I don't use heat sinks, just place a fan on top of the two cards.

I think what you quoted is more aimed at modern power hungry cpu's and gpu's.

The Voodoo2 doesn't consume that much power so these heatsinks should be fine.

Thank you very much for your answer guys...! 😀

Mau1wurf1977, using a fan is a great solution and probably that's what I will probably be using if I won't find a way to use the heat sinks... but the system is already loud with 3 fans inside and I would be happier if I could use a passive cooling system...

these are the heatsinks that I want to use:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171060626510?ssPage … 984.m1439.l2649

NitroX infinity, do you think that using the adhesive tape that I mentioned above with these heatsinks, would be OK for passive cooling? Or by using it I would be damaging the Voodoo2's CPU chips...? 🙁

If you know any other (safer) way of attaching the heatsinks guys, please let me know... 😊

Those are ok but it is best to get rather think coolers that are wider to cover more area while being compact. As for removal of these coolers later you will need to warm them up before trying to pull them off. The fan method works well enough but some people do like having more or no fan at all.

In general I'm not a fan of thermal tape if it can be avoided, even for applications where it is appropriate (and I think in this case you should be fine). I'd suggest thermal adhesive instead - I know that both Arctic Silver and Arctic (they are very much different companies) make suitable compounds that would work for your application.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I don't use heat sinks, just place a fan on top of the two cards.

How did you mount the fan securely inside the case so that it would blow directly onto the two cards? I didn't realize that these cards would generate enough heat to cause damage even while being run in SLI.

JoeCorrado wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

I don't use heat sinks, just place a fan on top of the two cards.

How did you mount the fan securely inside the case so that it would blow directly onto the two cards? I didn't realize that these cards would generate enough heat to cause damage even while being run in SLI.

Slot exhaust fan 😀 IBM PC-300PL - Diamond powered!

Most Voodoo2 don't have cooling because they are fine without it. All they need is a little airflow.

And if not a slot fan, many modern cases have front or side panel fans that can handle the expansion card region of the case; usually designed with more modern graphics cards in mind.

Ah, sure enough, either of those solutions would work! Should have thought of that myself.

I'll try adding a case fan first and hopefully that will cool both cards with just the single fan. My case is one of those with lots of mesh all around. Didn't really care for all of the vents everywhere at first, but it sure does make cooling and adding extra fans more convenient.

I don't use a case, always an open test bench because I change hardware so often 😀

I just rest the fan on top of both cards.

Thank you very much for your answers! 😁 I don't really want to use adhesive paste in case I decide to remove them in the future... I imagine it would be a mess. I thought of a different solution... If i use adhesive tape, like the one I mention below, on the frame (perimeter) of the heatsink and in the middle I will use thermal paste like Arctic Silver 5... Would that be better...?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-M-long-1-2cm-wide … =item2a2ea3021d

ViiMaster wrote:

Thank you very much for your answers! 😁 I don't really want to use adhesive paste in case I decide to remove them in the future... I imagine it would be a mess. I thought of a different solution... If i use adhesive tape on the frame (perimeter) of the heatsink and in the middle I will use thermal paste like Arctic Silver 5... Would that be better...?

Adhesive tape isn't exactly "neat" to remove - you can still risk tearing the chip up/off. I wouldn't suggest wasting the time to make a "border" of tape and then encasing AS5 within it. Honestly I'm doubting that you need heatsinks for these cards in the first place, but figure if you're going to do it permanently, do it right. 😊

Did a quick look to find the "official" Voodoo2 coolers (back in the day you could buy an aftermarket heatsink that was designed for the Voodoo2), found this instead:
http://www.billsworkshop.com/techtips/v2fan_2.html

Another thought that comes to mind is getting a heatsink that fit the primary chips, putting AS5 (or similar on them), and then using large enough zipties to secure them to the card (the zip-tie has to go around the entire card). It'd be removable in the future, but it wouldn't be "perfect" looking (because you'd have zipties on the card); also make sure whatever heatsink you find isn't so heavy as to risk damage to the card.

obobskivich wrote:

Did a quick look to find the "official" Voodoo2 coolers (back in the day you could buy an aftermarket heatsink that was designed for the Voodoo2), found this instead:
http://www.billsworkshop.com/techtips/v2fan_2.html

This one must vibrate a lot! As for more or less mass-produced cooling solutions, there are:

Tennmax cooler http://tdfx.de/pic/stealth_v2cooler_01.JPG
Pure 3D II cooler http://www.3dgw.com/review/pure3d2/pure3dii.jpg
A-MAX Technology VP510 http://tdfx.de/pic/vp510_05_t.JPG
Gainward Dragon 3000 http://tdfx.de/pic/Dragon3000_05_t.JPG

RacoonRider wrote:

This one must vibrate a lot!

My guess is the "wire ties" version is probably better than the bolted-on version; IME wire-ties, string, etc tend to do a good job of not transferring vibration/noise as long as they aren't cinched down too hard (so the fan has some wiggle room). I don't know if this is actually true in this case - I'm speaking more from attaching fans to CPU heatsinks or other projects like that. The Tennmax cooler is what I was originally looking for - thanks for posting that! 😀

The A-MAX/Gainward solutions looks like the same end-result as what ViiMaster is proposing - just attaching small passive sinks to the chips. Unless I'm missing something.

Right... I will think about it a bit more and let you know what I will decide... One more thing... Is there a program that can measure the voodoo2 temperature? So in case I do either the fan or the heatsink solution, I want to have before and after temp results...

by the way, these cooling solutions back in the day looked very nice! 😀

I will look into temperatures when I start with my Voodoo 2 scaling project. I will use a digital thermal probe. One of those you stick into meat 😀

I also have a fan controller with 2 thermal sensors, I could stick them onto one of the chips.

But which chip should I go for?

RacoonRider wrote:

This one must vibrate a lot! As for more or less mass-produced cooling solutions, there are: […]
Show full quote

obobskivich wrote:

Did a quick look to find the "official" Voodoo2 coolers (back in the day you could buy an aftermarket heatsink that was designed for the Voodoo2), found this instead:
http://www.billsworkshop.com/techtips/v2fan_2.html

This one must vibrate a lot! As for more or less mass-produced cooling solutions, there are:

Tennmax cooler http://tdfx.de/pic/stealth_v2cooler_01.JPG
Pure 3D II cooler http://www.3dgw.com/review/pure3d2/pure3dii.jpg
A-MAX Technology VP510 http://tdfx.de/pic/vp510_05_t.JPG
Gainward Dragon 3000 http://tdfx.de/pic/Dragon3000_05_t.JPG

I have done a mod like this years ago with a 80mm fan and vibration wasn't a problem. Just needs to be tight and done right.

ViiMaster wrote:

Right... I will think about it a bit more and let you know what I will decide... One more thing... Is there a program that can measure the voodoo2 temperature? So in case I do either the fan or the heatsink solution, I want to have before and after temp results...

by the way, these cooling solutions back in the day looked very nice! 😀

I'm pretty sure the Voodoo2 doesn't have any sort of hardware thermal monitoring capability - I don't think that really started to become prevalent until a few years later. You'd have to measure the temperature externally, which has its own sets of compromises (you're measuring the package surface, not an internal probe within the chip's logic, and depending on what you have for measurement it may not be able to contact very securely with the package or parts of the sensor may be exposed to open-air on the other side). Still, better than nothing if you're trying to collect data.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But which chip should I go for?

My completely wild-*** guess is the middle chip - my reasoning is that on cards that I've seen with only one heatsink/fan it tends to be on the middle chip, so I assume that one requires the most cooling and/or heats the most during operation (and I'm working on the notion that its best to have the "worst case scenario" data). I have no idea if that's accurate or not though.

I have absolutely no idea what the temp limit would be for those chips though; so even if we had measurement data about temps, there's nothing to compare it against. I'm not saying don't collect the data, just that with the data in hand it creates a new question/problem to be answered. 🤣

On a Voodoo2 the 'CK' chip is the framebuffer and the 'BE' chips are the texture mapping units. If my understanding of them is correct, the framebuffer does most of the work and should get the hottest.

Regarding the Tennmax cooler; there are two versions; one for regular cards and one for STB/3dfx cards (because they use solid state capacitors).