Reply 40 of 59, by RacoonRider
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- Oldbie
OK, now that the heatsink plaster has solidified, I'm going to tell/show you, what this has been all about.
Since the moment I installed 2 slot exhaust fans and one extra intake fan, I had to put Aureal Vortex 2 into a drawer and use the onboard Crystal sound chip. With most games it was OKish, but some, Grim Fandango in particular, had awful sound. It can be described as scratching in random moments and speech/music repeating itself while location is loading (every 15 seconds that is). Moreover, the exhaust fans did not cool the chips (and they never could), so the hangups I told about before were still there, only it took much more time for them to appear (1,5-2 hours, sometimes more).
So I came with a decision to find heatsinks for main chips and to remove one exhaust cooler in favor of the Vortex card. Here comes the difficulty: There are only 3 PCI slots and they are situated to the top side of the riser, so the only place for the blower is in the lowest, ISA-only, slot. That is in no way optimal, but time will tell.
The master Voodoo 2 card was placed next to slot exhaust fan as it is supposed (though not confirmed) to produce more heat. Next to it is the Vortex card - it's better to place less heating parts among more heating to spread the heat a little. Next goes the secondary Voodoo 2 card and that's it. Haven't tested the setup yet, but it looks promising.
Since this time I forced the screws in to get rid of the ATX chassis on the back, I had to remove left-side cover and V770 card. So here are some pictures I could not make when they were in place and, since I took it out anyway, there's a picture of V770 with an NLX backplate as well.
Fan goes to the bottom - there are only 3 PCI slots in this giant computer
From bottom to top: fan, first Voodoo, Vortex, second Voodoo (triple "V" 😁)
Diamond Viper V770 (TNT2) with NLX backplate: