage).

Unless you have some supreme cooling, and good soldering skills, do not attempt a volt mod.

my mobo lets me change the vddq from the bios, but i only can change it from 1.5V to 1.6 or 1.7, well, I need some explanation, what are the vdd and vddq? if we were talking about vcore I would logically know that it refered to the voltage of the processor core.. but here there are too parameters, vdd and vddq, they refer together to the gpu voltage? or they point to the gpu voltage independently? and, how can I raise my card's vmem?

however , Your motherboards bios is different.

In mobo bios VDD = chipset voltage.
AGP voltage doesn't effect anything huge.
You cannot adjust the video card voltage from the motherboard.

 

[FenrisW0lf]

Thanks Dippyskoodlez.
I only have rough soldering skills... like solding earings, or rings gems, etc (my sister studied arts, and i've learned to solder small things, but only with a large soldering machine and the things I used do solder didn't required any precision at all, and if I did any mistake I could correct it without the risk of damaging the thing I was soldering), but, I would like to try to do some volt mods on my asus a9550 . cooling, hum... I already got a thermaltake all copper vga water block, I only need the watercooler, and I'm thinking on buying a mini-bar, I have an old water pump from a dish washer machine and buying the water block, I should get enough cooling to mod the vga card, what do you think?

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Thanks Dippyskoodlez.
I only have rough soldering skills... like solding earings, or rings gems, etc (my sister studied arts, and i've learned to solder small things, but only with a large soldering machine and the things I used do solder didn't required any precision at all, and if I did any mistake I could correct it without the risk of damaging the thing I was soldering), but, I would like to try to do some volt mods on my asus a9550 . cooling, hum... I already got a thermaltake all copper vga water block, I only need the watercooler, and I'm thinking on buying a mini-bar, I have an old water pump from a dish washer machine and buying the water block, I should get enough cooling to mod the vga card, what do you think?

Don't use a fridge. They arent designed to handle a high heatload 24/7.. you would definatly have to upgrade the condensor for it to not die.

Unless your quite... good with soldering, I would definatly hesitate to suggest a volt mod...

Besides, a volt mod wont provide any extremely noticable differences.. +10fps tops in games... and lower the life of the card...

Volt mods can, will, and HAVE killed cards, even when done "properly" and removed..

I've been soldering for a long time now, and am pretty good, and still hestiant to mod a $500 card... although a $40 card wouldn't be as hard..

I would siggest top notch water cooling, or greater for a well volt modded video card. Will rpolong life as long as possible, and provide the best results. Water, letalone your first water looop, may not handle it how you expect.

 

[FenrisW0lf]

Yeah, I know that fridges aren't designed to work with an high heat load (as you say 24/7), however that can be a good choice if you do not use the fridge as your main radiator, if you cool the water before it enters the fridge it won't be so stressful to the fridge. for exmple, I can use copper tubes from the waterblock to the fridge, and adapt some fans and heatsinks on it, or, for some serious cooling, that was what I have been thinking around, I can get a large plastic tube and a copper spring tube, the copper spring tube will be inside the plastic tube, the copper spring will be the tube from the water block to the fridge. The plastic tube will be conected to an hole on the pc case and to another on the fridge door, and there will be some fans pulling air from the fridge to cool the water on the spring before it reaches the fridge and at the same time cool the pc case. Yes, I know, I can't take air from the fridge, at least a lot of air whitout replacing it, but if I adapted some fans to push air in they would push hot air, the only thing that occured me was to make some small holes, so that air could be slowly pushed in, the fan used to pull air to the spring should do that job. Well, if think that theorically this is not a good solution, but if i tried it should prove that it's not a very bad idea at all...