Legend AGP 6600GT and Zalman VF700

Filias Cupio · Post by **Filias Cupio** » Thu Jun 22, 2006 3:30 pm

I have a Legend AGP 6600GT GPU card, which I wished to silence.

AGP 6600GT cards have a non-standard layout, due to an extra HSI chip to translate a PCI GPU to the AGP bus. I couldn't find a purely passive cooling solution. (I'm aware of an AGP 6600GT card supplied with passive heatsink - Gigabyte GV-N66T128VP. There is a separate forum thread somewhere about it - about 50% of posters found it worked fine, 50% had overheating problems. I decided not to risk it. From their website, it looks like they've expanded the range a bit, so maybe there is now a better solution.)

So, the question is: can the Legend AGP 6600GT AGP have a Zalman VF700 installed?

The answer is: sort of. Unmodified, the RAM heatsinks are too close to the heatsink, and prevent it sitting in place. The RAM heatsinks have four rows of bins sticking out. (See links at bottom for pictures) Four are required (8 are supplied, so you have some leyway for messing up.) On three of these, I needed to file away one row of pins completely, and reduce the height of the second row by a few mm.

There are numerous mounting hole options for the VF700. I used the pair of holes that are relatively close together. (Thus using the innermost holes on the VF700 mounting bracket.) In the VF700 link below, these are the holes for Radeon 9*** series among others.

The stock heatsink on the Legend card is all one piece - it does not have a separate bit for the HSI chip. Therefore you also need the Zalman ZM-VHS1 for the HSI chip.

Lessons learnt:
(1) It can be done, but with difficulty
(2) Perhaps that Gigabyte card is worth trying afterall
(3) Don't chose an AGP motherboard.

Gigabyte passive card: http://www.giga-byte.com/Products/VGA/P ... uctID=1239
Legend card:
http://www.legendmemory.com/modules.php ... e&sid=2225
Zalman VF700 (includes pictures of RAM heatsinks)
http://www.zalman.co.kr/eng/product/vie ... 9&code=013
Zalman warnings on VF700 with AGP 6600GT
http://www.zalman.co.kr/product/cooler/ ... T_eng.html

Xoman · Post by **Xoman** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 2:36 pm

I have Evga 6600 GT card and I used Zalman VF 700 to silence it. About the RAM heatsinks, forget about it. I was in the same situation a year ago and I decided to leave off the RAM heatsink. The stock fan was driving me nuts with noise. Unless you want to file them to fit under the fan, I would just leave them off. I haven't used those RAM heatsinks and my computer ran fine for 1 year without them.

I do have black Antec case with holes on the sides to help cool the video card though. I played Battlefield 2, Oblivion, Half-life 2 for hours without problems. Just make sure you have good air flow in your case with some case fans. I use one 120mm fan blowing in and one 120mm fan blowing out.

defaultluser · Post by **defaultluser** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:43 pm

I installed a vf700 on my XFX AGP 6600 GT over a year back, was painless except when it came to the ramsinks.

Like you, I modified the ramsinks, but I took the easier method: the sinks are made of a soft aluminum, and you can easily remove the pins with a pair of needlenose pliers.

I sold the system, but to my knowledge the vf700 is still working well.