sgt76 wrote:

That single large fan idea looks good. I've already lost one 5500, but I dunno whether it's to heat or general old age. I'm thinking of getting maybe one of those pci slot fan blower thingys and putting that right under the card, or make one myself out of 2-3 80mm fans.

You can always toss it in the oven and bake it, or for more precision use a heat gun.
My 8800GT was revived 5+ times that way before I decided the effort wasn't worth putting off buying a new card.

Sliderider, I think you misunderstood ProfessorProfessorson. The pictures are of his previous Voodoo5, with the custom fans and adaptors, but his current card just has the stock setup. 😀

This is some good info since I just bought a V5 5500 AGP for myself. I think I'll be okay with the stock cooling since my case has a side panel fan; if not I'll probably try to mod the case or get a slot fan before I mess with the card itself.

By the way, I like your name Professor; Community rules 😁

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

Currently I am just using the stock fans, and they seem to do the job fine, however the case I am using has nice fans and good airflow. The last time I had a pci Voodoo 5 I did however swap the fans out using special fan adapter plates:

Man, that's a sweet setup Professor.

TheLazy1 wrote:

You can always toss it in the oven and bake it, or for more precision use a heat gun.
My 8800GT was revived 5+ times that way before I decided the effort wasn't worth putting off buying a new card.

I'm thinking of doing that...the card's already been dismantled but I never seem to have the time to give it a good toasting.

I have a "dead one" too, but that one is far more cooperative. It even enters 3D on non-cloackspread systems but shows a broken mouse cursor in some games. I may bake it too. But the other is still doing fine.

I wonder if the capacitors used on Voodoo5 were one of the many defective brands? If I was at home, I'd look up the manufacturer...

I have my Voodoo 5 installed in an Obsidian3d Graphite system. I had to leave the top off due to the height of the card/power connector, which exposes the air intake fan on the back of the case as well. My dog, a Lhasa Apso puppy (6 months old,) seems to enjoy standing in front of the fan...and growls at it too! 🤣 funny stuff...

I would just replace the stock cooling with almost anything on hand, mainly chipset coolers. I got both versions of the stock coolers and the avvid coolers are smaller than the thermalsheild versions (stock with 3dfx stickers on the fans) but neither really work :s So I used matching chipset coolers that I drilled and bolt mounted. A little arctic silver 5 and two zalman vram coolers. I hit 200mhz rock solid but have gone up to 216mhz but unstable without artifacts. I am currently modding a v3 2k pci.

ProfessorProfessorson wrote:

You can purchase the plates on ebay for a few bucks last time I checked. They were offered in different colors.

Can you tell me what words to search for on ebay for these? Are these glued onto the GPU's or are they using the mounting holes? I would like to learn more of how these are attached, what model they are, and how it has worked out.

TheLazy1 wrote:

You can always toss it in the oven and bake it, or for more precision use a heat gun.
My 8800GT was revived 5+ times that way before I decided the effort wasn't worth putting off buying a new card.

I've thought of doing similar to some dead cards. However don't you melt the can capacitors, vga port plastic, etc? What temperature do you run your oven?

I do have a heat gun, but not exactly sure what to do and not do.

Yes, the oven method has some disadvantages... it won't outright melt the plastics, but it will soften them so you have to be careful about handling things until it cools. And it will also sometimes cook the electrolytic caps. (The 8800GT can usually get away with it, because those tend to use solid polymer caps, which are a bit more heat tolerant.)

If you have a heat gun, use that. However, since it doesn't really have heat regulation, I recommend going to Harbor Freight (or whatever your favorite cheap Chinese tool dealer) and pick up an infrared thermometer for judging temperatures.

Also, it's not so much an issue on the V5 since it's a pretty spread-out design, but in cases where there are caps and such near the chip you're trying to reflow, use aluminum foil to make a heat shield... take a piece, cut out a square in the middle of it to fit around the edges of the BGA chip you're reflowing, then bend the edges of it up into a dish shape.

Good ideas! I'll try those out.

I've installed a set of EC-VC-RI-BL mini UFO coolers on my Voodoo5 5500. Along with some memory heatsinks, I also added a Zalman ZM-RHS1 for the back side of each GPU. The main coolers and the memory heatsinks are warm to touch when the card is running 3D. But the Zalman's under the GPU's are very hot. Can't touch them but for a few seconds before you have to let go. 😲

Does this sound right? Is the Voodoo5 supposed to run this hot? Could it be that my top coolers are not cooling? I feel like it's just a really hot card and wasting away my power bill idling in my PC.

Don't fret, it just runs hot. Voodoo Banshee on up are just hot cards in general.

Roger. Do these old cards have temp sensors that a windows tool can read? I didn't find anything in google land besides 3dfx tools, and that doesn't seem to report such data.

bytesaber wrote:

Roger. Do these old cards have temp sensors that a windows tool can read? I didn't find anything in google land besides 3dfx tools, and that doesn't seem to report such data.

Nope, back in the day people had to go by other methods. You could mount a fan that can blow over the card to help cool it. As bad as it looks there are much worse cards out there and the v5 is very doable to master.

On my V3 I mounted a CPU heatsink with analog thermometer. Not sure how accurate it is, but it's always showing about 40-45°C both at idle and full load.