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V3 2000 overheating (Read 192 times)
Gooberslot
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V3 2000 overheating
28.10.04 at 09:30:47
 
Recently I've noticed that when playing games(especially Opengl ones for some reason) after a while the game would start stuttering real bad, like 3 fps.  I checked and the card was up to 77C.  I know V3's run hot but that looks insane. 

Anyway, I've taken the cover from my case and attached a small fan to the heatsink and the problem's gone.  The new problem is it's very loud and it can't stay like this.  Are there any other options like a bigger heatsink?  I don't have any idea how to get the old off either.  I've also thought of one of those slot coolers that I could stick in the pci slot next to it but I don't know if it'd be enough cooling since it isn't in direct contact with the heatsink.  It also might wind up being just as noisy or more so than this little fan I have on right now.  I'd also like to get enough cooling so I can overclock this thing since I noticed it has 6ns ram on it I should be able to get up to at least 166mhz.
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Rolo01
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #1 - 28.10.04 at 09:45:37
 
It is always a good idea to remove the stock heatsink and add some active cooling to your Voodoo3.
This is what I did :
Put the card in an antistatic bag, close it tightly and put the bag into a refrigerator for lets say 1 hour.
After that get the card out and let it dry.
The low temperature in the fridge should make the thermal epoxy between chip and stock heatsink more breakable. I could quite easily take off the heatsink ( you may need to twist and turn it gently ).
After that I cleaned the chip thoroughly with isopropanol ( pure alcohol will do also ).
I had some old heatsinks of those pentium-I days left, so I took one of them for the Voodoo3.
As there were no mounting holes on my V3 I had to use thermal compound ( i.e. from Arctic Silver ) to glue the new heatsink onto the chip.
I let it dry for several hours and mounted a small fan on top of the new heatsink. Maybe its a good idea to run the fan at 5V, so its almost noiseless.
The disadvantage : The new cooling solution is bigger than the stock cooling, so I "lost" my first PCI slot. But thats OK.
With this I was able to run my V3-3000 at 200 Mhz stable.

Let me know what you think...
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Gooberslot
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #2 - 29.10.04 at 18:08:25
 
OK, I have a few more questions.

Would getting my card that cold cause any damage to the other parts on it?

Where can you get pure alcohol? I've never seen it.

Is there a maximum safe temp for the V3?

I have Enrontech 6ns chips on my card, what's the maximum overclock I should shoot for? Without sticking heatsinks on the ram which is further than I'm willing to go.

At one time I remember seeing a site that was selling extra large replacement heatsinks for the V3.  It wasn't that long ago but stupid me I didn't bookmark it so now I have no idea where it was.  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
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Rolo01
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #3 - 29.10.04 at 19:25:57
 
Well, one hour in the fridge won´t hurt the components on the card. I have done it many times and never had problems.
For pure alcohol ( or Isopropanol ) ask in a pharmacy, its really cheap.
Your card has 6ns ram on it, so it is built for a clockspeed of 166 Mhz, with a little luck it will do 183 Mhz also.
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FalconFly
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #4 - 29.10.04 at 20:25:45
 
IMHO, a Voodoo3 2000 Chip will require alot of luck and one hell of a Cooler to even survive 183MHz.

Be very careful not to destroy the Card because a few individuals have successfully reached such extreme Overclocks.

(the thousands of Cards that died in the process of Overclocking and overheating you'll usually find never being mentioned)

Note -
The RAM on a Voodoo3 does not say anything about the Quality of the Avenger Chip at all. Chances are, they just didn't have other RAM's at that time, a situation frequently known to happen at 3dfx manufacturing sites (some Cards are even equipped with RAM chips of different manufacturers).

Personally, I never recommend Overclocking, since the gains are minimal and risk tremendous without alot of experience and the instant ability to replace the Card if it is destroyed.

Strap a high Quality Fan onto the Voodoo3 2000's passive Cooler (it usually allows to directly screw it on), and all of your overheating Problems should be solved.
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« Last Edit: 29.10.04 at 20:27:15 by FalconFly »  
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3Dfx_tweaker
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #5 - 29.10.04 at 21:50:09
 
And if you once overclocked the memory too  high,  you can get artifacts. For example I bought a Geforce 4 MX form a friend for just 25 euro's. The card was only cooled by a small zalman 37 heatsink, and he sad that he could overclocked it very well ( I never really believed him). Well wenn I bought his card for just 25 euro's at that time the card was worth much more. I cooled the card with a Zalman 80 en copper heatsinks on the mem.
But after a couple of months more and more artifacts were appearing on my screen, until it came to a point that when installing drivers I couldn't the normal way because the Bios didn't recognize the card. I had never really overclocked the card, so because my friend  Angry and the owner which he bought the card from pushed the card TOO high, i were getting the artifacts after a YEAR.
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Gooberslot
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Re: V3 2000 overheating
Reply #6 - 30.10.04 at 05:25:44
 
Hmm, I bumped it up to 183mhz and it seems stable.  It survived approximately an hour of gaming and an hour of 3dmark 2k set on loop but after what some people have said I'm thinking of going back down to 166mhz.  That's what the ram's rated for and I don't want to push my luck(ok, I'm pushing a little Smiley ).
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