Gigabyte Windforce 7950 VRM Cooling

[Percy1983]

In short as my 7950 is getting older I am pushing my clocks further, all good so far (1180/1800) but my VRM's are starting to knock on 90+

So I am really after a recommendation on a heatsink(s) and a pointer to exactly which if not all the chips in the area I need to attach them too.

Airflow through the card is good as I am running a custom fan profile so just need to get the heat out of them quicker.



Cheers

[herulach]

Did you pull something off when you removed the heatsink? My 670 Windforce 3X appears to have a VRM sink installed.Otherwise its all the ICs between the swaures marked R22 and the caps.

[Butuz]

It's difficult to really do much as the (far too small) vrm heatsink gigabyte fitted still has to fit under the main heatsink. It's a poor design. Has your card got the metal strip VRM heatsink holder on the other side? You could try attaching some more heatsinks to the back side of the card and cooling via a separate 120mm fan?

Full cover water block is the way forward really.

Butuz

[Percy1983]

No VRM heatsink from the factory, I have an early model 7950 which I can adjust voltage but has no VRM heatsink, a later revision had a heatsink but locked voltage.

I thought it was the lot of them, plus a few over the other side of the gpu. Just didn't want to waste time and money adding heatsinks where not needed.

I have considered a water block but the cost compared the value of the card just isn't worth it.

I am guessing just getting some generic copper heatsinks and getting them on should improve things.

[kompukare]

No VRM heatsink from the factory, I have an early model 7950 which I can adjust voltage but has no VRM heatsink, a later revision had a heatsink but locked voltage.

Ah, I was going to ask you how you were able to see the VRM temp since AFAIK the later models can only monitor GPU temps/voltages (presumably using the on-die sensors provided by AMD). Though I might have missed something but, yes, the early revisions (as reviewed by, for instance, HT4U.net) were able to monitor VRM temps etc. but Gigabyte did a nasty bait and switch.

As to your question... can't really help you there! Not pushing mine much and even if I were without using a thermometer or IR gun I have no idea what temps the VRMs are. Probably better that way!

[Percy1983]

Well the good news for you is I haven't had a problem with VRM temps until I started pushing really hard, due to the cooler the GPU temps are fine 1.25 but the VRMs just keep going up and up. If you have the later model you will have a VRM heatsink too.

Look on the bright side the windforce has hynix ram, I am now at 1900mhz (7600mhz effective) and all seems fine, just don't want to run it too long testing without any heatsinks in place.

Out of interest would adding anything to the other side of the card help, anybody tested such a setup?

[Butuz]

Ah I see.



That's the type of heatsink they come with as standard. It aint a brilliant design but definitely better than nothing!

Maybe you'd be better off finding someone with a dead 7950/7970 windforce and picking it up cheap and ripping the heatsink off it?

Butuz

[kompukare]

Ah, thanks for that. Hadn't realised that Gigabyte had actually made an enhancement to the later models (had though they had only cheapened out).

Can't adding a heatsink to the back being possible as there are solder points everywhere. What might be possible is something like this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5pcs-19-19...item51b6a4c19c

A rough look (no pixel counting) has the heatsink in Butuz post a tiny bit thinner than the 8 pin power input. And those are roughly 18mm. Plus there is more spare there too and 5mm high should be okay too.

There might be more on ebay too. I just searched for heatsink in computing and that was the best I found in the first three pages (of 200). The other thing which might work are those RAM heatsinks but I only saw rather poor ones on ebay. Aluminium should be easy to cut. Whatever you use, you have to use thermal adhesive instead of paste though since your card shouldn't have any holes there.

[Percy1983]

Had a quick look and the newer one has holes for it where my card doesn't so the later spec heatsink may be a problem.

Having a look on it seems my best plan is some generic ones from ebay or such and see if it helps.

At worse i will just have to back down my clocks.

Thanks for the input, I will update with what I do and the results.