Ghetto Water Mod: Taming Crossfire R290s

[Silverforce11]

My work rig has been mining 24/7 for nearly a month now, and its extremely noisy with the reference cooling. It's woefully inadequate and requires 70-80% fan speed in crossfire/closed case to keep them from throttling. For games they are fine at 55% fan speed but mining loads them a lot more as people would know by now.

There's only a few options to cool them well:
1. Full waterblock/loop setup. Would cost me around $600 all up.
2. Aftermarket open air coolers, ie. Artic Cooling, Gelid etc. These are fine for single cards, but no go for crossfire.
3. Ghetto modding with AIO coolers. Try to get the benefits of water cooling for cheap. I managed to buy a few new Thermaltake Pro/Extreme 2 for $40 each during a sale recently.

I wanted to get two NZXT G10 mounts, but they are all out of stock, with the closest Australian shipping in Feb 2014. Tired of waiting, I ebay some heatsinks, in particular: GELID enhancement kits, http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=13 rev2. ~$6 each kit. Note that the heatsink screw holes do not align, as such I used zip ties to secure them and apply downward pressure.

The final results?

Naked R290 with ghetto mod

VRM Heatsink 1

VRM Heatsink 2: Zip ties once secure, is solid, the heatsink won't budge.

How to cool the VRM heatsink? Ghetto fan mod with zip ties!

80mm fan I had on hand with LED, not really good since its low 16 CFM is terrible.

Crossfire R290s, with 120mm fan on bottom card. It's a Nanoxia DS, much better, over all the tests, the VRM was ~6-8C cooler from using the 120mm compared to the 80mm fan (tested in single and CF config).

Gaming/Benchmark temps?

Reference card would hit 94C core and around 70C VRM temps in gaming/valley.

Ghetto modded core didn't get above 48C! VRM temps?

Valley Loops, closed case.

CF stock R290s, stock CPU

How about some real punishing load? Mining @ 826 kHa/s:
Single R290 Temp core mining (open case)

Single R290 Temp VRM mining (open case)

Not too bad, note that this is reading the temps from the 80mm fan card.

Final run, overnight mining, closed case with side panel intake, core reached 55/58C:

Noise level? Just a gentle fan hum from the thermaltake fans, its the loudest component in the rig, much less noisy than even "quiet mode" 40% fan speed on the R290.

All up, CPU and both GPU watercooled, total price ~$160.

 

[chimaxi83]

Wow, that's excellent performance for the price of that mod! Can't beat it :thumbsup:

 

[blastingcap]

Cool setup, but inflated prices on R9 radeons (and then adding another $160 for water cooling that voids warranty on most cards) and Crossfire/SLI only supporting some games but not others = I'm gonna wait till 20nm GPUs come out next year for better bang for the buck, all on one single GPU, while keeping warranty and avoiding Crossfire/SLI issues.

But watercooling them seems to be the way to go if you must have this setup now, at any price and don't mind the warranty voiding. Thanks for photos.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I thought they'd be faster? 95.5 FPS is slower than my 7950 CF OC run.

While you have them not mining you should see what you can do about that

 

[Silverforce11]

I thought they'd be faster? 95.5 FPS is slower than my 7950 CF OC run.

While you have them not mining you should see what you can do about that

Can't find a reference figure for it, Valley 1080p, 8x MSAA Ultra. Any site with a nice set of numbers for different cards?

 

[Silverforce11]

But watercooling them seems to be the way to go if you must have this setup now, at any price and don't mind the warranty voiding. Thanks for photos.

I have asked the retailers here, changing TIM/cooler doesn't void warranty for: Sapphire, Gigabyte, XFX, Powercolor, MSI. Asus is the only iffy one.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317696

 

[Grooveriding]

$160 is a good deal for a water setup. A full loop setup and you'd get 1.3 waterblocks for that price

 

[blastingcap]

I have asked the retailers here, changing TIM/cooler doesn't void warranty for: Sapphire, Gigabyte, XFX, Powercolor, MSI. Asus is the only iffy one.

That's awesome for Australia. I wish USA had similar policy but AFAIK only XFX explicitly lets you change TIM/cooler, MSI reportedly does if you ask them. But the rest I don't think let you do it in USA. For instance, Sapphire says warranty void if you change anything in USA: http://www.overclock.net/t/1444881/sapphire-after-market-coolers-and-warranty Gigabyte too, apparently: http://forum.ncix.com/archive/index.php/t-2615060.html and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-thermal-paste-efficiency,3678.html

Similarly, Powercolor says no warranty if you modify the card: http://www.powercolor.com/us/support_warranty.asp

"Removal and/or damaging of the S/N or P/N sticker(s) on any PowerColor products will VOID all warranties associated with that product."

and

"PowerColor products sent in for RMA MUST be free of any improper use, including but not limited to physical damage from dropping, improper installation, or modification of any kind (this includes installing aftermarket cooling solutions). The warranty WILL BE VOID if the product has been damaged or altered."

Not sure about ASUS, though they have horrible reputations for video card warranty service anyway judging by the negative comments in the other thread. For what it's worth I had a good ASUS RMA laptop experience but some say that ASUS's laptops warranties are treated better than video card warranties. I've never had to RMA an ASUS mobo but know that they have a pretty strict policy on mobos, where it has to be perfect condition, or they will claim you bent something or whatever.

 

[Silverforce11]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2317696

Temp, Core: 48C (LOL!) and VRM1 60C.

Does Valley care about CPU clocks? I left it on stock due to mining.

Edit: yes it does, just looked at GPUZ load tracking, it wasn't pegged 99% on a lot of scenes..

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Yes, yes it does

 

[f1sherman]

That's awesome for Australia. I wish USA had similar policy but AFAIK only XFX explicitly lets you change TIM/cooler, MSI reportedly does if you ask them.

Weee I knew I was right for getting XFX.

 

[Smartazz]

Are you worried about memory temperatures?

 

[Elfear]

Love ghetto mods.

Impressive temps on the VRMs since they are normally so hard to cool. Thanks for posting!

 

[moonbogg]

Nice. Looks like fun, and it works!

 

[Silverforce11]

Are you worried about memory temperatures?

Heck no, GDDR5 ramsink has always been a gimmick in recent times. They run extremely cool by default, and the reference design plate (due to being heated by the gpu/vrms) actually cause them to run hotter than naked with cool airflow! I've owned several open air design cards without vram heatsinks, just airflow and they all OC nicely on the vram. For reference, I ran these R290s with 250mhz vram OC and its mining stable overnight.

Love ghetto mods.

Impressive temps on the VRMs since they are normally so hard to cool. Thanks for posting!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N9dZhEC4as&feature=*********

This guy got very similar VRM temp results with the NZXT G10 mod, a VRM heatsink with GOOD contact pressure and a fan blowing cool air on it does the trick.

Nice. Looks like fun, and it works!

Works too dang well, mining 24/7 and if I move a few meters from the rig, cannot hear it at all. This is the future for all my GPU cooling needs. Don't even have to buy new components, once done, cut zip ties and everything ready for re-use!

 

[MrK6]

Excellent work and results!

 

[IEC]

I will second this mod. Running pretty much the same setup on my Radeon 290X/290s. VRM sinks only, no RAM sinks. Far superior to stock cooler and very quiet.

 

[DooKey]

I will second this mod. Running pretty much the same setup on my Radeon 290X/290s. VRM sinks only, no RAM sinks. Far superior to stock cooler and very quiet.

Pics!!

 

[ICDP]

I am using an R9 290 flashed to a 290x with a Arctic Hybrid and get very similar results.

 

[Silverforce11]

I just realized the Thermaltake Extreme 240mm needs its USB cable plugged in, and to download the fan control software to actually enable 1900 RPM mode (same as the 120mm Pro), all this time it was running in "Silent Mode" at 1100 RPM...

Temps now -5C on the core.

 

[Draygonn]

Nice mod. Looks to be quite useful for keeping the WC costs low.

 

[faseman]

Nice thread.

Did you grab the coolers second hand? Or was it just a sale? Just looking for some tips on finding some for cheap.

 

[Smartazz]

http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=13
Which VRM cooler? There's two of the revision 2s.

 

[Silverforce11]

http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=13
Which VRM cooler? There's two of the revision 2s.

rev1 works better due to the holes aligning near perfect, but i could only get rev2 on ebay, which required a zip tie to act as an anchor for another zip tie to go through the PCB holes.

I am probably gonna end up getting 4 more R290s and doing water mods to them all to mine coins soon. I managed to get a few more thermaltake 2 pro AIO NEW for $38 each its ridiculous.