Project: cool the 5850 by a S1 R2

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:19 pm

Ok, so I'm going to mount a S1 R2 on the 5850 and from all the information I gather online there is only(?) 3 problems for this setup.

My understanding is that I should only use the S1 to cool the gpu core(?!) and let the original 5850 plate cool the VRM, Memory and rest of card?

The problems are:
1: DVI hits S1 fins, solution: bend 3-5fins on S1(?!)

2: VRM gets too hot, I read a forum post here from a user who claimed during furmark the max temperature was 125c with original VRM and S1, well this has to be the biggest concern.

Solution1: undervolt the card and see if it helps.
Solution2: Test max temperature with crysis instead.
As furmark is not a game but extreme app, maybe a VRM at 100c is acceptable but It could ofcourse reach higher as I have not tested.
Solution3: Maybe always running Vsync helps temperature of VRM?!

3: The 5850 has many different kinds of screws.
Solution: can anyone point in right direction what kind of screwdrivers I need to remove the original cooler and mount S1?

maalitehdas · Post by **maalitehdas** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:42 am

Good luck in fitting the Accelero in.
1. Bend anything in it, just try not to block any air passages (other hot parts under the sink). Some fin's may touck each other freely, that won't affect too much in its performance.
2. add any 12cm quiet fan or two on top of accelero blowing air towards all hot components. Try to get the coolest air available (possibly with some ducting from free PCI-slots) to achieve slower speeds.

Lawrence Lee · Post by **Lawrence Lee** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:19 am

1. Bend or cut.
2. A fan is pretty much a necessity for a 5850. Use a good low speed 12cm fan and it will be inaudible.
3. On the Powercolor version, they were all philips heads. Though there were some small/deep threads in some of the screws holding the cooling plate to the cover I wasn't able to get off.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 3:42 pm

Lawrence Lee wrote:1. Bend or cut.
2. A fan is pretty much a necessity for a 5850. Use a good low speed 12cm fan and it will be inaudible.
3. On the Powercolor version, they were all philips heads. Though there were some small/deep threads in some of the screws holding the cooling plate to the cover I wasn't able to get off.

2. I think the guy who posted the 125c VRM actually had mounted a 120mm fan but I could be wrong as I have not tested, I need look up the quote.

3. Incase I will use the original VRM cooler would you say I need to take the small/deep thread screws off when installing aftermarket coolers(?) for example S1 R2

Is this how I should install the S1 R2 combined with original cooler:

sorry if I wrote some stuff wrong english is not my first language.

Big Pimp Daddy · Post by **Big Pimp Daddy** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 5:15 pm

I use an S1 on my 5850, but with a Thermalright VRM R4 instead of the stock baseplate, so some of this is guesswork;

1. I cut the fins, only need to take about 4mm off the ends, I used nail scissors to do it, the metal is very thin.

2. I think that 125c was without fan, but I could be wrong. When I tried my setup fanless the GPU temperatures were the problem not the VRMs.
Also, my Furmark temps were a good 20c higher than actual game temperatures.

3. All the screws are standard Phillips head (cross type), I used Draper jewellers screwdrivers size No. 1 for the big screws and size No. 00 for the small ones. The screws joining the baseplate to the rest of the cooler are the smaller type. Some of them are very tight, I had to wrap sticky-tape around the handle of the screwdriver to make it wider and give me more leverage. You should be OK as long as you don't strip the heads of the screws; use good quality screwdrivers, apply lots of force down onto the screw and go slowly.
Yes, that picture is correct.

Let me know if any of this is not clear, but to sum up; it should be fine. Best of luck.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Sat Feb 20, 2010 6:39 pm

Thanks for the answer Big Pimp Daddy wery good and informative!

A. As for the picture that I posted do I need to remove the original ATI cooling plate then remount it?

B. Or would I just only remove the ATI GPU core cooler and mount the S1 R2 over the core directly?

The S1 R2 that I got is used so there is no thermal adhessive on the RAM I guess incase I decide to use any of the S1 RAM heatsink I would need to buy some thermal adhesive or take the risk of them falling off and put Arctic Silver 5 cpu cooling on the RAM and hope it sticks like glue to RAM?

EDIT---> I mean can I just remove the GPU core heatsink without having to unscrew any other ATI cooling the Heatsing that is shown on this picture:

The Heatsink is off here, will it pop out first? :

Big Pimp Daddy wrote:I use an S1 on my 5850, but with a Thermalright VRM R4 instead of the stock baseplate, so some of this is guesswork;

1. I cut the fins, only need to take about 4mm off the ends, I used nail scissors to do it, the metal is very thin.

2. I think that 125c was without fan, but I could be wrong. When I tried my setup fanless the GPU temperatures were the problem not the VRMs.
Also, my Furmark temps were a good 20c higher than actual game temperatures.

3. All the screws are standard Phillips head (cross type), I used Draper jewellers screwdrivers size No. 1 for the big screws and size No. 00 for the small ones. The screws joining the baseplate to the rest of the cooler are the smaller type. Some of them are very tight, I had to wrap sticky-tape around the handle of the screwdriver to make it wider and give me more leverage. You should be OK as long as you don't strip the heads of the screws; use good quality screwdrivers, apply lots of force down onto the screw and go slowly.
Yes, that picture is correct.

Let me know if any of this is not clear, but to sum up; it should be fine. Best of luck.

Big Pimp Daddy · Post by **Big Pimp Daddy** » Sun Feb 21, 2010 3:59 am

Yes, you do need to remove the whole cooler from the card, then unscrew some more screws to remove the baseplate from the rest of the cooler, then reattach the baseplate to the card, then install the S1. There is no short-cut as the screws connecting the baseplate to the rest of the cooler assembly are hidden by the card itself.

The glue on used RAMsinks will not work a second time in my experience, and I don't think Arctic Silver alone will be sticky enough to hold them. You will need thermal adhesive to hold them on, but I don't see why you would need RAMsinks if using the stock baseplate?

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:38 am

1. I'm getting a bit nervous for applying the cooler, almost wish I would have bought a used 4890 for more then half the price hehe.

Hopefuly wellprepared everything will go smooth.

2. Anyone know any good site or video where they explain in big detail removal of the cooler.

gvblake22 · Post by **gvblake22** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:51 pm

I saw someone (I think it may have even been on the SPCR forums) that was able to remove the shroud on the DVI connectors to fit the S1 on there without it hitting. The actual contacts for the DVI connector went up at a 45Âº angle instead of 90Âº so it just cleared the edge of the S1. I don't know how they removed the DVI shroud, but you could look at it and see if you can figure it out.

zyrobs · Post by **zyrobs** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:42 pm

Sapphire 5850+S1v2 user here.

Fitting the heatsink: Yes, you need to bend the lower 4 fins on the S1, or cut them off. Not a big loss. There's also that guy who removed the DVI Heatsink on his card, but IMO bending the fins is simpler and faster.

About the VRM: If the VRM goes above 130, the card throttles itself back to 550mhz.

With the heatsink only and no fan at all, I only tried a stream app, and it rose to 90c and quit in about 5 minutes. This is in a case with semi-decent airflow. Semi-decent because I don't have intake in the upper bay, only in the lower one as all my HDDs are there - on the flip side, there are no cables getting in the way of airflow, even the front panel connectors I've managed to hide in the small space below the floppy slot.
Either way, running a 5850 + Accelero S1 with no fan is definitely not a good idea.

I had a 12cm Thermaltake fan running on 5v, mounted to the middle fan bay of the Antec P183. It fits extremely tightly, and it's probably not too healthy that way for the videocard since a lot of force is exerted on the 6pin connectors, right at the back of the card. With this setup, I got around 90c max gpu temp with furmark, but only because the VRM hit 130c and kept scaling back the card every other second.
After downclocking the card to around 700mhz (stock is 725), the VRM stayed just below 128c, though the gpu managed to hit 95c. 675 mhz got down to just around 90c for the gpu.
I didn't test games, but I tested an app that pushes gpgpu stream processing to the max, and it stayed just below 90c gpu and 120c VRM. (the app is self monitoring and shuts down if it reaches 90c on the gpu - in the half hour it was running, it never shut down). Since I use this app often, downclocking was not good, as performance got noticeably worse.
Idle temp was around 40-50 for the gpu.

Obviously, this solution was no good. I'm not about to burn out a card I bought for 300$ just this weekend.

So, I mounted the fan directly on the heatsink. It's held there by a couple of paperclips, so it's not exactly tight, but it's very close to the heatsink. A rather barbaric method, but I didn't have any other tools at hand (and I've no idea what else I could do to mount it anyway! Hold it there with female screws on one side, and a regular one between the fins?).
With the fan mounted directly, I get 72-75c gpu and 116-119c VRM in furmark. Idle gpu is 38-41c. I've yet to test Stream apps yet, but I doubt they will break 70c gpu. I expect games to run between 60-70c as well, maybe even below 60c. And it's silent enough that I can't hear it next to the HDD noise. Outside the VRM temperatures, I am content with this setup, for now.

In comparison, when playing games, I got as high as 77c with the stock cooler, and it got pretty damn loud even though the fan was only running at some 30%. Sadly, I didn't take notes of the VRM in the stock cooler. It would've been important, since the stock cooler covers the VRMs better. I'll probably buy the Thermalright VRM R4 to keep the VRM down from the ludicrous 117c on full load. The heatsink part of that thing should end up near the cpu fan, so even if I leave it as-is, it should have some airflow there (in case the big-ass heatsink alone is not enough to calm the raging VRM).

But, as it was pointed out in this thread, perhaps I could use the base of the stock cooler to cool down the VRMs more. At any rate, the ram sinks included with the Accelero are worth fuck-all for VRM cooling.

grandpatzer wrote:1. I'm getting a bit nervous for applying the cooler, almost wish I would have bought a used 4890 for more then half the price hehe.

2. Anyone know any good site or video where they explain in big detail removal of the cooler.

1. 4890 doesn't have DX11, and I'm sure you'd have temperature issues there as well, if you used just an Accelero S1 and nothing else. IMO the 5850 is the best bang for buck right now among hi-end videocards, considering its feature set and raw power. The 5870 pricetag is unreasonably high compared to its performance over the 5850.

2. There's nothing special about it, just unscrew it carefully. On my sapphire 5850, there are also two small screws on the side, next to the dvi outputs. Also, there are some smaller-than-average screws holding the gpu backplate on the card, so make sure you have a very small screwdriver for that.
(edit: the draper screwdrivers posted above are what I used as well, but only for the few extremely small screws, since that screwdriver set has the excellent habit of tearing the skin apart from my fingertips).

edit 2: To clarify, the 32c idle gpu I got was right after booting. Now that the system has "warmed up", I get around 38-40c.

Rucker · Post by **Rucker** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:50 pm

zyrobs wrote: But, as it was pointed out in this thread, perhaps I could use the base of the stock cooler to cool down the VRMs more.

Thanks for the update. I'm very interested to see the results of the above set-up.

zyrobs · Post by **zyrobs** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:54 pm

I won't be readding the base of the stock cooler until someone confirms that it pushes the VRM down a lot. From what I saw, it just has the plastic pushing tightly to the VRM, so I doubt that it's that much better.
The Thermalright sink looks more promising. Even if it doesn't cover both VRMs, but I'm sure I can stuck something on the other one.

Edit: in the other thread, nova was posting temperatures with a setup not entirely unlike mine, and with the baseplate up he got sub-100c VRMs with furmark. I may have to read the baseplate afterall. I wonder if that Thermalright VRM cooler will still fit with the baseplate on?

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:02 pm

zyrobs thanks for the excellent post!

I have recently become owner of a 5850 saphhire, however I will test it for a week or two before changing cooler just to see it has no defects in warranty purposes.

My english isn't the best but if Nova had 100c on VRM with the original baseplate +S1 R2 in Furmark I think that would be acceptable temperature.

zyrobs my understanding is that the Baseplate covers all the RAM and VRM so I don't see a way to fit a R4 with it on if I understood the baseplate function correctly.

Maybe it's possible to dremel the baseplate but that is way beyond what I'm willing to do!

Fow now I'll just test out the 5850 with original cooling and if no problems are seen with it within 1-2weeks I'll also be putting the S1 R2 on the GPU core, I might also buy the R4 but I feel that 25usd is a bit much for a VRM cooler..

The way I see it there is 2 options for me:
1. Test the card out for 1-2weeks then put a S1 R2 on
2. Return the card to shop and and buy a Vapor-x <--- I have no idea how this is vs the S1 R2 noise level.

zyrobs · Post by **zyrobs** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 1:08 am

Could please post gpu-z stats with furmark running in the background for 10-20 minutes? I'd like to see the stock cooler VRM temp in furmark.

mynameisyoung · Post by **mynameisyoung** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 11:47 am

To zyrobs:

If I understand correctly you're not sure how to mount a fan to the S1. The easiest way to is to just zip tie them to the heatsink. It's the method most used and works perfectly.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 8:14 pm

zyrobs wrote:Could please post gpu-z stats with furmark running in the background for 10-20 minutes? I'd like to see the stock cooler VRM temp in furmark.

after 9 minutes the temperatures and fan stabilized, the screenshot is after 12min furmark, the temperatures are wery similar to max temperatures.

the original fan stabilized at 32%, the noise level can be desrcribed as a cd-burner noise.

in conclusion: the VRM reaches 80-84c peak in furmark.

Rucker · Post by **Rucker** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:32 am

grandpatzer wrote:zyrobs thanks for the excellent post!

I have recently become owner of a 5850 saphhire, however I will test it for a week or two before changing cooler just to see it has no defects in warranty purposes.

I'm looking forward to your tests.

My english isn't the best but if Nova had 100c on VRM with the original baseplate +S1 R2 in Furmark I think that would be acceptable temperature.

Your English is perfectly fine.

bradyapba · Post by **bradyapba** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:40 pm

1. I have a Twin Turbo pro on my 5850.

2.The screws are metric i can tell you that, not sure size. "tiny" hehe.

3. The base plate (its metal, not plastic, and is designed to cool the mem and vrm) is the WAY too go. The heat sinks that come with after market coolers will NOT cut the mustard. As most have seen, it leads to temps over 100C. I am getting temps of 70C ish, on an OC of 875/1175 right now (with a lot more head room to test) with the stock plate.

4. The problem I see with the Accelero S1 Rev 2 is those tight fins. your gonna need some fans pushing some big time air, to get through and cool the plate, so it can cool those vrms. That plate needs some decent air moving on it, to keep the vrms cool enough.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:12 am

ok, so I reread the thread where nova had put a cooler and it seems at 1000rpm and 30min of furmark he gets 100c on VRM.

considering ATI throttles the card at 125c VRM, I'm assuming 100c is perfectly fine, also furmark is a extreme gpu app.

I recommend for anyone thinking of installing S1 R2 on 5850 to read fully page 5 & 6 of: viewtopic.php?t=55343&postdays=0&postor ... &start=120

the only thing confusing me was this picture posted by nova:

My assumption is he is NOT using the stockplate for VRM, instead he is using aftermarket VRM coolers.

My assumption would be that the original stockplate would cool better than the aftermarket VRM.

EDIT---> I'm still wary of putting the S1 as I'm worried my card would start show the infamous vertival lines, I guess that would mean a silent pc for me and the occasional xbox 360 gaming

bradyapba · Post by **bradyapba** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 5:28 am

in that pic from Nova, he does indeed have the stock plate reinstalled. What he did was add 1 after market heat sink into the opening of where the orginal fan was. Not a bad idea i guess, but its not touching the VRMs, so i dont think its doing much either

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:56 am

bradyapba wrote:in that pic from Nova, he does indeed have the stock plate reinstalled. What he did was add 1 after market heat sink into the opening of where the orginal fan was. Not a bad idea i guess, but its not touching the VRMs, so i dont think its doing much either

my guess would be the original fan used that vent to push in air through it?

I'm not going to put anything there hopefuly the card is not damaged.

I'm planning on using a Scythe 1200rpm fan on the S1 R2, I will put it on a 7v resistor and put straightly to the motherboard GPU fan pin.

depending how high of rpm it can reach maximum and the temperatures I might have to run it at 12v and hope the motherboard pushes the fan to 550rpm maximum in IDLE

edit---> Stock cooler I decreased vcore of gpu to 1.00v with help of MSI Afterburner, VRM temperature on 74c after 15min of furmark.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:18 pm

I finaly installed the S1R2 I also attached a 120mm slipstream 1200rpm I connected the slipstream to the fractal fan control at minimum speed.

I ran furmark for 17min resolution 1280*1024, 8x MSAA, Run Mode: stability test. only post Fx was choosen,

I did not choose Xtreme Burning mode or displacement mapping <--- not sure if I should have had these 2 on?

10 Minutes, 95c on VRM:

17 Minutes, the VRM peak at 99c:

bradyapba · Post by **bradyapba** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:23 pm

yikes thats hot.... my VRMs are in the 40's/low 50's at full load at stock.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 1:06 pm

it is hot, however I heard that the 5970 would throttle the card when the temperature reaches 125c.

Assuming the 125c also applies on 5850 I think that a 99c top in furmark is acceptable.

it propably is less temperature in gaming as furmark demands alot.

edit---> here is IDLE temperatures:

the gpu core is around 35c, VRM is 38-39c

bradyapba · Post by **bradyapba** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 1:27 pm

oh, sorry, i wasnt saying it wasnt an acceptable temps, just hot for stock #'s is all.

You wont able to overclock much if at all, it will get to 125C very quickly if you start to OC, and its hotter than if you had just left the stock fan on... so im not sure you accomplished anything.....

Im not sure what good putting an aftermarket cooler on, if your not gaining betters temps or a better OC.....

Silence isnt an issue, becuase the stock cooler is pretty quiet at stock speeds.

grandpatzer · Post by **grandpatzer** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 6:52 pm

I have now shut off the top case fan and I connected the GPU fan a slipstream 120mm 1200rpm to 7v and to the motherboard.

I made new furmark tests, after 10min 1920*1080 8xAA the VRM reached 108c at most.

after 18min it seemed as if the VRM started coming closer to 106c also as the fan is connected to motherboard with 7v resistor it got up to almost 700rpm if I read the correct fan rpm value.

bradyapba maybe my original fan is slightly defective because it's slightly more noisy then the other fans also a difference frequency noise.

I do feel that the computer noise level is abit better also now I can reach the sata connectors this was not possible with original cooler.