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Hardmod Success
I just wanted to post some thanks to everyone here who provided all the pictures and knowledge on doing these mods. I hardmodded a 3870 with trimmers for GPU and Memory voltage (to 1.6V and 2.05V respectively) and got a stable card running at 940/1210 using the stock cooler, it doesn't exceed 80 degrees C under load but I figure I pushed it enough. I was able to bench it at 1280 memory with some artifacts and 1210 without. While I was at it, I replaced many of the 180uf caps with 330uf, and added more 220uf caps in the spots where there were none. On the 2.5V plane I added 1x 2200uf cap to the top of the board (memory) and 2x 2200uf behind the board, so the board's capacitance increased about three-fold.
One thing I found was that my Weller WD1000M goes up to a max temperature of 850 degrees F. I found this was not sufficient to melt the solder used on the board (as I wanted to remove the 800uf caps, but I could not melt the solder!) so I had to just tack on a couple loose ones and glue them down.
I have 4 more water cooled cards I want to modify the same way, as I can push the voltage way up on those. I just learned from MSI Tech Support that they will NOT be adding a Northbridge multiplier into the K9A2 Platinum (V1) BIOS. They used to have it in a beta bios (1.13). They claim due to lack of hardware support which is complete crap. So I will be looking for another motherboard for my water cooled beast.
Work in progress...
Koolance PC4-1026SL Case, ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe BIOS 0602 - Video, CPU, Memory - Water Cooled
Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.6GHz with Koolance CPU-340 (o/c limited by 4 memory sticks maybe?)
4x mushkin 2gb 991593 in OCZ FlexXLC Water Blocks at 5-5-5-12-2T 2.2V DDR2-960
3x ATI Radeon HD 3870 @ 960/1250 @ 1.675V, custom capacitor mods, with Koolance VID-387, Catalyst 8.10
2x WD VelociRaptor SATA 10k 300GB RAID 0 on SB750(200MB/s throughput!)
Silverstone Zeus 1200W (single rail mode) Power Supply
Dell 3007WFP-HC, LG DVD, Razer Keyboard + Mouse, Vista Ultimate 64-Bit
FSB 240, CPU 1.4V 15x, Mem 2.2V, NB 1.3V 10x
System Showcase -
Koolance PC4-1026SL Case, MSI K9A2 Platinum with 1.6B3 BIOS
Northbridge, Southbridge, VRM, CPU, Video, Memory - Water Cooled (picture)
Phenom 9850 CPU @ 2888MHz with Koolance CPU-340
4x mushkin 2gb 991593 in OCZ FlexXLC Water Blocks at 5-5-5-12-2T 2.1V DDR2-960 (Sandra XII SP2c Mem Bandwidth 11.68GB/s)
4x ATI Radeon HD 3870 @ 975/1250 @ 1.675V, custom capacitor mods, with Koolance VID-387, Catalyst 8.6 HF1 | 16156 3dMark06 | screenshot
2x Fujitsu MAX3147RC SAS 15k 146GB RAID 0 (156MB/s throughput!)
SilverStone OP1200 (90A Single Rail) Power Supply
Dell 3007WFP-HC, LG DVD, Razer Keyboard + Mouse, Vista Ultimate 64-Bit
FSB 240, CPU 1.45V, Mem 2.1V, NB 1.3V, HT 1.3V
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