View the updated project log on my personal site, XodusTech.com OK, like true modding really is, it starts off with a need, the need in this case being 1) I need a graphix card that can handle COD2 2) I have no money to buy a new card 3) My current radeon 9600se can handle COD2 but it overheats and crashes 4) What i did have was a fried Nvidia Geforece FX5900 with a pimped cooler So as i put my head together i said, 1) the FX5900 was more powerful than the 9600se, therefore the cooler can handle more 2) the cooler was removable, and so was the 9600se's So here starts the pictures: This is the eVGA Nvidia Geforce FX5900 This is my card in all its infinite glory, a value purchase when i got it 2 years ago, today it is a bit outdated, but i decided to go for it anyway Note: i had to take that silly sticker off the cooler, which revealed a really nice looking mirrored metal plate, wich not only looks better, but dosent say nvidia all over my ati card. It was a complete pain in the rump to take off, took about 20 minutes and alot of Alcohol (the rubbing kind). This is the completed front view of my card, the cooler was by far extremely hard to mount to my card, as ati and nvidia do not use the same mounting hole locations, so i had to drill new holes in the cooler, and hide the screws, and make sure the heads were flat under the fan to let the fan spin and also to keep them from spinning inside the cooler when i bolt them onto the back, the little pcb above the fan is the fan controller circuit i stole out of an old powersupply, it keeps the fan at about 7v and when the sensor detects more heat, it increases the fan speed to 12v, i put that on there to keep noise down, and just becuase i could put that on there This image is of the fan controller circuit i used to power the coolers fan, the controller had a weird connector on it, so i simply soldered on the one i stole from the fx5900, and as you can see in the picture, the red and black wires on the other side of the pcb, the black one is soldered to an etched peice of the cards pcb (the ground) and the red wire goes through a hole in the card to the back of the card where i tapped into the cards 12v input This is the relocated capacitor that i ... relocated..., i had to move it becuase it was sitting in such a way that it would not allow me to use the other mounting hole on the side of the gpu, so it had to be moved, i will probably secure it better later on, for now it works This is the back view of the card, as you can see the wire comes out of the hole at the back and down to the A1 pin on the AGP connector, which btw is the only line that runs from the motherboard to the AGP card that carries 12v, im glad it was easily accessable This shows in greater detail the hole that was drilled to allow the +12v wire that ran to the fan controller to run to the back of the card to get the required 12v This shows the solder point at which i soldered my fan controller wire to the A1 pin on the AGP connector Well, what do yall think, the card now dosent even get warm, and the fan controller works flawlessly, it allows me to finally play COD2 worry free, which means more frags of course Finished product: One Really PIMPED ATI Radeon 9600se
You did a neater job than I did on my 5500. It didnt overclock well so I put a socket 7 hs/fan on it. Nice work.
maybe i missed something.. what is / are "voltmods"? ty, this was extremely hard to do, as it tested all my skillz
I am just about to start overclocking the card, im not to sure how to check the temps off my card, if you have a way please let me know, but as opposed to the way it used to be cooled (passively) the larger heatsink alone is better cooling, and the fan really helps. not only that but it also now has a firmer contact with the gpu core, and i also applied some AS (arctic silver) thermal compound to better conduct the heat as far as i know, i cant even feel the thing getting hot, as its a pretty underpowered card, i may try using the omega driver suite for the card to see what i can push out of it
I have this exact same card, and I took off the stock heatsink and put on a Zalman ZM80-D which lets me overclock from 324 core 196 memory to 457 core 250 memory when I use ATiTool.
