a_h_adl wrote on 2024-02-12, 22:17:

Awesome work and documentation! Now we need a before and after temperature comparison 😀

I don't have numbers, but before you could barely touch the heatsink after letting the Quake time demo run for a bit, now it's barely warm 😀 even the underside of the card is significantly cooler. I'll probably attach a thermocouple and get a few numbers at some point though!

ok, thermocouple numbers are in!
On top of the heatsink at the die, ambient temp 71F

No Fans: 136F stable during GLQuake
Fans: 86F stable during GLQuake

Results!

I put this cooler from Gelid Solutions, and the voodoo heatsink keeps it cool. The back of the graphic no longer burns as much.

I have a V3 2000 AGP in my 2nd Retro PC (P3-450, QDI 440BX) and wonder how I can remove the passive cooler because it looks like it is glued?

eliot_new wrote on 2025-10-02, 19:02:

I have a V3 2000 AGP in my 2nd Retro PC (P3-450, QDI 440BX) and wonder how I can remove the passive cooler because it looks like it is glued?

It's glued into place with thermal epoxy and requires a lot of care to take off without damaging the chip or the traces on the board connecting to the Voodoo 3 GPU's BGA balls. I have done it this way:

... jammed a craft knife blade in an edge I could see light through and put the card in the freezer for an hour, pulled it out and pushed the blade in a little further, then squished a second blade in between the heatsink and first blade until it went pop.

The important thing is to make sure you're applying force only to the top plastic of the GPU and not to the PCB part of the chip or the video card PCB, the traces and solder are fragile.

Alternatively, you could just get a slot bracket cooler and cool the card with a 92mm / 120mm fan instead, less risk to the card and it'll cool the RAM and voltage regulator as well as just the GPU. The original heatsink is well sized for the V3 2000 GPU, it just benefits greatly from active cooling.