--Do the ramsinks fit fine with the Zalman Heatsink--

The camera never lies, check Nicks piccies, although he may have modded a few of the ramsinks most of them look well clear of everything :)

--Does it run cooler than a stock heatsink/fan combo without active cooling?--

Very much so. The stock passive setup wont run much cooler than normal but obviously it was designed with silence in mind.

--I already have a Zalman Bracket & 92mm fan somewhere and was thinking of running that across it--

In effect thats what Im doing although with an 80mm smartfan and it seems to have a similar effect to mounting a fan directly onto the Z80 as Nick has done, depends how much room you have in the PCI slots below the card I guess.

--Do you have any installation tips--

Just check your mobo capacitors etc when slotting in the 9700 with the Z80 on it, it just touches one on my A7V. I used Arctic Silver 3 on the heatpipe etc rather than the stuff Zalman supplied. I also had to modify the shim on my 9700 to make good contact with the Z80 but 'apparently' the new ones have a raised area which removes the need for this. Another tip is to check the small screws on the Z80 for tightness after a couple of days, they may loosen off a bit as mine did.



edited to say GL btw ;)







[Edited by Jye - 4/16/2003 7:00:20 PM]

Thanks Jye.
As a short term mod I was thinking of tweaking the standard heatsink & fan on the card as I understand that it uses a Yellow TIM pad around the core & removing this and using some proper compound gets a better contact. Have you tried this Jye or maybe Nick has?

Darren

Just a quick answer, as I am busy atm, but look at Picture 3. The bottom right 2 sinks clearly show that they have been dremeled.

Cheers,

Nick :)

what should i be gettin with xp 1800 and ti4200 80gb wd HD and 1024 ram. mine seems a bit low at 1428

cheers

big sinky

Daz, yes this was my first change to the card, you will either have to put quite a bit of Arctic Silver or similar between the GPU core and heatsink in order to make up for the differnce in thickness between the pad and thermal paste or remove the shim very carefully with a razor blade or similar. On CPU's you would normally use a very thin layer of thermal paste for maximum heat transfer but this isnt an option with the Radeon I'm afraid.

Taking off the shim isnt something for the faint hearted though especially as you might crush the GPU core, personally I would buy the latest Z80 which has a raised area and makes contact with the die without the need for removing the shim.

Another thing Daz, you could always use a very thin piece of copper shim between the GPU core and the heatsink. It would have to be the exact height of the thermal pad though. And one more thing, the standard fan/heatsink is a right pain to get off without crushing the plastic lugs holding it on or scraping the surface of the card. I would say you could never RMA it without someone knowing it had been tampered with, so If I were you I'd either leave it for now or go the whole hog and get a Z80.

If thats 2003 you have used Bigsinky I'd say its about right. 2003 gives low benchmarks with Nvidia cards for some reason. Nvidia were well peed off about this and refuse to support it as a benchmark. Use 2001 with the patch, its more relevent for most machines anyhow.

[Edited by Jye - 17/04/2003 11:04:45]

there are some great cd's in the background of those photo's :D:D

Now that you mention it, 'New Woman', roflmao :D

Im sure Nick has a good excuse ;)

That is the better half's desk, as mine was covered in about a foot's worth of parts.

What did you do to your Radeon before you fitted the Zalman heatpipe Nick?
I am sure I read on here that you removed the yellow stuff.

Darren

Well yeah, the putty was cleaned off fully, the outer core edges of the main heat block dremeled out even more coz I wanted it that way:) lapped to super fine finish as it wasn't perfectly flat, lapped the top of the block mildly for the hell of it and that wasn't flat either, not that it mattered as they don't tend to make full contact. That's about it I think.

Think I will stick with the Zalmanhttp://216.40.249.192/s/contrib/sarge/Wink_anim.gif

What grade of paste do you use for lapping Nick? Have you tried jewlers rouge?

Never got around to hunting that stuff down, but know of the alternatives. I use 400,800,1200,1500 and 2000 grade wet and dry, loads of water, a glass table and patience. Different grades depend on what I want to achieve. Having a glass table and Halfords just down the road swung it for me.

Cheers,

Nick :)

Cem,

Now you've got a whizzy fast PC, any chance of updating blowdog.com - I miss reading new stuff whilst I'm supposed to be working :)

Simon.