4870X2 + 2x MCW60 guide (image heavy)
So, you purchased a fancy new 4870 X2 and you're loving the great framerates. You are, however, getting fairly worried about the scorch mark developing on the wall behind your case. Let's face it - this card gets hot. It gets hotter than your old 8800, hotter than an overclocked Pentium-D (okay, well maybe not), and hotter than a brazilian beach in the summertime. So what do you do about it? You do as any self-respecting enthusiast does to an excessively warm part and your watercool it. Great, now how exactly do we go about doing that?
You could, of course, sit around and wait for the usual suspects to release nearly moron-proof unisinks, you throw out your old waterblock (if you had one) and plunk down $150 for a piece of metal that won't work anywhere but this one graphics card. Or, you could go the more economical route (especially if you already have one) and pick up a pair of MCW60's and go to town. All fine and dandy, of course - except the part where it's a little more complicated than that.
The MCW60 is known for being both a fairly good gpu-only block, as well as being highly universal. If you can find a graphics card that the thing doesn't work on, you probably shouldn't be putting it on that card anyways. There is, however, a bit of a hitch in the case of the 4870 X2. Unlike its non-doubled little cousin, the X2 is so jam-packed with creamy graphics goodness that they've had to shrink down the mounting holes and backplate to accomodate everything - and that means the usual set of mounting hardware is not going to apply here.
Never fear however, for whether it was the gods or ATi (yeah, I'm gonna keep calling em that) who smiled on swiftech, it is actually possible to fairly solidly strap a couple MCW60's to a 4870 X2 with little more than the included mounting hardware if you're clever about it. Interested? I hope so - because this article is about to get into the nitty gritty on how to get your brand new beast of a graphics card to cool off, and do it without breaking the bank.
There are two parts to this article, the first being how to assemble the mounting hardware necessary to mount an MCW60 to a 4870 X2 GPU and the second being how to modify the stock frontplate to allow you to continue to cool your peripheral components without having to turn your card into a porcupine of small heatsinks (and, hopefully, allow you to someday reassemble it into something at least close to its original aircooled state). If all you're looking for is mounting the blocks and you're quite happy spending a few hours gluing heatsinks to your card then stick to the first section. If you want a full 4870 X2 cooling solution without having to go to the trouble of buying and attaching all those sinks, be sure to read the whole article.
PART I - How to mount the MCW60 to a GPU it was never designed for in the first place
Before I begin, allow me to credit Gabe of swiftech lore, whose xtremesystems post about mounting MCW60's to a 4870 X2 served as the starting point for this mod. While it was vague and scarce on details, and needed some revision and reworking to make it work correctly (at least for me) it gave me the inspiration I needed to attempt it myself. The basic idea used here is his - however the specifics of the implementation are the product of my own trial and error (mostly the latter).
Original xtremesystems post
Now, I'm sure all of you who went out and blindly purchased a couple MCW60's with your brand new 4870 X2 have had a question burning in your minds after lining up the blocks and card; "How the hell do you mount one of these things to an X2 when all the mounting plates have holes nowhere near close enough together to work with the card?" And the answer, of course, to that is that you're not looking at all of the available mounting holes. As it so happens, the four socket head screws that usually hold the mounting plates to the block (and, incidentally, the block together) are *very nearly* the same spacing as the 4870 X2's mounting holes. I say very nearly because the MCW60's holes are actually ever so slightly further a part (a fact I discovered after my first assembly attempt based on Gabe's post). While you can still jam the thing through the holes and mostly get it in the right place, the block is spending more time binding against the mount holes than it is applying pressure to the gpu die - not a great situation. We can, however, with a tiny bit of work make things fit quite nicely. Before we get to that though, we need to assemble the parts and tools required for this mod to succeed.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The whole procedure detailed below for this section is for ONE (1) GPU. This simplifies explanations, but keep in mind that unless you're doing something Very Strange, you're going to want to do this *twice* as your 4870 X2 has two GPUs and each must be cooled by its own MCW60. So, be sure to double up on the parts as necessary to make sure you have everything you need.
Parts list:
1 MCW60 Waterblock and associated hardware
1 MCW60 G80 adapter kit (an old MCW60 that was cooling an 8800 or a new MCW60-R will include this)
4 #2 3/16" washers (optional)
3" of 16-gauge electrical wire (colour of your choice)
Tool list:
The standard screwdrivers required to disassemble a graphics card (all philips, nothing *too* small for this part)
A drill, or drill press (recommended)
A 9/64" drill bit (no more, no less!)
Wire cutters, tin snips, or a very serious pair of scissors (if you don't get the washers)
A razor blade (you might be able to get away with a good, very sharp knife too)
Some decent thermal paste, cleaning rags, rubbing alcohol, etc...
See? That wasn't so bad, now was it? Now that you have everything assembled, it's time to get down to business. The first task is to set up the waterblock itself for installation. To do this, we'll first have to make ourselves a few nifty electrical wire insulation spacers, and cannibalize a bunch of parts from the G80 adapter kit. The idea for these so-called spacers is that the four corner holes on the MCW60 block are designed for wider hardware than the 2-56 stuff we'll be using, so we need to fill in the gap, so to speak, to make sure the screws stay centred. Don't worry though, it's easier than it sounds. All you need to do is take your 16-gauge wire and razor blade, and cut off 4mm sections of the insulation in nice clean rings, and slide it off the wire. My wire was crazy and had some plastic wrap on top of it which I had to remove, but hopefully yours won't be the same. If I'm not mistaken this stuff is commonly used as one conductor in electrical household wiring, so that maybe a good place to find some if you have a piece lying around. You'll need 4 of these spacers per block.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...ire_spacer.jpg
Now that you have the spacers, you're nearly ready to assemble the blocks. The only remaining question lies in your washer type. If you managed to scrounge up some of the smaller diameter washers I optionally listed, then you're nearly ready to go. The only possible question is that you may want to take your razor blade and cut out a little more space around the screw holes in the delrin top at the barb end of the cap. For mine, there was almost no lip here and the screws tended to go in at an angle and get a bit jammed because of the washers here, but a quick minute with the razor blade fixed that.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o..._and_screw.jpg
If you didn't grab some smaller washers, you're going to have to pull out your wire cutters or tin snips and snip off the corner of the larger diameter washers included with the G80 kit - the spacing of the delrin cap top is such that the washer won't sit correctly on the lower outer frame of the cap unless you cut away a corner. I leave it to you to figure out exactly how much to cut and what shape to use, as I didn't take this method myself - I simply present it for readers who couldn't track down the smaller washers. Feel free to come up with your own solution here, but considering how close the hole size is to the head size of the 2-56 screws we're using, you're very likely going to need some type of washer if you don't want your screw sliding into your cap when you tighten it.
So you've got your washers set up right, and it's now time to assemble the waterblock stack. The first order of business here is to disassemble your MCW60 down to its base elements, removing any peripheral screws, mounting plates, etc... until you have just the delrin cap and the copper baseplate (and maybe a couple barbs if you're lazy and left them in). Now, you'll need to get the four 1 1/4" long 2-56 screws from the G80 kit, the washers of your choice, and the 4 wire insulation spacers you made earlier. Thread the washers onto the screws, then the insulation. In my case the insulation was tight enough that I had to literally hold the spacer with some pliers and "screw" the bolt into the spacer, but your mileage may vary depending on how flexible your insulation is. See the image above for how the screws should look right before insertion into the block.
At this point, feed the four screws (with their washer and spacer installed) through the waterblock corner holes, then slide another washer (either the small ones if you have them or uncut ones from the MCW60's bag of goodies) onto the underside of the block. Then, grab 4 2-56 nuts from the G80 adapter kit and thread them onto the bottom of the block as well, tightening them down to hold the block together. You should now have an MCW60 block with four pegs securely protruding from the bottom of the block, and if that's what you've got then you're done with the block assembly step, and things should look like below (if you line up the remaining required hardware with it)
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...bled_block.jpg
Put the finished waterblock aside for now, and here's where things get interesting. The next step is to prep the graphics card itself, and this is where that drill(press) and drill bit come into play. Now, don't panic - we won't be destroying anything here. Firstly, you're going to have to remove the cooler and front/back plates from the graphics card - if you can't do this part yourself then perhaps you may want to re-examine exactly what you're doing here. Once you have those off, you should be looking at your exposed circuit board with dual gpu dies visible. Now, as I mentioned earlier, the sizing for the block's holes is ever so slightly larger than those of the graphics card, and here is where we'll account for that. If you examine the four mounting holes for the GPU, you'll see a metal ring with a small amount of bare PCB just inside of it. By removing some of this bare PCB, we can bring the card and block into tolerance and allow the block to slide easily onto the card.
The procedure is simple, if terrifying; take your bare graphics card and your drill or drill press with the 9/64 drill bit installed, and VERY carefully drill through the four mounting holes for each GPU. This should remove a small amount of PCB material, but not enough to reach the metal ring around the hole. The image below details both an untouched hole, and another that has already been drilled out.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o.../pcb_holes.jpg
This small adjustment in mount hole size should, in theory, not dramatically impact normal installation of the stock cooler, but it does wonders for the waterblock installation. The blocks should now slide smoothly onto the GPUs if you test fit the assembled blocks onto the card.
If you're going your own way for heatsinking the rest of the card, you're now pretty much ready to assemble the card. Apply thermal paste of your choice to the GPU and slide the waterblock onto the card. Then, while holding the waterblock to the die, flip the card over and slide, in this order, the following parts onto the exposed screw shafts. First goes a paper washer on each post, then a spring, then a screw insulator, and finally a thumb nut, all from the G80 adapter kit. Slowly tighten the thumb nuts to secure the block, being careful not to overtighten and distort the PCB too much as you're no longer using a load-spreading backplate. This is less of a problem if you're still using the stock back and frontplates as detailed in part II as the plates improve the rigidity of the card - but those using their own heatsinks will just have to be a little more careful.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...crew_stack.jpg
And, assuming no catastrophic cracks, snaps or unexpected bends, you should now be done - you have mounted your MCW60's to your 4870 X2 with a minimum of fuss, cost, and irriversible modification.
PART II - Hacking the crap out of the stock frontplate (and hoping it'll still work afterwards)
If you have completed part I (perhaps minus the final installation) and are looking to use the stock back and frontplates with the card in conjunction with your waterblocks, there's still a bit more work you'll have to do before everything will work the way you want it. For this section, we have a separate tools and parts list:
Parts list:
Wax paper (no, really - but some other stick-resistant material may work too)
Tool list:
Small philips screwdrivers (Either a small multitool set or some jeweler's drivers are in order - the shroud is attached to the front plate with some fairly small screws)
Dremel, and assorted bits (at least cut-off discs, more stuff if you lack other tools and need to substitute)
Drill press or mill (or dremel, if you're stuck)
Straight file (...or dremel as well I guess, if you don't have one of these for some reason)
Tin snips (timesaver, but you can get away with just the file)
This section is much shorter and more vague than the first part, mostly because the work here is a lot less absolute and more subject to fit checking and cutting/filing as necessary for your case. It will also differ in implementation more widely based on the tools you have available, so I will simply present which areas of the frontplate you're going to have to deal with and how I approached them (or should've, in hindsight, if my method sucked).
There are three basic locations on the frontplate that you're going to have to address before you'll be able to mount both the stock plates and the MCW60's at the same time. Firstly you're going to need to cut and adjust the main heatsink wells, then you're going to have to cut space for the MCW60's "wings", and lastly you'll have to do something about those pesky tall pins on the top edge of the front plate (they'll get in the way of the tubing and barbs otherwise).
Before you start hacking away at the plate though, remove the plastic shroud (and fan, if you feel like it) and then you'll have to do something about the very tacky thermal pads located on the underside. If you just leave those as-is, I guarantee you're going to have those pads frosted with metal shavings by the end of this procedure. My solution was to stick pieces of wax paper to all the relevant areas, but this made the entire plate cutting process a whole lot more awkward with paper flapping everywhere. Instead, you may want to consider carefully peeling the thermal pads off temporarily and sitting them on some wax paper (or similar) while you do the work. Some of the thermal pads are a lot less tacky, and more prone to falling apart - these can't easily be wax papered or removed and reapplied, so I cut up an old graphite thermal pad I pulled off some mosfets in some device I disassembled awhile ago and used that instead. Those voltage regulators get mighty hot though, and I plan to try and track down a better thermal pad for those - the gap is too thick for straight thermal paste, so make sure whatever you do it has at least some thickness to it. If you have a better solution for those, go for it. After you've dealt with the thermal pads, it's time to start cutting.
Firstly, the wells. If you take one of your MCW60's and position it over one of the heatsink positions on the frontplate, you'll get a pretty good idea of what needs to get hacked out here. The four corner passthrough holes that the GPU heatsinks normally sit in will have to go, as well as a portion of the surrounding rectangular area. One of the wells will only require the corner holes removed and a small amount of surrounding material, whereas the other smaller well will require a little more cutting to fit. The best way to tackle this area is to perform the major cuts with your dremel and a cut-off disc (it'll probably take you more than one, if your luck is anything like mine) and then to switch to the file to fine-tune the edges that aren't quite there when you perform your test-fit later. The procedure will probably take awhile, but unless you have access to some fancy milling equipment I couldn't think of an easy way to speed it up.
Once you're satisfied with your wells (or at least think they're close) you're going to need to make space for the wings that protrude from the sides of the MCW60. While you could always lop them off - that precludes installation of the block on some other cards and so I would advise against that. The work we do here doesn't seriously compromise the frontplate in any way either, it just takes time. If you place your block above the now-cut well, you'll see the two points where the extended wings require more space than the main body of the waterblock. As it happens, the height of these wings is such that you don't need to cut all the way through the heatsink below them to get clearance - just getting the offending section down to just thinner than the lowest parts of the frontplate is probably enough. The best tool to use here is, of course, a mill - but without access to that a combination of either creative use of a drill press or a dremel will eventually get the job done.
Once you've cut space for the wings, all that's left is to hack out some of the pins at the top of the plate that would prevent us from attaching barbs to our waterblocks (and that wouldn't do a whole lot of good, now would it?). Initially I tried filing these by hand, but it was awkward and slow going. The much faster solution is to take a pair of tin snips to the pins and do most of the cutting that way, followed by touchup afterwards with a file to clean up the cuts and flatten everything out. In terms of how many pins to cut and how deep to cut them - I went overkill here personally, just to make sure I'd have a lot of clearance for the large 1/2" fittings I use. In truth, you probably (even for the large fittings) only need to shorten the pegs down to about 4-5mm, and as to which ones to cut you can take a look at the image below of the modified cooler to get an idea which ones. Gabe's original post and images did not remove this many pins - so you can go and take a look there and decide for yourself how many you want to take off. Considering you're removing all the heat of the GPUs from the card (and they'll be running at much lower temperature) you can probably get away with fewer pins if you want to make sure the blocks will fit easily.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...tplate_cut.jpg
Once you've modded all three sections, you can test-fit by sitting the frontplate in the right position on the card and checking if the blocks will seat correctly. If not - get back to hacking at that card. If they do seat - great. Now all you have to do is clean everything up, reattach the thermal pads, mount the backplates together, and then mount the GPUs with the thermal paste of your choice as detailed at the end of part I. As mentioned there, you can apply a little more pressure to the GPU blocks if you're using the stock plates because they make the entire card more rigid.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...overview_2.jpg
And there you have it - one 4870 X2 watercooled and ready to game. Tube up the blocks as you see fit, fill you loop, boot to windows and check temperatures - My GPUs sit in the 35-40 c region depending on load and how long I've been running them. Also verify that the cooling for the secondary components is still working adequately, and that all the temperatures are at least below the 80 or 90 degree point, if possible (the VDDC temps may be higher, up to 110c or so if you're testing with furmark or something). GPU-Z handles reading all the sensors of the 4870 X2 quite nicely.
EDIT:
My friend complained when I skipped posting a picture of the card in the loop, so here it is. Ignore the odd red/pink two-tone tube colouring, half is new and half is old and the water wetter + dye have stained the old tubing slightly. The picture is from just after filling the loop, doing bleeding - so some bubbles are still in the loop at this point. And yes, for those who are wondering, that is a 4870 X2 in a socket 939 system - 4800+ X2 @ 3.0Ghz if you were wondering ;). Waiting for nehalem before I upgrade the rest of the system to match the new 4870 X2.
http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/o...case_bleed.jpg
