[NW] Upgrade the C90S to a 9600M GT 512MB DDR3 [FIXED!]

Not 100% of course but then I would say I would try it in an instant. The xeon processor was of course released quite some time before the E7500 so the current bios that you guys now use should be able to recognise it fine. It is basically a highly binned Q6700. A beauty of a processor should be able to crank a good 3ghz out of it. Not bad in a 3 going on 4 year old laptop.

Now what I am interested in is can Atvaak's new 4670 come close to your awesome 3dmark06 score.

 

to reach that score could be difficult, since after loosing my gt 130m, i do not plan on overclocking anything in this machine (past the default overclocking mechanics of the laptop of course). i just don't know how much damage the system took, stressing it to that extent might kill it. and with the price all these components cost me, i'm short on funds in case it blows up. i'm also noticing that i'm getting bottlenecked by the memory...not in terms of space, but in speed. what is the fastest, most stable brand i can put inside it?

by the way kings...
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Intel-Xeon-Quad-..._EN_Networking_Components&hash=item3a5f814a6d

a xeon 3 Ghz, 1333Mhz fsb, 12megs of cache...and only 95W. this would be the perfect xeon for you, no? or is that the same model you linked us before? of course, the price is quite high for it, but still.

 

Hi,

About memory :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/144187-c90s-common-problems-fixes.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/312103-asus-c90s-vs-4gb-ram.html

Myself : when I bought my C90S, 2 years ago, I tried RAM with fast timings : 4-4-4-12.
The C90S is desynchronized in this case, CPU and RAM didn't work at same speed.

So 5-5-5-15 are the best timings you can use on the C90S;


I hope that will help you,

@+

 

Atvaark thanks for the update but the X3370 3ghz is pretty much a clone of the Q9650 I already have lol. The X3380 would be the only viable step up for me as the QX9650 consumes too much voltage.

 

nVIDIA N10P GE A2 1GB MXM3 VGA CARD = GeForce GT 230M on eBay (end time 13-Nov-10 10:44:54 GMT)

A card that is potentially better than the 4670 1GB GDDR2. 1GB GDDR3 GT 230M card. It looks like MXM 2.1 II. Considering the GT240M performs somewhere between 4650 and 4670 levels the GT230 should easily be as good as the 4650 while with GDDR3 puts it in a different league to the GDDR2 4670.

 

BTW You could always inject the microcodes...
good luck!

 

Hello phoenon,

I don't know where are those microcodes,
and I don't know how to inject them in the bios. :/

 

Well I'm not an expert, but I added the microcodes for the Q7600. I don't know if is there any way to know wich one belongs to wich CPU. But what I did is pick from a motherboard with the same socket (newer one) and just inject all. There's free space enought for inject microcodes, so no worries.

There's a tool for AMIBIOS setup ( MMTool). Make sure you have a backup of your actual BIOS, there are a lot of tutorials and documentation abaut MMtool, it's very simple.
one tip- take care if you plan to play with the logos, you could brick your mobo

Download a BIOS file from any motherboard match socket (latest rev.), extract the CPU patches, and import to your BIOS

(AMIBIOS has also a rescue secuence during boot (pressing F2, think but not sure), I think you need a pen drive with the bios file called AMIBIOS, but asus might replaced for C90S [caps], and don't remember wich extension should be [ROM or BIN])

my tip - keep 4 BIOS files in a pen drive root directory: AMIBIOS.ROM, AMIBIOS.BIN, C90S.ROM and C90S.BIN notice capitals...and read documentation, rescue key might change depending on vendor...(F2??)

Good Luck!!
Cheers!!

 

Hello phoenon,

Excellent, indeed. Thanks alot.
That should help all C90S's owners.

So long.
@+

 

Thanks dude,

But the true is I don't remember as good as I wish, but reading a little documentation it's very easy. The main problem is if I remember well, some shortcuts from AMIBIOS (like rescue key boot, and bios file name...) were customized on ASUS (probably other vendors to), and you always have to keep that in mind, and look for the right info, that's all.

There's also an AMIBIOS (MMTool) packet with extra tools, like boot logo swap, but you have to take care with messing the BIOS, you can brick your mobo (you can rescue btw but I don't think it's funny), I swaped my logos with an Republic of Gamers style, but I extracted from a BIOS posted in this forum from an G(don't remember wich). I don't recommend at all doing on your own, if you miss the format (size, ressolution...) you would damage the BIOS.

tip do changes step by step, that way if something went wrong you would know what did...

cheers!!

 

Hi, I have a problem with my C90S with standard configuration
Several times when I start the pc the fans run and even the lights come on but the screen remains blank, the only thing it is to switch off and try again until the screen comes on, this also happens when I restart it or after the suspension
What could be the problem and its solution? Thanks in advance

 

Perhaps your card is starting to die. Then you have come to the right thread!

 

i received my HD4670. unfortunately, due to some complications ( thermal pad for the gpu die was not shipped with the rest of the package) i couldn't use it without burning it. so it's patiently waiting in it's box for the rest of the components to arrive...

at first, when i emailed mxm upgrade, they said that the hd4670 was using the default gt8600M heat sink/heat spreader assembly. unfortunately, instead of using a mounting bracket, they soldered spacers onto the card to fit everything in place. this wouldn't be a big problem i though. however, the gt8600M's bracket has it's spacers on the same level as the card itself, meaning that everything fits in place with no issue. but the spacers soldered into the hd4670 are placed higher, about the same level as the gpu die and memory chips. of course, when i prepared everything and fired up my computer, everything worked fine for the first oh...1 minute or so. then screen tearing and artifacts started to appear. alarmed, i shut everything down and disassembled the gpu heat sink/heat spreader. to my surprise, the thermal paste on the gpu die did not spread, aka no contact at all was made with the heatsink... and no apparent pressure was applied to the memory chip and their thermal pads ( mxm upgrade tells us to fold the pads in two and put them on the memory chips) i could plainly see that i either did something wrong, or something was missing. i emailed mxm upgrade telling them this story. i was supposed to use a grey thermal pad that was supposed to be provided along with the rest of the set. i saw nothing of the sort included in the package. it's no problem, since they're shipping me a grey pad and some screws ( they forgot those too, had to use my gt130m screws). but be warned. while i don't doubt mxm's professionalism, just make sure when you order from them that everything is included.

what the box was supposed to contain ( coming from them)
- the video card itself
- some high quality thermal paste (still not as good as ic24)
- 4 blue/purple thermal pads, very thin, to be folded in two and applied to the memory chips.
- 2 grey thicker thermal pads for the gpu die ( 1 for testing purpose and one for final seating)
- 4 screws (m2) to fit on the spacers.
- 1 switch to modify your fan circuitry. ( they said that in order to use the full potential or the card, modifying the fan to blow at 100% would be required) this switch is rather bulky compared to what i was expecting, but it's rather stylish and will fit well with the c90 once i figure out where to put the darn thing...

anyway. it would be unfair to make a full review of it at this time, because of the shipment errors, so i will hold out until everything is here.

and for anyone asking why i didn't use my custom heat sink instead, i was planning to, however the ceramic chip on the top right of the card is a bit larger than the gt130M/9600M GT so I'd have to shave off about 3-4 mm off the heat sink to make it fit. i plan on doing this, of course, but first, i want to do things their way. once i know it works, i will use the copper one. maybe I'll be able to use 100% of the card without modding the fans...who knows.

this whole adventure made me think about thermal paste, pads and whatnot. i decided to try and see if there isn't any new kind of paste, surpassing ic24.
research concluded that there are quite a few! for the cpu, and this one will be of huge interest to all of us quad core daredevils... the indigo extreme.
Indigo Xtreme™ - High Performance Thermal Interface for Overclocking Applications
it's available for the lga 775 socket, and the results online surprised me quite a bit.
for the gpu, i found out that MX-3 is supposedly the best, but i didn't find enough reviews to agree on that.

of course, my reason for all this is to be able to run a xeon and the hd4670 without fan modding. in my hands, modding often leads to disaster, so the less i tinker around, the less chance of everything exploding in my hands.

i hope all this was informative. and of course, i will do a full review of the hd 4670 once i get it working. in the meantime, any suggestion is welcomed.

 

Hello Atvaark,

In a French forum, I met someone who has also bought a HD4670 to mxm-upgrade.
First he mounted it as you explain with the original aluminum heatspreader.
Then he is afraid of the temperatures he get.
He speaks of more than 90°C.
Now he tries to improve the cooling with the C90P's heatsinks. Unfortunatly the northbridge heatsink is too small now, so he will modify it with some pieces of copper.

I plan myself to perhaps make the same.

@+

 

looking at all these videos and reviews, instructions about the indigo extreme, I'm starting to wonder if they'll ever make their products for video cards.

thank you, 9800xpv, for telling me about this. i think I'll go straight to cutting my copper heat sink then. or finding someone to do it. knowing me, I'll find a way to break it -.-

well, once the video card works and with decent temps, i'll start eyeballing that xeon processor. and of course, i will test the indigo extreme compound.

their reflow procedure does scare me a bit though. since the video card's fan will stop working at the same time...

 

Why on earth did they solder spacers onto the card!?? How pointless. The 4670 fits the C90P heatsink and therefore also the older 8600M GT C90S heatsink perfectly without any modification. This is what I experienced anyway and my temps ... well suffice to say stress tested with ati tool a couple of days back running 675/990 and no artifacts for over 10 mins ; temps peaked about 54C

There is a NBR member on here called Ice-Tea he founded Mxm Upgrade. Send him a PM to get direct answer as to why these modifications were made

 

as i already said, i contacted them through email yesterday and received an answer that they were sending me what was missing. are you telling me that with a mounting bracket instead of those spacers, the regular heat sink would have worked without adding all that padding? ( literally). i am shocked. /sarcasm

when they sent me the card and told me about spacers, i did not expect them to be soldered on the card. to be honest, i had no clue what they were talking about. i just though it was another kind of mounting bracket. now that i look at it, a proper mounting bracket would surely provide additional support underneath the card, preventing the card from bending if say, i put my copper heat sink on it...

my take on it is that they clearly said they were not providing mounting brackets, that we had to take them off other cards. maybe they just got fed up with complaints about it and fixed the problem that way. I'm also under the impression that thermal pads could never achieved the amount of heat transfer that a good thermal paste would give. is that why people report such abominable temperatures? and would it be better to just go straight to using my copper sink?

 

Yes I think you would get much better results with your copper sink. My card looks like this : Imageshack - 09102009436.jpg - Uploaded by triturbo

If yours looks anything like it although probably on a red pcb then I see no reason for the spacers. Please put a pic up of your card would be very interesting to see.

My problem currently lies in deciding whether to upgrade to the QX9650 hehe undervolted at 1.0375V on my Q9650 I get only 61C at stock 3ghz however at full 1.15V temp climbs to 75C in prime95 only 5C lower than throttle temp. Perhaps I should upgrade to my 11,000rpm fans that are simply gathering dust..

 

well, a lot happened. i went to a nearby garage and asked for the heck of it if they could cut me a piece of copper if i brought it. they accepted, so i hurriedly ran home and took my heatsink with me. the heatsink now fits on the card, but oh no! there's still something very wrong with the card...i hooked up the pads to the memory, put some ic24 on the gpu die, fitted my copper heatsink on top, added more ic24 to hook the heatsink to the heatspreader, and fired it up. installed the drivers, started a game and loaded gpuz at the same time. woo. time out, 118 degrees celcius. something is wrong. another emergency shutdown, i cracked everything open again, burned myself in the process, and to my astonishment...the dab of ic24 was still untouched. yes, the spacers completely prevent a heatsink, even when it's not elevated from touching the die...once again, i took everything apart, cleaned the card and put it back in it's bag. seems like i'll have to use their damn thermal pad after all.
and i can't remove the spacers, they're soldered quite well on the card. and another thing that worried me when i looked at gpuz and at ati's catalyst control center. the gpu clock is clocked at 400Mhz. max.
and the memory at 500Mhz ( 1Ghz i presume).
isn't that card supposed to run at 675/800? i'm starting to seriously reconsider returning the card and getting a refund.

 

HD4670 should run at 675/800, according to Notebookcheck.

 

here are the pictures you requested, kings...bad quality, i know, but that's all i can do.

[/URL] [/IMG]

as you can see...more or less, the spacers are too high to do anything with em without inefficient cooling. and i'm now really concerned for the clock speeds. i know the card auto throttles when too hot, but gpuz usually reports the top speeds programmed in the bios...and 400/500 is not what i paid for...in fact, that's much slower than the gt 8600m...and yes, gpuz reports the card running on pci express 16x...at 16x.

 

Send a PM to Ice-Tea asap. Tell him about your problem and ask for a 4670 that is untouched. Nothing soldered to it! The GDDR2 version that you have should be running at 675mhz/550mhz I believe. Seriously I can't believe the crap they did to that card. The C90 doesn't need extra rubbish put on its cards it was designed to be upgraded why won't people understand this.

Fact of matter is this I have the same card albeit different memory and nobody with a mxm 2.1 II laptop can cool it better than me (in fact I bet I could cool a GTX260M of 4850 if there was one that fitted). You can assure mxm-upgrade that you need your 4670 unmodded FULLY unmodded.

I hope Ice-Tea has time to read this thread and help you out pronto and if he reads this post than sure I apologise for venting but it is frustrating for us mxm laptop owners to find a supplier of compatible mxm cards and then we find them modified beyond use.

edit: I have PM'ed him to ask if he can visit this thread to help you out. Good luck!
btw shouldn't your card run at pci 16x atvaark? mine does

 

Hi Artvaark,

I also recently contacted mxm-upgrade in regard to a HD4670 for the c90s.

On request for information, they stated that they shipped the card with 'safe' clocks that are awaiting a vbios mod for the higher clock speeds, apparently for customers possibly not savvy in doing the fan mod. Unfortunately, they didn't mention making the vbios it needs easily available (Though I would understand leaving out the utility for non-tech-savvy users, having to do the run-around for the correct vbios is an extra, and rather frustrating at times, step).

They mentioned the heatsink would need 4 new holes in it to mount the card properly, so I'm not sure if this is in regard to the new spacers or something else.

Hopefully, with good results on your end, I can move forward with this upgrade (sans heatsink overhaul just yet). My C90s is getting *terribly* fickle, and I'm not sure how many more times I can stick the 8600m in the oven or under a heat shrink gun.

Thank you for your update on the subject, however! It is greatly appreciated.

 

How do I check it?
Changing card I would leave it as last option

 

thank you very much, thaipo for the vbios information. i was scared to have received a rebranded card of a lesser caliber. i will calm down and wait until i receive mxm's thermal pad and do the job their way. if i am not satisfied when everything is done according to their instructions, THEN i will return the card, and ask for one that hasn't been touched. i do have my dead gt130M laying around with a perfectly good mounting bracket. the only issue will be to remove it and mount it on the ati card.

to be honest, with the temperatures i've gotten so far with this "nerfed" card, maybe their idea was good after all. surely at full power, it would have burnt to a crisp. i do however wish they informed me of this sooner. it would have saved me much panic and frustration. i am angry at the soldered spacers, since there's nothing i can do to remove them, i can use a soldering iron, but i'm completely sure i'd break the card if i attempted to remove them. i'll just be patient and wait. if their thermal pad for the die is really as good as they claim, perhaps i can just mount it on my copper heat sink.

thanks for getting angry on my behalf, everyone, but mxm upgrade is our only stable provider. they made a mistake with the spacers and my delivery, but their intentions were good. with patience, I'm sure we'll come to suitable results and everyone will be happy.

and by the way, yes, they also told me the heat sink would need 4 new holes pierced, but so far, i fail to see where and why exactly. i mean, besides the obvious issues, the heat sinks ( both regular and copper handmade one) fits the card. they're just too high with the spacers...

oh and kings, i think you misunderstood me, the card does run at pcie 16x. i was just pointing it out to show that the lowered speeds weren't due to my bus not working at it's intended value. also kings, can you take a picture for me of your cooling system and a brief explanation? if i'm going to modify it, i want to do it like yours, since angel's mod is far too complex for me to build, and i found no one to do it for me. oh, while I'm at it, hint hint, if there's anyone able to do that angel mod for me, i'll gladly pay 150$ US of course, at this price, you'll have to get the mats to do it.

 

Mxm upgrade are aware of the thread and he will post here shortly. Good job you have lots of patience Atvaark

 

Allright.. Firstly, the SD card with pictures is corrupted so for the time being no 'proper' pics but I'll try to explain what we did and why we are doing it.

Firstly, the paste we have is every bit as good as we say. Check this review. We are shipping the successor of the TIM consultants compound mentioned there which is, according to them, 44% better. Whatever that means.

Secondly, we didn't just add the spacers for the fun off it. It's a rather expensive solution that also requires a fair bit of time. Reasons:

- Prevent shorts. Recycling a bracket is nice but rarely fits the original keepout on a card. Even though the vias on the 4670 are tented this is a better approach.
- The holes in the card are *not* wide enough to accommodate the bracket of the C90's 8600GT. We have tried enlarging the holes (something we did on the non-C90 8600GTs) but the card was dead as a bug after that procedure. Chalk one up for the Good Cause, taking one for the team and all that..
- Solution: toss away this:

and drill 4 new holes in the top heatspreader
- While a heatpad performs less than die-to-copper-with-paste our heatpads are pretty awesome (and cost a pretty penny more than sheet gold) part of that difference is offset by the fact that the inner plate (which we threw away) is 'only' aluminium and the top plate (interface to the heatpad) is the copper pad leading directly to the heatpipe.

I also know you guys would prefer me to ship copper shims iso pads. I won't. Few reasons for that:

- I can't start stocking different thicknesses and sizes. I already mix up too much as it is (as Atvaark noticed)
- A bad paste-copper-paste setup is many times worse than a good (and easy) pad solution.
- Even if you pad yourself on the chest for a job well done, chances are you are slowly killing your card. If the copper is not 100% level with heatsink and GPU, you will easily cover that by bending everything in place with the screws. This may not even be visible to the naked eye but you're putting pressure on the GPU BGA balls. That, and cycling the temperature, will kill your card. If it dies in 12 months and a day I don't care. If it does after 11 months, 3 weeks and 6 days I'm fuxzzorred.

If I missed something, let me know.

 

Hello again, I see I'm not alone with my problem. I understand mostly everything what I should do but..... how should I tread this part, because it won't fit anymore, since the holes in the card are smaller then the screw holes of the plate. Should I cut them away?

 

NOO don't use the plate!! Not only are the holes too small but you will also crush important transistors underneath the plate as the 4670 is designed for a different plate with a slightly different layout. Put the plate back on your 8600M GT and put that away as a spare (I have a spare GPU, PSU, ODD, fans) don't know when spares might come in handy. Anyways read carefully:

I used 3cm long narrow threaded screws, cut them down to about 1cm (maybe a bit less) put washers on the screws. Then I fed them through the holes from the underside of the card used hot woodglue to hold them in place and then once the card was installed I slotted the heatsink on top and used 4 threaded bolts specifically made to fit the scews (so really tiny) to tighten the heatsink down onto the card.

This is done to a 100% unmodified 4670 512mb GDDR3 mxm II 2.1 card and temps even when very OCed don;t even reach 60C. My technique needs little technical expertise and allows one to re-use either the C90P or C90S GPU heatsinks unmodded. It seems to me Ice-Tea had found the same problem but has taken a very complicated approach. Using the woodglue gun was my salvation as until then I couldn't figure out how to hold the screws in place before bolting the heatsink down. Easy to apply and easy to remove brilliant stuff.

BTW I still have a small sealable bag with loads of screws left. Stainless stell 3cm threaded screws that fit the holes perfectly along with washers and bolts. So if anybody need some I will see what I can do. I bought mine from Maplins in the UK.

 

Pictures recovered. I'll post the article here shortly.

 

Not complete yet but in terms of technical stuff good enough for this thread

Linky.

 

i was wondering...instead of a switch, would a dial work too? so we can control the fan speed to a happy medium instead?

all this is very interesting. but your link to reflash the default vbios clocks is broken.

 

Hey, it's Sunday. I'm a bit slow The RBE page won't be up before tonight.

You could use a dial but I don't see the point. For desktop/browsing/movie/whatever the 'default' speed is just fine. For gaming only one setting does the trick: Warp 9. And the knob would probably protrude too much.

 

That's a really nice guide, I really like the switch, probably have to do the same with my notebook.

 

Good gude and nice switch. I shall post pics up of my mod hopefully tomorrow or tuesday as I will be taking my fan module apart to upgrade the fans anyways. I think Atvaark was interested in seeing my mod so hopefully it will be of interest to him to see both mods mine and ice-teas and then perhaps he can work out a compromise if he wants full independent control of the fans like I have.

BTW ice tea at default settings on the switch are the fans using the bios settings or are they simply being fed a certain amount of voltage eg 5V from battery?
Edit: Very interesting where you took 12V from. A much more convenient and easy place to take 12V from than the battery compartment. I wonder if the C90P motherboard has the same chip in the same place..

 

Hey,

Using bios settings, not 5V.

With respect to the position: in the picture you can see one of the corners of the MXM card and I believe one of the fan connectors. In one of the following pictures, where I show the isolated part on the mobo, you have an overview.

I'd expect a comparable part to be present on your MoBo. This is basically the component that 'takes' 12V and converts it lower for the fans, so one of the legs is the 12V input.

By the way, if your mobo is comparable and they are using the same fans then 5V is probably below the design voltage of the fans.

Ice-Tea

 

I see what you mean. The designe spec is 7V -13.8V for the fans hey are exactly the same. The only difference between the C90S and C90P is the board P35 vs 945G also the cooling has been altered so that the northbridge is passively cooled giving the GPU heatsink the entire bay (twice the size).

Anyways I use a 2 fan speed controller designed originally for a pci slot on a desktop to regulate my voltage between 5-12V. perhaps the fans take a minimum of 7V rather than 5V however I have had no problems. The fan controller does emit a high pitched whine but I have got used to it after several months lol

 

King of Interns could you upload a photo of your notebook (I want to see how you fit the controller inside)?

 

Sure I will sometime over next day or two. However the controller isn't inside. I have drilled a hole in the side of the fan bay (it protrudes out back on C90) and fed the wires with connector for the fan controller through that (Wires are of course wrapped in that black sticky electrical tape stuff for neatness). I have modded the controller so that the ends of the bracket are cut off. Anyways to stop fans I simply unplug the controller. It isn't the most elegand solution but it certainly isn't at all ugly and very practical. If the controller fails for any reason or if the plug breaks on the controller I have a couple of spares already. Besides costs about 5 pounds to get a new one as they are stil for sale on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Speed-Control...ponents_Fans_Heatsinks_SR&hash=item3a5f61d254

 

Just wondering, what 3d06 score did you have on stock clocks?

 

It is in my sig : 7670 points at stock. If you take the quad out of the equation means it would get about 7-7200 with a fast core 2 duo. Shows how much GDDR2 strangles the performance of this card.

In fact someone with the acer 5920g and same card with 2.53ghz core 2 scored 7000 points at stock.

 

Heh. Yeah. Might wanna read that first

That's pretty darn sweet!

 

I never spected a great enhacement from the 9600m GT DDR3 to 4670 HD DDR2. Keeping in mind the great OC the 9600 allow. I'm still waiting a more in detail 4670 review. With all my respect, I don't think the 4670 DDR2 worth it's price. By the way I spected more than 5000 3dm06 at stock...

I don't mind why there are no DDR3 version.
Cheers

 

Well the 4670 GDDR2 I would expect should reach 6500 3kmark06 with an OC perhaps more. Not close to the 7100 that 9800xpv has however the 4670 is a newer card with more shaders it will probably perform better in newer and shader heavy games that the 9600M GT even in GDDR2 guise.

 

Perhaps you are right, it would be logic. But in perform therms we are talking perhaps y an AVG of a 2~4 FPS. For me there's no point to spend that much, and that work (MXM-Store mod) for make it work. BTW I think my modded c90p copper heatsink would keep the card cool...who knows.
But anyway we should wait for a deep review and some in game test.

King we all would like to know more abaut your fan mod please!!

Cheers.

 

Yeah,well, the bench was not very clean. Had HW32 running in the background and I didn't close other memory and CPU gobblers...

@phoenon: I do not suggest to 9600 or 9650 owners to switch to the 4670. As you pointed out: not worth the money.

 

Lol alright alright. Been getting myself sorted out this morning have limited time off so work. Anyways with any luck I will be able to delve into the bowels of my lappy this afternoon and of course I shall take some pictures and try to write up some kind of guide that makes sense. Mind you I personally didn't do any soldering or wiring that was someone with a bit more soldering and electrical skills

 

Great and happy news everyone! I have just finished working on my revamped fan mod/upgrade with my electronics engineer contact Here are the results. Enjoy!


As you can see the the wire protruding from the fan module is not much of an eyesore and is in fact quite elegant lol while the controller is very easy to disconnect


It is an absolute success. The 11,000 rpm delta fans work perfectly and in fact are quieter and more refined than the 9,500rpm fans at idle while at full speed they certainly move a noticable higher amount of air.

We also managed to change the 12V source to the same that Ice-Tea used which is perfect(big credit to ice-tea!). Now the fans only come on when the computer is switched on so I no longer need to have the battery plugged in 24/7 and I hope you all agree it makes it alot tidier!

In the pictures you can see the yellow wire that is hardwired for 12V(more accurately 12.5V) to the small black chip. While the short black wire that has been first soldered and then glued to the top of the power connector is the earth.

With a bit of care access is still very easy via the ACE door to get to the components. I shall be doing so soon enough when I get a QX9650!

In order to do this mod you will need the following:

1.) 2 speed pci fan controller : Speed Controller 2 Fan PCI Bracket 3 Pin Cooling on eBay (end time 07-Nov-10 16:24:11 GMT)

2.) 4 x 11,000rpm delta AFB0412SHB fans

3.) Soldering iron, magnetic screwdriver, heatgun, black insulating tape and or heatshrink insulators for the wires and steady fingers

Here is a screenshot of my idle temps with the mod complete!

The text on screen shown here is very small. Basically the CPU is idling at about 40C and the GPU around 37C (Note this is with the fans idling too)
Pretty much knocked a good 3C of both GPU and CPU idle temps with the new fans at idle!

CPU temperatures after 10 mins of good old Prime 95. Q9650 at 3ghz and 1.0375V. Fans spinning at 11,000rpm!

 

Heh... I wondered about the 11k Delta fans when I looked up the datsheet

 

Doing a stress now in Prime 95 on the quad and 5 mins in it is at 57C!! Quite unbelievable another 5 mins and a screenshot will be made