First post, by TheAbandonwareGuy
- Rank
- Oldbie
So some of you might remember I used to own like 200 plus graphics cards. In all that time I never found a working 9700, of any variant. Every single one I was able to get my hands on (at least 5 different ones) was defective. I come to read later that apparently the shim around the GPU die is actually too tall causing the factory cooling solution to come out of contact with the GPU core, so essentially every 9700 is factory defective in terms of cooling.
Well today I was at a thrift store and I found a clamshell dell with some variant of 9700 in it. Not sure which, I checked to see if it posted then cut power to come make this post. Has a bronze color cooler which I've never seen before, these are usually flat black.
Point being did the community ever come up with a good solution for keeping these cards working? The most common suggestion I saw was filing down the shim around the GPU package edge to lower it, but that seems really sketchy. I think I said in one of those threads there must be a way to lower the cooler surface down to the cure rather than modifying the GPU itself and risking damaging what is at this point basically the unicorn of early 2000s performance graphics cards. I floated the idea of using a high performance thermal pad though IIRC I got some pushback on that idea but I cant remember what it was.
Another solution would be aftermarket cooling, and if I can't find a good way to keep the factory setup I might go that route but I'd like to explore stock adjacent options first.
RetroEra: Retro Gaming Podcast and Community: https://discord.gg/kezaTvzH3Q
Cyb3rst0rm's Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/naTwhZVMay
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction
