Even if you remove the pins, the heatsink still holds very well after all these years. I think it is best to leave it and mount some fan, should be more than enough.

Also - some V3 3000 have glued heatsink - the V3 3000 PCI SGR (the PCB has no holes for the pins). And some revisions of V3 3000 AGP as well, for example this one. http://hw-museum.cz/vga/355/3dfx-voodoo3-3000-agp-rev--c4

havli wrote on 2021-09-21, 08:24:

Even if you remove the pins, the heatsink still holds very well after all these years. I think it is best to leave it and mount some fan, should be more than enough.

Also - some V3 3000 have glued heatsink - the V3 3000 PCI SGR (the PCB has no holes for the pins). And some revisions of V3 3000 AGP as well, for example this one. http://hw-museum.cz/vga/355/3dfx-voodoo3-3000-agp-rev--c4

I tried to get the heatsink off - wanted to see if the thermal paste needed replacing or if it even had any but it was impossible to remove without damaging the card. I have the one in your picture (revision 4) but the heatsink still has two pins but I think they used glue in combination because the pins did absolutely nothing.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-09-21, 08:09:

Mine is pretty much glued (I tried removing the heatsink and gave up in fear of ripping the chip, considering this is my only Voodoo card that's working - I am set to find a working V2 as well but funds are short right now) and no signs of tampering beforehand. And yes, it's a standard STB branded 3000.

Uh...maybe you have a revision w/o push-pins like @red_avatar? All the V3 3000 I ever had were the ones with push-pins.

havli wrote on 2021-09-21, 08:24:

Even if you remove the pins, the heatsink still holds very well after all these years. I think it is best to leave it and mount some fan, should be more than enough.

In my opinion it's still worth to take down the heatsink, remove the tin foil and place some thermal paste instead of the foil - this will reduce the temperature significantly.

kind regards
soggi

soggi wrote on 2021-09-20, 22:15:

I really needed the sandwich cooling (V3 2k/3k has no SMD parts on the backside, V3 3500 does) to get to 200/200 (over 200 I got blue points/clouds, think this was the RAM) - w/o sandwich I came up to something like 175!?

kind regards
soggi

I actually modified a heatsink to clear all the SMD components on the back of a V3-3500. Also added RAM sinks. I gave that card away along with some other stuff a couple years before I got into retro computing though.

Nice...how far could you overclock the beast?

Yeah, I also sold my sandwich cooled V3 3000 nearly 20 years ago...before I came to collecting retro/vintage computer parts in the mid-late 2000s.

Because I was too lazy to sell some items, I still own five Voodoo3 cards (all standard AGP) - one 2000, two 3000 and two 3500 ... together with six Voodoo Graphics, one Voodoo Rush, seven Voodoo2 and one V5 5500 AGP, the latter is the only one which was acquired later for a collector's price (~120 EUR).

kind regards
soggi

You never mentioned your motherboard, is it Gigabyte?

appiah4 wrote on 2021-09-22, 08:56:

You never mentioned your motherboard, is it Gigabyte?

He said it's a P6F91i (it's a board from Freetech)

BTW to remove a glued heatsink from the voodoo3 you have to heat up it first and then use some pincers/tongs to rotate it (carefully but firmly), first in one and then in the opposite direction
At least, this worked for me

soggi wrote on 2021-09-21, 20:43:

PcBytes wrote on 2021-09-21, 08:09:

Mine is pretty much glued (I tried removing the heatsink and gave up in fear of ripping the chip, considering this is my only Voodoo card that's working - I am set to find a working V2 as well but funds are short right now) and no signs of tampering beforehand. And yes, it's a standard STB branded 3000.

Uh...maybe you have a revision w/o push-pins like @red_avatar? All the V3 3000 I ever had were the ones with push-pins.

Nope, it's the revision with golden push-pins, but the heatsink IS glued like hell.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-09-22, 10:34:

Nope, it's the revision with golden push-pins, but the heatsink IS glued like hell.

OK...this really bothered me...I took my two V3 3000 and removed the two brass pins. It took some enforcement by turning the heatsinks and then I could take them off and - oh wonder - there's a thermal pad...but for sure, I remember there was a tin foil ~20 years ago on the V3 3000 I described above (sandwich cooling). Maybe the previous owner(s) replaced them with the thermal pads or there are different solutions by default!?

If you have push-pins, it makes no sense to glue it...so I don't believe it's glued.

kind regards
soggi

Interesting seeing all these mixed cooling solutions on the Voodoo3. I'd reckon 3DFX basically just went with whatever was available to them seeing how for instance 3DFX also used different memory types and speeds on the same cards.
I nerer tried removing the heatsink of a V3 as I always assumed just adding a fan should be enough (and with the glueing of the heatsinks it seemed more risky then it was worth).

I think it depends a lot on the airflow as has well. I worry about using my Voodoo 3 in a small case tuned for quiet with low RPM fans as the entire case doesn't move much air by the expansion slots.

Tetrium wrote on 2021-10-01, 14:03:

I nerer tried removing the heatsink of a V3 as I always assumed just adding a fan should be enough (and with the glueing of the heatsinks it seemed more risky then it was worth).

As said above, if there are push-pins it's very likely that the heatsink is not glued, but seems to because of the self-sticking thermal pad. It's worth it to clean the heatsink + chip up and place some thermal paste between them.

kind regards
soggi

There are plenty of GPUs without push pins where a thermal epoxy of some kind was used and that worked just fine. But I agree with soggi that some kind of paste was probably used for better thermal conductivity and that's why it has push pins. A paste may have been chosen specifically because the GPU gets so hot.

Whether or not it was a paste originally, it appears to bonded and more of an adhesive now as described. It's also possible that some OEMs used a thermal epoxy in place of paste because that's what they had on hand at the time. Without photos it's difficult to know for sure.

One easy way to tell if it's a paste or an epoxy is to see if it melts in the presence of a citric acid solvent such as Goo Gone. This is how I remove thermal paste and it always works.

The V3 2000 usually has this kind of thermal epoxy between GPU and heatsink - I wouldn't try to remove it.

kind regards
soggi

The method recommended on overclockers.com back in the day for removing epoxied sinks was to bag the card, put it in the bottom of the deep freeze for several hours, then try twisting it off. The low temps are intended to shrink the metal more than the epoxy and start the bonds breaking, and also to make the epoxy brittle (While it's still cold)

All Voodoo3 3000 AGP cards I've ever had (nine or ten) have had the foil/tape plus brass pushpins to fix the cooler to the chip.
I found that replacing the foil/tape with thermal paste decreased the cards' temps by a few degrees.
Some late Voodoo3 3000 AGP apparently have their heatsink glued on with the same white epoxy(?) used on Voodoo3 2000 cards.
The Voodoo3 3000 PCI SGRAM have their heatsinks glued on with that epoxy(?) as well.

soggi wrote on 2021-09-22, 08:00:

Nice...how far could you overclock the beast? […]
Show full quote

Nice...how far could you overclock the beast?

Yeah, I also sold my sandwich cooled V3 3000 nearly 20 years ago...before I came to collecting retro/vintage computer parts in the mid-late 2000s.

Because I was too lazy to sell some items, I still own five Voodoo3 cards (all standard AGP) - one 2000, two 3000 and two 3500 ... together with six Voodoo Graphics, one Voodoo Rush, seven Voodoo2 and one V5 5500 AGP, the latter is the only one which was acquired later for a collector's price (~120 EUR).

kind regards
soggi

I don't remember exactly how far it could overclock. I do remember that the modded heatsink on the back got warm though.

soggi wrote on 2021-10-01, 16:10:

As said above, if there are push-pins it's very likely that the heatsink is not glued, but seems to because of the self-sticking […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote on 2021-10-01, 14:03:

I nerer tried removing the heatsink of a V3 as I always assumed just adding a fan should be enough (and with the glueing of the heatsinks it seemed more risky then it was worth).

As said above, if there are push-pins it's very likely that the heatsink is not glued, but seems to because of the self-sticking thermal pad. It's worth it to clean the heatsink + chip up and place some thermal paste between them.

kind regards
soggi

Yes, I'm definitely gonna be keeping all this info in mind 😀

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-01, 17:10:

I don't remember exactly how far it could overclock. I do remember that the modded heatsink on the back got warm though.

You had some fan on two sides? My sandwich cooled V3 3000 had fans on both sides and therefor ran extremely cool (heatsinks felt like room temperature while running) - as I mentioned before, most likely the RAM didn't get over 200 MHz w/o problems (blue dots/bubbles/clouds while benching the oc'ed card).

Maybe one day when I have more then two V3 3000, I will redo this sandwich cooling...

kind regards
soggi

I thought about modding my Voodoo 3 today which required the heatsink to be removed. But it looked like I'm not the first one to try!

I am not the original owner of this card. I don't know if they were successful yet but I can see a white thermal paste when looking at it from the side.

Edit:

Unfortunately I can't share my own experience with the OEM paste. The work has already been done for me. 😀

Here is a photo of my card with the thermal paste cleaned off.