NV5 Silencer Revision 3 Installed on a 7900GT

P

pandora's box

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 7, 2004
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I decided to install an NV5 Silencer Revision 3 on my 7900GT.
Stock Cooler Removed, Core and memory cleaning with isopropyl alcohol.
barecard0el.jpg



G71 core, nice and shiny.
g711dn.jpg



Silencer Installed, Notice the problem yet?
silencerinstalled2tc.jpg


Yeap, the silencer is too long.
toolong1kf.jpg



Had to modify my case a little...
modifiedcase7fp.jpg

installedexterior9by.jpg





Temps Idle dropped from 45C to 38C. Load temps dropped from 67C to 50C while running RTHDRIBL for 5 minutes...

rthdribl7qz.jpg


Thats with the core at 560mhz and the memory at 1800mhz.

As far as noise goes, I cant hear my computer at all anymore. The silencer is well, silent!

Im about to go test a modified 7900GT bios that has 1.4volts applied to the core and see how I do now I have aftermarket cooling. Ive tried the bios with stock cooling and I got to 600mhz core, but I had tiny artifacts in 3dmark03.
 
Heh... why didn't you hack a little off the end of the silencer instead of the case? Either way I guess it makes no difference; I guess your method makes sure ALL the hot air goes out of the case, haha.
 
Wow!! Thats a nice decrease in temps man. Looks like the case cutting was well worth it.
:p
 
god damnit. stupid windows is hosed. running 3dmark03 at stock settings = 14,000. bs. ugh, gonna be a while before i can test overclocking
 
hmm interesting. the modded bios also added a throttle clock and a lower 2d clock (275mhz). removing the throttle clock and pushing the 2d clock to same as 3d has restored 3dmark03 scores to the 19k range. currently running 3dmark03 at 585mhz (with a 20 delta in the bios so 605mhz effective) and 1800mhz mem.
 
well i decided to test 3dmark05 as 03 was giving weird results.

600mhz core, 1800mhz mem is 100% stable with 1.4 volts on the core. scored just over 10,000 in 05 at that setting. rthdribl is reporting 57c at those clocks so not bad at all.

going to flash back to 1.2volts now. only wanted to see what the card was capable of at 1.4volts. no intention of running it at that voltage for too long. anyone remember the 6800gt at 1.4volts? dead card after a few months, not worth it imo.
 
Just to review:

stock heatsink stock volts:

44C idle, 64C Load

stock heatsink 1.4volts:

50C idle, 76C Load

NV Silencer 5 stock volts:

38C idle, 50C Load

NV Silencer 5 1.4 volts:

44C Idle, 57C Load.

at stock volts it didnt help my overclock at all. however at 1.4 volts i was able to overclock the card from my previous max of 570 to 600. (note that the 570 overclock had no delta in the bios and the 600 clock had a 20mhz delta so in effect max overclock increased to 620mhz). My memory overclock didnt change at all, max of 1.8ghz.
 
This will help a lot of ppl. Thanks!!!

I don't mind a lil plastic hanging out! Better ALL of the hotness gets out!
 
TheGamerZ said:
Heh... why didn't you hack a little off the end of the silencer instead of the case? Either way I guess it makes no difference; I guess your method makes sure ALL the hot air goes out of the case, haha.
Click to expand...

Wondering this myself.
 
mike_j_johnson said:
Did you use the thermal pads for the memory and the GPU or thermal paste?
Click to expand...


used the thermal pads for the memory and the paste came pre-applied.
 
I am also very curious why you didn't modify the Silencer.

I am waffling on pulling the trigger to step-up my 500mhz 7800GT with the Silencer to a 7900GT at no charge...

I won't buy a new Silencer to do it, but I won't hack up my Antec P180 either.

I don't mind hacking up a $30 Silencer, but an expensive case?

Not judging your decision. Maybe it is a $19 case. But do you think cutting the Silencer would work?

If so I'll step-up my card and give it a shot.

Thanks
 
case is a very cheap case, so i wasnt too concerned about it. i dont have any tools to cut the end of the silencer and it looks like its fairly strong plastic, a dremel should do the trick though.
 
i have read that even if a hard mod or BIOS mod tries to actually apply over 1.29v to the core that there is an overvoltage protection that kicks in and causes a black screen (no video output)

can you confirm with a multimeter that the core is actually getting 1.4v when the modded BIOS is applied?
 
Thanks :)

To be truthful it is masking tape used by painters:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/2blmataca.html

The beauty of this stuff? Goes on EZ. Peels off EZ. No residue.

Soft, pliable. It's like sticky cotton.

You just put it where you want to block air holes, dampen vibration, create air-channels, tape down loose wires...

I dress my case with it and if I make a change, it just lifts right off. Put it back down when done.
 
trust me.. the tape will leave a residue if left on too long. and eventually the glue dries and hardens up and turns into a powdery form.
 
Ordered a nv5 rev 3 silencer for my 7900gt I am getting high temps that hit the mid 70's full load and idles at 48. I will be cutting the silencer and doing the volt mod for 1.4volts as well.
 
ZeroH said:
trust me.. the tape will leave a residue if left on too long. and eventually the glue dries and hardens up and turns into a powdery form.
Click to expand...

Cool! Why sniff glue when you can snort it?
 
are there any new coolers for these 7900's coming out or should i get a silencer?
 
I just tried to mount my silencer5 rev 3 on my 7900 gt and the plug gets in the way. Did you have to mod this in anyway? I think you have to remove part of the plug's "housing" but i dont wanna break anything. What did you do?
 
what you do is plug the fan header in before seating the silencer and screwing it down.

Or in your case (as was mine), unscrew the silencer, lift it off the card a bit, plug the fan header in, and then reseat it.
 
Nice work!! hehe.. the new cores are so tiny. :) good things come in small packages sometimes. ;)
 
What kind of tools would I need to cut the cooler down to size? I'm not really big on using power tools. Could I just saw the end off?
 
Hacksaw.

Fine tooth.

http://www.runslinux.net/~matt/tonus/new/

Um.. wrap the cutting zone with masking tape to reduce the chance for stress fractures.

Use a box cutter to score your cut line. A few good firm swipes and you'll have a nice groove to follow with the hack saw.

Running 600/875 on stock voltage, temps are below 60 stressed. I could probably get 630 from teh core but I'll use it like this for a while. Then bump it to 630. It was fine at 630 last week but just for a short while before my system was acting weird. Don't know if that was the cause, so I have it at 600 and play games all day no artifacts.

Maybe I'll do the 1.4v mod later.
 
If anyone cares still, some more pics of one cut and installed, just did it today :)

PIC 1
PIC 2
PIC 3

If you've got a dremel, it takes all of about 45 seconds to make the cut.

Waiting on my replacement memory to get here, so I won't be able to test temps with the silencer installed until the weekend. :( But it sure looks pretty :p

On a side note... It seems funny to me using these "thermal pads" that are there to cover and adhere to the memory... do those things really conduct heat that well? My sister's NV Silencer 3 (for an fx5900xt) had direct contact between the base of the heatsink and the memory chips, with the help of a thin layer of AS5. Those pads don't look that effective :-/

Grimx, those are some nice numbers for sure... just curious, what card do you have? (what was your stock speed in other words?)

And what did you use to overclock? The only nvidia OCing I've ever done was with coolbits.
 
walther you make me wish I had a dremmel. I guess if I had spent the money on the tool I would have finally used it.

That hacksaw I bought back in 91' finally earned its keep. I'm not really a tool guy but 45 secs would have been fun :)

I got the OC SC version .... evga... comes at 550/1780 or the like... probably a good chip(set).

It has behaved so well for the last few days I'm planning to visit Radio Shack to drop another $15 and see what happens at 1.4 volts.

However Obvliion, which started out for the first week buggy and with artifacts, is now behaving VERY well. Friggin butter. Fast. Clean. something "broke in" and now I'm

a) happy
b) wondering why I'd screw with this more more FPS when they arent' needed.

But at least the card seems so friggin solid that it may be worth a try. I think I'll do it over some tape as someone here suggested, so I can lift the tape if things get weird.

I like restore points. With hardware mods as well.

Except with this NV silencer. Best $30 I ever cut in half.
 
oh to oc i've used them all except power strip... now i'm on, and appreciating most, the NVtweak-enabled-by-coolbits.

I like using the NV control panel to manage things. Seems natural to me. I'll probably do the 1.4 mod, then play with power strip.

Once I know which software works best, I'll then do a system restore and OC using my favorite tweak app. Right now that would be coolbits (nvtweak)
 
Took ram out of sister's machine today just to test it with real quick, temps are nice :)

Idles at 36-37c and the highest it ever saw total was 48c, that was running, all immediately back to back, 3dmark01, 3dmark05, 3dmark06, and running the 3dmark06 demo twice through. :p

The downside is, I tried OCing it a bit, ran it at 550/1550, the gpu can only go up to 552 :(
 
I bumped it to 1.4 volts.

Heavy use today was at 650/1810. Just finished 3dmark06 and an hour of Oblivion. I suspect I could get a lot more out of it. Just taking it 10 mhz every day or two. Rushing these things is never a good idea.

(coolbits test passes at 698 on the core, fails at 699)

That doesn't mean I will run it at 699 on the core. I will bump it up each night before an hour of Oblivion.

Also next week it might test/work at 710. Might fail at 670. It just takes time to see what feels comfortable.

Temps might bother the unrealistic. 66-73 in Oblivion's most brutal situations. Look... the card throttles at 130. The temp indicated shows two yellow bars, not red. These chips can run in the 80's 90's no problem.

If I baby this thing like a freakin daisy it will never fully bloom before it's obsolete and selling for $79 in second hand bin.

I need 2 years out of it. For a $350 card, I'm gonna run the thing in the warm zone not the cold zone. I'll take 2 great years instead of 2 good ones. At these temps the life of the card cuts from 10 years to 7.4.
 
grimx said:
I bumped it to 1.4 volts.

Heavy use today was at 650/1810. Just finished 3dmark06 and an hour of Oblivion. I suspect I could get a lot more out of it. Just taking it 10 mhz every day or two. Rushing these things is never a good idea.

(coolbits test passes at 698 on the core, fails at 699)

That doesn't mean I will run it at 699 on the core. I will bump it up each night before an hour of Oblivion.

Also next week it might test/work at 710. Might fail at 670. It just takes time to see what feels comfortable.

Temps might bother the unrealistic. 66-73 in Oblivion's most brutal situations. Look... the card throttles at 130. The temp indicated shows two yellow bars, not red. These chips can run in the 80's 90's no problem.

If I baby this thing like a freakin daisy it will never fully bloom before it's obsolete and selling for $79 in second hand bin.

I need 2 years out of it. For a $350 card, I'm gonna run the thing in the warm zone not the cold zone. I'll take 2 great years instead of 2 good ones. At these temps the life of the card cuts from 10 years to 7.4.
Click to expand...


oh bullcrap :D

the card will run what it runs today, tomorrow, or yesterday, crank it up to what you want, if it fails, lower until it doesn't, go straight for the max and see what it ends up being, then back off to your everyday comfot level, i've been doing this stuff for years, all of this "easing your way up" approach to overclocking is non-sense except when you are talking about voltage, but not clockspeeds, either it will run or it wont, it's not like artifacting will harm it, if it starts to artifact, stop whatever you are doing, lower clocks, try again, rinse, repeat ;)

like my Opty 165, it never saw a 200Mhz HTT except for the initial boot into BIOS where i promptly went for 250Mhz, on to 300Mhz.....

and give that sucker at least 1.5v, that seems to be the sweet spot for hitting 700+ Mhz
 
I like your style. I was going easy on the temp-weenies.

/me cranks the motherfucker.
 
grimx said:
I like your style. I was going easy on the temp-weenies.

/me cranks the motherfucker.
Click to expand...

glad you can appreciate it and didn't take offense, as seems to happen alot these days......good luck, keep us posted, my 7900GT CO SC should be here in a few weeks hopefully, and i am going to do the 1.5v mod and strip that mofo and properly dress it with my V1 Ultra cooler before it ever gets plugged in
 
Trust me computer geeks bug the hell out of me and I love giving them a hard time. I deserve one myself.

I just set the core to 698 and it runs Oblivion just fine, and temps stayed a bit lower even.

I was just worried the temps would skyrocket but I guess as you say there is plenty of protection against that.

Seems votage ups temps but under load, the range stays the same. I'm guessing if I underclocked the core I would see the same temp range underload with the same voltage.

Thanks for the push.

Will dick with the ram later.
 
grimx said:
Trust me computer geeks bug the hell out of me and I love giving them a hard time. I deserve one myself.

I just set the core to 698 and it runs Oblivion just fine, and temps stayed a bit lower even.

I was just worried the temps would skyrocket but I guess as you say there is plenty of protection against that.

Seems votage ups temps but under load, the range stays the same. I'm guessing if I underclocked the core I would see the same temp range underload with the same voltage.

Thanks for the push.

Will dick with the ram later.
Click to expand...

that's because the 7 series cards dont throttle back the clock speed and voltage like the 6600GT did for example, whatever you set the voltage to is where it stays

these new 90nm GPU's run incredibly cool, what temp are you maxing out at?
 
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