Fitting a VF900 on a GeForce 6600GT AGP?

borc · Post by **borc** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:58 am

So, I have an old GF 6600GT AGP card and I want to fit a better cooler on it. Originally I had a VF700, but it didn't cool the card too well if i wanted the fan to remain even close to quiet.

Some months ago I managed to break the card. I guess it overheated. So I RMA'd it (evil me). Now I'm not sure which cooler I should install. The stock one is way too loud, so it's out of question, and the VF700 seemed to have trouble cooling it adequately.

So is it possible to fit a VF900 on the AGP version of 6600GT? Has anyone done this? The Zalman website claims that the HSI chip heatsink will interfere with installation. Is this true?

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:42 am

I can't imagine why the VF700 wouldn't have worked for you. I have mine on 5v and it's pretty quiet and never have a problem cooling the card (XFX 6600GT AGP). What were your temps that you think were too high? You may want to reinstall the HSF to make sure you are getting adequate contact, and didn't misapply the thermal paste.

What speed were you running the fan at? The fan should be able to be slowed down further through a PWM mobo and speedfan or a fan controller. Or you could always do a fan swap.

Sorry for the skepticism, I've just found the VF700 to be a VERY capable cooler, when installed properly. While it's not very stable on an AGP 6600GT (due to the position and mounting), it still works very well, in my experience.

borc · Post by **borc** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:38 am

The older card (which i RMA'd) didn't have a temperature sensor so I couldn't monitor the temps. However, random freezes and crashes in 3D games should be a good enough hint that the gpu is overheating. This would happen only if I ran the fan at 5V. And I still found the fan a bit noisy at that voltage.

Mike_P · Post by **Mike_P** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:47 am

i also have a 6600gt AGP and find it cools quite well w/ the VF700. mine is O/C to 530/1050 core/mem and it loads out @ 65c which I find completely acceptable. (considering the nVidia threshold is 150c)

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:34 pm

borc wrote:The older card (which i RMA'd) didn't have a temperature sensor so I couldn't monitor the temps. However, random freezes and crashes in 3D games should be a good enough hint that the gpu is overheating. This would happen only if I ran the fan at 5V. And I still found the fan a bit noisy at that voltage.

Perhaps, but the question is WHY would it be overheating? You'll find plenty of people here to confirm that the VF-700 is enough to keep even a heavily overclocked system cool. So the more likely scenario is that the HSF wasn't making quite good enough contact. Or the card was defective to begin with.

But random freezes and crashes in 3d games is not enough on it's own to say that it's the GPU. I have had the same problems with my system--which contains a 6600GT with a VF700--but I isolated the problem to inadequate cooling of the northbridge. I swapped that HS with a larger one and no problems since.

But you seem to have your mind made up so here is the only mod I was able to find on the VF900 on a 6600GT AGP. In short, it will work IF you can do some elementary metal fab.

borc · Post by **borc** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:43 pm

jhhoffma wrote:Perhaps, but the question is WHY would it be overheating? You'll find plenty of people here to confirm that the VF-700 is enough to keep even a heavily overclocked system cool. So the more likely scenario is that the HSF wasn't making quite good enough contact. Or the card was defective to begin with.

But random freezes and crashes in 3d games is not enough on it's own to say that it's the GPU. I have had the same problems with my system--which contains a 6600GT with a VF700--but I isolated the problem to inadequate cooling of the northbridge. I swapped that HS with a larger one and no problems since.

I'm not exactly sure how good a contact it was making, but it was properly installed and felt secure. The card could've been defective, tho.

My NB cooler is very small, indeed. I should probably swap it in any case, so thanks for the tip.

And thanks for the link. I've got metalworking equipment at my disposal, so that shouldn't be a problem at all.