My Asus DC II GTX 680 mini review and voltage mod

[chimaxi83]

Thanks for the responses guys!

Yes it does look like bandwidth is an issue here. I stilll get improvements the higher I go, but around 1400MHz, more core speed returns a negligible increase. VRAM is topping out right around 6900-7000MHz before I get crashes or errors.

I want to play with the memory a little more, so I'm going to increase volts for that as well. Not sure what PLL will get me (AUX voltage in Afterburner, on enabled cards), but I'm going to give that a bump too. Might not happen for a couple days, but I'll update as soon as I have something :thumbup:

 

[Don Karnage]

Has a volt mod been found to give the memory more voltage?

 

[Don Karnage]

Chi what kind of airflow do you have running over the card? Ever consider zip tying a pair of high cfm fans an inch from the PCB for better ram cooling?

 

[chimaxi83]

The card has mod points for GPU, VRAM, and PLL. They're just as easy, however different value resistors will have to be used.

Yea I thought about it, but for now I'm just running one of those cyclone type house fans into the side of the case lol.

 

[Kenmitch]

Nice

If it was me I'd just pop for a full water block tho.

 

[Don Karnage]

Nice

If it was me I'd just pop for a full water block tho.

Asus uses a custom PCB. Dont believe any blocks are available for it yet

 

[chimaxi83]

Yea they're not out yet, I'm going for one though. All I've seen so far is EK announcing that they should be out first week of June.

VRMs hit 90C very quickly without this fan blowing into the case unfortunately lol. Even at unmodded voltage, 80-85C comes pretty fast. Thing is I'm not sure if the actual DC II cooler fans blowing onto the card help VRAM/VRM cooling much, I would assume they do. I wasn't looking for air testing though

 

[SHAQ]

How high did it go before the mod? I get around 1280 on both my cards at stock so 1440 at 1.35v doesn't seem worth it.

 

[Don Karnage]

How high did it go before the mod? I get around 1280 on both my cards at stock so 1440 at 1.35v doesn't seem worth it.

Imo his vrm temps are holding him back from 1500 core. Adding a fan blowing across his card will do wonders.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Imo his vrm temps are holding him back from 1500 core. Adding a fan blowing across his card will do wonders.

Except for the fact he'll gain almost nothing going to 1500mhz since the card is bottlenecked by the memory.

 

[Kenmitch]

Asus uses a custom PCB. Dont believe any blocks are available for it yet

Hmm....Are you sure about that?

EK Water Blocks

May 14

EK-FC680 GTX DCII for ASUS custom design GTX 680 DirectCU II graphics card in mass production!

From here https://www.facebook.com/EKWaterBlocks

But I guess one can't believe everything they aread on the internet

Looking around on info for the EK not sure if it's full water block or not? Looks to be a fairly new product.

 

[chimaxi83]

1313 before the mod. Tell me, what makes it "worth it" to you? Lol just curious What did you think 1.3V was going to get, 1500MHz?

VRM temp definitely playing a part in it, I'm going to play with it more in the next couple days. Especially upping VRAM volts a little and shooting for 74-7500MHz.

 

[Don Karnage]

Except for the fact he'll gain almost nothing going to 1500mhz since the card is bottlenecked by the memory.

Who cares. Its not about the 11 scores. Its about hitting 1500 core.

 

[chimaxi83]

Hmm....Are you sure about that?



From here https://www.facebook.com/EKWaterBlocks

But I guess one can't believe everything they aread on the internet

Looking around on info for the EK not sure if it's full water block or not? Looks to be a fairly new product.

They have universal, core only blocks available now. At the top of your pic, it says "VGA Fullcover coming soon"

From their site:

Four new Full-cover water blocks available soon - 07/05/2012 EK is currently developing new water blocks for the newest and most popular graphics cards on the market, namely ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II, MSI R7970 Lightning, reference design AMD Radeon HD 7870 as well as referece design nVidia GeForce GTX 690.

All Full-Cover water blocks will feature excellent cooling and hydraulic performance, pre-installed standoffs for safe and easy installation. More details will be available close to release. The products are expected to be widely available for purhcase in early June.

- Your EK Team

 

[fstime]

These ASUS DCII designs are so sloppy are poorly thought out. It is obvious they reuse the same cooler for multiple designs which is why all the 7950 cards were faulty and reaching over 140C.

 

[Don Karnage]

These ASUS DCII designs are so sloppy are poorly thought out. It is obvious they reuse the same cooler for multiple designs which is why all the 7950 cards were faulty and reaching over 140C.

XCooler is a 5 heatpipe cooler. Why shouldn't they reuse it?

 

[chimaxi83]

The cooler itself is great. Big, but its a performer, along with Twin Frozr and that new Sapphire cooler. That 7950 issue was just bad mounting really, wasn't it?

 

[MrK6]

Excellent write-up chimaxi83, really informative. It's a shame about the cooler (looks like they need to re-engineer it for 28nm). I'm surprised at how little improvement you got from overvolting. It's tough to read through everything on my phone, but did you measure power consumption before and after? Whenever I (used to) install pots, I always would confirm my voltage measurements with power draw changes (and calculating backwards). It just seems very odd that they card, which seems to be a good overclocker, wouldn't budge at all with that much more voltage. Anyway, happy tweaking. :thumbsup:

 

[3DVagabond]

The cooler itself is great. Big, but its a performer, along with Twin Frozr and that new Sapphire cooler. That 7950 issue was just bad mounting really, wasn't it?

I've seen no official response from Asus. It would be good to see whta the problem, and hopefully, fix was.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

XCooler is a 5 heatpipe cooler. Why shouldn't they reuse it?

The windforce cools the vrm and mem with the heatsink used by the gpu. I'm not impressed that asus is using separate vrm and mem sinks instead of integrating it with the gpu cooler.

 

[chimaxi83]

Excellent write-up chimaxi83, really informative. It's a shame about the cooler (looks like they need to re-engineer it for 28nm). I'm surprised at how little improvement you got from overvolting. It's tough to read through everything on my phone, but did you measure power consumption before and after? Whenever I (used to) install pots, I always would confirm my voltage measurements with power draw changes (and calculating backwards). It just seems very odd that they card, which seems to be a good overclocker, wouldn't budge at all with that much more voltage. Anyway, happy tweaking. :thumbsup:

Thanks man! I didn't measure power draw, didn't have a meter handy. Going to grab one though, I'm curious. I think VRM temps is affecting my clock. I can adjust PLL volts too, and will in the next few days. We shall see, but I might just have a poor clocker.

The windforce cools the vrm and mem with the heatsink used by the gpu. I'm not impressed that asus is using separate vrm and mem sinks instead of integrating it with the gpu cooler.

Heh, this DC II does not have any memory heatsinks installed out of the box, only cooling would be blow by air from the DC II fans. VRMs have a small heatsink for 10 VRM phases, which is also pretty crappy. Blah to the poor stock cooling :thumbsdown:

 

[SHAQ]

Maybe you can really OC that 2600K when you get done? 1.32v is child's play with that CPU.

I am waiting to see what the 680 Classified can do as I don't want to v-mod without a nice warranty and better cooling. I v-modded my 8800GT but that was only a $300 card.

 

[chimaxi83]

Maybe you can really OC that 2600K when you get done? 1.32v is child's play with that CPU.

I am waiting to see what the 680 Classified can do as I don't want to v-mod without a nice warranty and better cooling. I v-modded my 8800GT but that was only a $300 card.

I bench with the 2600K at 5.3GHz Everything except Metro 2033 bench, which for some reason refuses to start if I'm above 5.0GHz.

 

[chimaxi83]

So EK went and bastardized their design methods, just as they were designing the full cover block for this card D:

Not that these have to be gorgeous works of art, but this is easily one of the plainest, blockiest, ugliest blocks I've seen lol. Cool story, EK :thumbsdown:

 

[Don Karnage]

The windforce cools the vrm and mem with the heatsink used by the gpu. I'm not impressed that asus is using separate vrm and mem sinks instead of integrating it with the gpu cooler.

I dont care. The blue PCB sucks :biggrin: