Akasa Vortexx Neo on a non-standard HD4830(with pictures,56k warning!)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I recently acquired HD4830 as a cheap replacement for my HD3870 which I managed to damage(still not got round to mending it yet though). It is one of the Powercolor ones with the shorter PCB:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4830/

The stock cooler is actually quite good and is silent when the card is not under load. However under load it is very noisy. It also dumps heat into the case which is especially not good in my case as it is a Shuttle SFF. Also the VRMs are not cooled properly!

I decided to use the Akasa Vortexx Neo I already had on the HD3870. However it is not as easy as it seems due to the non-standard layout of the card!!

The first thing I needed to do was remove the shroud around the fan connector as it was obstructing the cooler and cover it with some tape to prevent a short circuit. This is indicated by the crudely drawn black circle!!



Once I had pried the RAM heatsinks off carefully I fitted the cooler. I used Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound and re-used the old thermal pads which came with the Akasa Vortexx Neo. Luckily there was barely enough clearance for the capacitors!

Also I had to slightly bend the unused pin on the jumper which is indicated by another crudely drawn circle. Anyone know what this jumper does??



Luckily the fan also cools the VRM heatsink too!



Has this trouble all been worth it?? Well, yes it has!!

With the stock cooler I was hitting between 45C to 50C at idle. When the card was overclocked to 700mhz(from the original 575mhz) the core hit between 65C to 70C. The cooler which was silent before became very noisy at load as the fan ramped up!!

With the Akasa Vortexx Neo the card was idling at around 37C to 39C although it was a bit noisier as the fan is at a fixed speed(I chose the higher fan setting).

However under load at 700Mhz the card was not more than 55C to 60C!! Also the cooler was much less noiser too!! This is excellent for a SFF case with relatively limited ventilation!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Tried Furmark 1.6.5. on extreme burning mode for over 23 minutes at 1440x900 and the temperature did not exceed 73C!! The graphics core was at 700mhz.




The card scored 4233 in the Furmark benchmarking tool!

The card scored 11500 in 3DMark06 with a q6600(stock) and 4gb of RAM.

[Webby]

Good job that man

Would it make you sad if I said my 4870 in Furmark 1.65 extreme burn in @ 1680*1050 only reaches 40°C



This is with my cooling fans spinning at ~750-1000rpm (changes with water temp) and air into rad temps of ~19°C (BTW CPU and NB are in the loop as well)

Then again the cooling in my PC probably costs more than some people spend on a whole base unit (probably would cost ~£350 to buy it all atm, I didn't spend that on it though ) I need to make some alterations as well may make a new thread and see what peoples thoughts are

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I assume that you are using water cooling then!! Nice!! You finally upgraded you graphics card I see - is it a good boost over your old x1900 series card then??

I managed to get an extra 25mhz out of the memory and have got 11755 in 3DMark06(4648 SM2 score,5242 SM3 score and 3677 for the CPU score). Cannot overclock the RAM much on the card even though it is rated for 1000mhz!! I think at least for this benchmark the RAM speed on the graphics card is holding me back a bit.

Anyway the card should be fast enough at these setting anyway. Probably overclock my q6600 to 3ghz again to seen if it makes any difference though TBH it is pleanty fast for me even at stock speeds!!

I am using a Shuttle P2 series SFF so the temperatures are certainly good for this case!! I assume if I was using a full size case with some 120mm fans the temperatures should be a bit lower!!
Some of the newer Shuttles have better cooling and the top end models are even liquid cooled it seems. I would like to get one eventually but they are certainly not very cheap!!

[Webby]

Yeah Water cooled

Upgraded from a 3870 as well Anybody want to buy it got the 4870 for a steal just over £100 delivered so made sense over getting a 4850 for the same money got it a couple of weeks back before the price drops as well so it looked an even better deal at the time.

Have not run 3DMark06 yet but you could run the Stalker CS benchmark (check the main hardware section for the thread) CPU speed can make a big difference in that though moving from 2.33Ghz to 3.5GHz gave me ~1.5K extra points.

EDIT: Added screenshot to my first post.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Oops!! I thought you had an x1900xt!! I got the HD4830 for around £50 and it looked unused. I would have liked to get something better but I have not got much dosh at the moment so it was all that I could afford!! Me and my butter fingers!! It is not a massive upgrade over my HD3870(when both are overclocked) but at least Crysis Warhead seems to run a bit smoother and at least enabling AA will now mean a smaller performance hit.

I would imagine that the HD4870 has around twice the real world performance of the HD3870.

I would sell your HD3870 on Ebay. If it is the GDDR4 version you should get at least £50 for it.

[Webby]

Yeah GDDR4 version with non-standard cooling and a factory overclock Think ebay is calling it I had an X1950XT before that but it started artifacting so got relegated to dust gathering duties still use it as a test card as it will do 2D no problem at all so makes a good card to have laying around.

My 4870 was brand new So a real bargain.

Just checked my Dad's suppliers (He has a small PC maintence business) and I could get an 4870 1GB for £134 + VAT, delivery and mark up (not that I would pay mark up but anybody else would ) obviously I don't need one but its shocking to think they were the best part of £200 a month ago.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With the q6600 at 3ghz I get a 3DMark06 score of just above 13000 when the GPU is at 700mhz and the RAM at 925mhz. The RAM does not seem to be able to clock any higher despite the active cooling of the modules by the Akasa cooler!! This is a bit sad as they are rated for 1000mhz!!

The SM2.0 and SM3.0 scores increased by nearly 10% and 15% respectively when the q6600 was at 3ghz(as opposed to stock speed)!

I get 4372 in FurMark at 1280x1024 and 4183 at 1680x1050.

[Pob255]

Well what I mean is take it apart remove the current blower and replace it, you'll nee the size, akasa lists it as 80 x 25mm but I think 80mm sounds too large.

if it is 80x25 then something like this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PC-Case-System...item48361d5f9f get the blower out and mod it into the vortexx neo

or how about one of these
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Asus-Vertical-...item335cb31e94
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ASUS-OPTIONAL-...item41481e730d
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Clear-Round-VG...item27b14f6faa
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/delta-compaq-c...item4ceeff84ad


How much space is there between teh cooler and the side of the shuttle? I see this as a exellent opptitunity for modding.