VERY hot spot on my 6800 [pic added]

[Benchern1f]

I recently ordered a chaintek 6800le from zipzoomfly.com

Unlocked 16x6 no problem.

Wouldn't overclock...not 1mhz.

Did some research, flashed bios to hard 16x6 unlock, and upped voltage from 1.1 to 1.3

ALSO added an NVsilencer5 rev2.

Now I'm at a stable and cool clock of 345/895. I know it will push more, but I don't want to push my luck, as I am not always gaming...mostly photo editing.

Anyway, I did notice there was one increadibly HOT spot on my card, which is driving me nuts. After doing some research, I think it is the voltage regulator.

I mean, it is so hot (only during gaming), that if I hold my hand onto it, I'll burn, no joke.

I ended up using some arctic ceramic epoxy and threw on a small memory heatsink onto it to dissappate heat, but man...it is still rockin hot!

Here is a picture of the area I am talking about (not my card, but you'll get the idea):

Picture link
or
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-2/960198/hotspot.jpg

And a picture of my heatsink mod

Could some of you, who own a 6800 with the selected area open, run a game for like 5 minutes and feel that spot...let me know what's up? Also let us know if your card is vmoded, overclocked, etc?

I just don't want to kill a great card...and the total only cost me about $160 w/ nvsilencer...you know?

I will reflash to the lower volt and clock (though keep my 16x6), and see if it runs any cooler.

I figure adding the heatsink wouldn't hurt, as the 6800 vanillas/gt's have them on their voltage regulators.

Thanks...

Ben

 

[Gstanfor]

YOur findings are no real suprise.

Overclocking will always stress the voltage supply area of a card. This is where good and bad designs really seperate themselves. Poor quality components will not tolerate the stress anywhere near a well as high quality components.

This is why a lot of 7800 GTX boards don't have analog voltage supply/regulation, but rather digital supply/regulation.

People tend to worry lots about the heatsink/fan effectiveness for overclocking, but, really they need to worry FAR MORE about the quality of the power components of the card.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if you have a PSU that isn't the best quality or is marginal for what you have running in the system, you will force the on-card power supply/regulation to work much harder than it normally would.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Heh, the voltage regular on a self-assembled circuit bread board I had to make got really hot just from 4 D-cell batteries; of course the voltage regular on a video card is going to get hot! Do what you can and realize that is a killer OC for a 6800nu

edit spelling

 

[Benchern1f]

It was worth adding a picture
Ben