Got my 6970s today - Mixed bag so far...
- Thread starter Grall
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Okay...put the Setsugen-2 ramsinks on with Arctic Ceramic Epoxy (after soaking in 91% isopropanol and thoroughly cleaning off that 3M tape crap) and have it all installed.
The Setsugen-2 is on the 6950-flashed-to-6970 at the bottom of my case next to my psu so less than ideal airflow. In furmark it's holding about 18 degrees C below the 6970. Not bad
Edit: thought I don't recommend this cooler - backplate is wrong for 6950 as they want to push on a rubber thing in the center of the back of the board where there are lots of caps, etc. so I had to use the stock backplate...
The Setsugen-2 is on the 6950-flashed-to-6970 at the bottom of my case next to my psu so less than ideal airflow. In furmark it's holding about 18 degrees C below the 6970. Not bad
Edit: thought I don't recommend this cooler - backplate is wrong for 6950 as they want to push on a rubber thing in the center of the back of the board where there are lots of caps, etc. so I had to use the stock backplate...
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you can mess up with the other kinds of cooling too.
I had the displeasure of witnessing hardware that had been immersed for fun and on the cheap. using a plexiglas voting box and used cooking oil
it did work but the hardware was contaminated with an awful stench. the hard drive was immersed as well, I believe it failed rather quickly, putting an end to the experiment.
the aquarium set up shown here would be fun for a number crunchinhg machine with multiple video cards, I guess. with the car radiator on the side you can tell right away it's a computer/aquarium/space heater combo
oil immersion is used by the utility companies for electricity transformers.
True but it's far worse to mess up with something like oil immersion or water cooling than it is to mess up with air cooling. Air cooling you mess up and you lose 1 part at worst in most cases unless you have a heatsink tear loose while oil and water a mess up can quite easily ruin the whole system.
...But, if the stock backplate works, then there's no real problem as long as you're aware of the risk of crushing the caps and don't use the included plate, right?
Or are there additional issues with using the stock plate with this cooler?How's this hybrid mounting scheme working out for you?
...But, if the stock backplate works, then there's no real problem as long as you're aware of the risk of crushing the caps and don't use the included plate, right?
How's this hybrid mounting scheme working out for you?
As with most Scythe stuff the instructions are shit, but, if you're used to modding, etc., it's a decent kit.
The pluses are:
1. The cooler itself works very well. At full fan speed it's much quieter than the stock cooler and will cool as well as the stock fan at 60% of max speed (which is very loud).
2. It's a two slot (total as in no bigger than stock) solution.
3. It comes with a ton of aluminum heat sinks for all manner of video card.
The minuses are:
1. Stupid 3M thermal tape that doesn't work. Soak the heat sinks in 91% isopropanol and scrape that crap off. Use thermal epoxy instead.
2. Doesn't come with PWM fans (big WTF on that one). I ordered them separately but, even then you need to mod the cable or buy an adapter for the VGA PWM connector.
3. Back plate used to mount the cooler is designed to put all the load on a 3/8" round rubber bumper dead center behind the GPU. I haven't examined other cards to compare, but this real estate is occupied by a tone of surface mount parts - I don't really want to load them! I used the stock back plate.
I have another that will go on the "real" 6970. Not sure how soon. My replacement motherboard (Sandy Bridge) is on it's way from Newegg so I'll probably do it then and also move my PSU to the upper location in my case to get more airflow on the lower card.
Really looking forward to having the PWM fans on these so I can create a good, quiet fan profile in Afterburner.
Just another update on that Setsugen-2. Since I don't have PWM set up yet I played a bit with lowering the fan speed. If I lower it to inaudible and run the benchmarks in Just Cause 2, the Setsugen-2 holds 6-7 degrees below the stock cooler, using my custom (aggressive fan) profile in Afterburner which puts the stock running at 40%.
Hey, that's great news. I just might invest in this cooler then, since it doesn't exceed the original form factor.
What kind of PWM adaptor cables were you talking about previously? Would be interesting to be able to plug the Setsugen fans directly into the fan headers on the graphics cards themselves to let the video card BIOS dictate fan speed. I don't have enough mobo headers for that, unfortunately...
What kind of PWM adaptor cables were you talking about previously? Would be interesting to be able to plug the Setsugen fans directly into the fan headers on the graphics cards themselves to let the video card BIOS dictate fan speed. I don't have enough mobo headers for that, unfortunately...
That's what they're for. I was going to cut the fan connectors off the original coolers and then solder them to the fan cables but found a source for an adapter cable via a post on another forum:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110651624715
So the whole idea is to have PWM controlled on-card using custom fan profiles I will set up with MSI's Afterburner program.
My 6950 is on the way, Hold on for water cooling temps
You're going from 3x5850 to 1x6950? Hell, I figured you be holding out for 2x6990 but then your blocks wouldn't fit
You're going from 3x5850 to 1x6950? Hell, I figured you be holding out for 2x6990 but then your blocks wouldn't fit
A single 6950 ( Faslhed to 6970 ) will be a massive improvment in itself, I'm so VRAM bound in most games it's unreal.
Crysis with texture packs and MSAA can get so bad because of the VRAM bottleneck.
STALKER games running stock can stutter quite a bit and are damn near un-playable in certain parts of the game with the 'Complete' texture packs installed.
So my games will be a lot smoother, I could of got a few 2Gb 5850's for the price of this 6950 but I'm bored, I get bored a lot
I'll bang another one on there for Crossfire soon enough
And I don't have the CPU power to drive a couple 6990's
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A single 6950 ( Faslhed to 6970 ) will be a massive improvment in itself, I'm so VRAM bound in most games it's unreal.
Crysis with texture packs and MSAA can get so bad because of the VRAM bottleneck.
STALKER games running stock can stutter quite a bit and are damn near un-playable in certain parts of the game with the 'Complete' texture packs installed.
So my games will be a lot smoother, I could of got a few 2Gb 5850's for the price of this 6950 but I'm bored, I get bored a lot
I'll bang another one on there for Crossfire soon enough
And I don't have the CPU power to drive a couple 6990's
Is it just textures that are a problem? Or are you running at a silly resolution too?
I'm trying to decide between a 2nd 5870, 2x6950,2x6970 or 6990. (most likely one of the first two)
I game at 1080p
Crysis stock with 4xMSAA runs fine, 8xMSAA stutters now and then.
Crysis with Hi-resolution foliage pack with 4xSAA stutters slightly more often.
Crysis with Hi-resolution foliage pack + Rygels texture pack = Fail and double fail with 4xMSAA enabled.
STALKER games stutter all over the shop with texture packs installed.
Mind you Clear Sky at default Ultra settings requires nearly 900Mb of VRAM so I can only imagine how much it needs with the texture packs.
Received my motherboard-type-PWM-connector-to-VGA-PWM-connector cables today.
Here's the final product:
They hold below 61C in Furmark with a fan profile that's silent. 25-27C at idle.
Will be interesting to see how my water blocks compare
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