Sink it Baby!

Sink it Baby!

Well, what can you do with a grey afternoon when all the exams are over. Invite a mate over and get sinking!

SVM and I both have Geforce DDRs and Celerons. Overclocking these cards with our CPUs gives practically no performance increase in Quake III (pretty much all we ever play). We did this for sheer blagging rights. You should not overclock you card unless you can afford to purchase a new one when you blow it up.

Well, we had a rumage around and found a few CPU heatsinks. The only problem was we couldn't find the camera. *doh!*. We sized up the 'sinks against the cards and selected which ones we wanted. I chose two green CPU heatsinks with rather funky overhangs, and SVM went for some pro looking black/purple ones with straight fins. He got the last heatsink for his core as well ... I'm going to have to do mine another day.

First up we had to hack the 'sinks in half. A fine bladed hacksaw was retrieved from his house and a BnD Workmate from mine. Clamping the 'sinks down tightly we just hacked away lining it up by eye. Well, this was supposed to be fun, not boring and professional :) The hacksaw went through fairly cleanly, although SVM did insist on filing his edges down a bit. Fussy git.

To actually attach the 'sinks, we plumped for a thin dollop of paste, and a drop of araldite epoxy in each corner. The idea was that the paste was as thick as the glue. To be honest, I dont think we used enough paste (and I ran out as it was) but there is some, and it is better than nothing. I made sure there was plently on SVM's core 'sink. The last thing we wanted was for a core to cook, a la the Prophet Memory Chips. To make sure the 'sinks where down tight, we had to apply even pressure. A little lateral thinking solved this problem :)

Not heard about those? The Hercules Prophet II comes with ram heatsinks. Certainly the first batch I saw had been badly attatched. There was an air gap under the heatsink which trapped heat and caused the cards to crash. I know of at least one such card, and sure enough it crashed left right and centre, but usually under heavy load. I haven't had problems like that with our cards at stock 300. Looks like we did a better job than Hercules :)

So was all the effort worth it? Well, you have a look and tell us.

This is my 'sunk CL Geforce DDR, with a CL Geforce2 GTS in the background and an old ATi lying down and dying :)

This is SVM's Leadtek Geforce DDR revisionB, minus wierd ass gold heatsink, but plus some natty black ones. Note a tin of the blackstuff. When you are supergluing things to a £150 card, you need a lot of caffeine in you :)