appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-09, 10:02:

Also for comparison here are my STB Riva128 AGP and ASUS Riva128 PCI cards - the former has no heatsink, the latter does (but not a shitty transistor/vrm heatsink..)

What's with the dual DIN/composite connectors?

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-03-09, 10:08:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-09, 08:05:

That heat sink sure dont look like factory 🤣.

Looks like a Mosfet heat sink that someone decided would be perfect for the 128, tho I do question just how warm the 128 would get I doubt hot would describe it 😁

Pretty sure it would have great DOS compatibility too, nice little retro card !

I have a couple AGP 128 cards with that heatsink. For some reason I think it might have been a Gateway OEM card but have nothing to back it up.

The Riva 128 PCI card rocks in DOS btw.

I use it in my Cx5x86-120 PC running MS-DOS 6.22. It's amazingly good.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-09, 10:12:

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-09, 10:02:

Also for comparison here are my STB Riva128 AGP and ASUS Riva128 PCI cards - the former has no heatsink, the latter does (but not a shitty transistor/vrm heatsink..)

What's with the dual DIN/composite connectors?

It's a VIVO card, they are for Composite/S-Video In/Out.

I also have the Riva128ZX AGP version of that same ASUS card..

The Riva 128 does get pretty dang hot, I just put a heatsink on mine the other day. And yes what a great DOS card.

I did some test with my Riva 128 and it gets really hot! If anything, it needs a larger heatsink!

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-11, 17:37:

I did some test with my Riva 128 and it gets really hot! If anything, it needs a larger heatsink!

That heatsink is pretty discoloured already. I like that violet colour STB's black heatsinks seem to get after some time.

What was it originally? Black?

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-11, 18:52:

What was it originally? Black?

Most likely. Same thing tends to happen on Voodoo3 cards.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-09, 08:05:

That heat sink sure dont look like factory 🤣.

Looks like a Mosfet heat sink that someone decided would be perfect for the 128, tho I do question just how warm the 128 would get I doubt hot would describe it 😁

Pretty sure it would have great DOS compatibility too, nice little retro card !

I worked at computer stores in the 90's and I'd see heat sinks like this occasionally glued onto ICs (not TO220s they should be on).
Here's another example of the STB, from the VGA Museum. Maybe STB found out they ran hot and did this before getting custom-machined heat sinks that fit, or maybe they ran out of those.

Almost looks like the same card but the glue underneath the heat sink shows the clear difference.

It just odd as hell that they would use Mosfet cooling for a GPU cooler, I mean I guess it would provide a little bit of cooling but I doubt enough to make a huge difference.

It was enough for STB to decide to glue them on. My Riva 128 didn’t get hot enough to warrant a giant heat sink, but it did get warm.

This is mere speculation, but maybe someone somehow decided that a heatsink was need and they scrambled to comply and that was the only thing at hand.
Might well have been their first card ever with a heatsink.

But how and where that decision came to be? My Riva 128 is made by ELSA - stereotypes about anal Germans aside, but I'd assume they would have mounted a cooler if they deemed it at all possible.
Has anyone here compared the factory set frequency of that card and others?

There isn't a power source to mount a heatsink and fan. Heck there are no holes for mounting a heatsink period.

The original 128 was 100Mhz and the 128ZX was bumped up to 125mhz so maybe that speed bump version needed the heatsink added.

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-03-11, 21:34:

There isn't a power source to mount a heatsink and fan. Heck there are no holes for mounting a heatsink period.

Now, I loathe people who glue stuff to CPUs and GPUs as much as the next sane person, but it's not uncommon at all.
Roughly the same time, Permedia II and Voodoo Banshee had those, many ATIs - sans fan, that would have been excessive.

Oh, and I'd like it to be noted that the Creative Labs CT6760 Banshee wins silver for the second most primitive heatsink on an early 3d card:
https://www.electromyne.com/images/large/200160a.jpg

That heatsink is the same one that Creative used on their NVIDIA TNT 2 cards. Probably a cost saving measure that is woefully inadequate for the Banshee. That thing gets really hot!

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-11, 22:56:

That thing gets really hot!

OK, that would explain why the former owner of mine messed up the heatsink by improvising a fan on it.
To be fair to Creative Labs, they did release a batch with a nicer heatsink:
http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/cre … doo_banshee.jpg
But Diamond went like:
http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/dia … banshee_pci.jpg
(once again many thanks to Fabian of amoretro.de for providing all those high res photos!)

The Dell OEM Velocity 128 PCI I own came with one of those MOSFET heatsinks glued to it. Popped it off, removed all the glue I could and stuck a 40mm by 30mm by 5mm raspberry pi heatsink on it. Don't know how well it works because there seems to be an issue with the vbios (doesn't produce a image yet windows detects it when I have another card installed alongside and installs the drivers with no problem), so I gotta work that out first. It fits nicely though and I wager its more than adequate.

Here is an STB Velocity 128 for Gateway.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-11, 21:28:

...
But how and where that decision came to be? My Riva 128 is made by ELSA - stereotypes about anal Germans aside, but I'd assume they would have mounted a cooler if they deemed it at all possible.
Has anyone here compared the factory set frequency of that card and others?

I have an Elsa PCI variant ("Victory Erazor"), too, which came without any heatsink:
http://www.amoretro.de/wp-content/uploads/201 … ia_riva_128.jpg

I did however put one on the chip long time ago as it seemed to get way too hot to me.
It looks like the one on the Creative 3D Blaster Banshee at the link Cuttoon posted before.
It's a bit unlovely now that you can't see the chip anymore but heat-wise it can't hurt.

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-03-09, 08:23:

The heatsink is most likely factory. I have seen this exact heatsink on NIB Riva 128 cards before.
On vgamuseum.info there's a pic of the same card with the same heatsink.
Certain Asus and Miro Riva 128 came with a more professional looking heatsink as well.

Just replying even though it's already been answered.
I can confirm this is not added later by some user but these were manufactured like this. And yes it's really primitive.

Even though this is quite literally the most crappy graphics heatsink I ever did see (lol), it's still interesting from a hardware evolutionary perspective. Manufacturers were really in an experimental phase and VGA cooling evolved quite rapidly even from generation to generation. And those tinypuny heatsinks were perhaps something of a "oh, we need cooling, what do we have in the nearest box? Yes that's heatsinks don't ask just go get the glue!" thing xD

People would need to remember that cooling was not much of a thing back then. Case fans only started popping up regularly with the advent of ATX and tbh CPU cooling was not much more either, yet at least several years ahead of GPU cooling at the time.

Considering the entire reason that the Apple 3 failed so spectacularly was because Steve Jobs insisted on not including a fan, I think that this problem has been known for some time. The problem in that case was that the PCBs would warp from the heat and the chips would come loose from their sockets. Apple's advice at the time was too pick the computer up about an inch from the desk and drop it, to try and reseat the chips.