Kahenraz wrote on 2021-10-05, 00:47:

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 […]
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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.

IMG_20211004_204459_resize_42.jpg

Edit:

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

IMG_20211004_204930_resize_74.jpg

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

IMG_20211004_205656_resize_70.jpg

Haha, yes, you're not the first one removing the heatsink. Unfortunately you have a version with 6 ns ram, not 5.5 ns RAM - but no reason to cry. Just renew the thermal paste, add a fan and maybe some RAM heatsinks and a heatsink with fan on the backside (best done with some kind of self-sticking thermal pads, don't use any kind of glue).

kind regards
soggi

What is the advantage of 5.5ns RAM on the Voodoo 3? Easier overclocking to 3500 speeds?

I finished modding my card with a copper heatsink and fan. I also added a small heatsink to the back. The little heatsink would get hot with the old passive aluminum heatsink on the front but now it only gets a little warm to the touch.

I don't think the memory needs any heatsinks. They don't seem to get hot.

The fan is 35mm x 10mm and this is enough for it to overhang the neighboring PCI slot. I'll have to see if I can find something thinner to avoid this. I also think that reversing the fan to blow onto the heatsink would provide better cooling but this is fine for now.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-10-05, 03:08:

What is the advantage of 5.5ns RAM on the Voodoo 3? Easier overclocking to 3500 speeds?

6 ns RAM provides 166 MHz for sure, 5.5 ns RAM ~182 MHz - it is more overclockable, obviously.

In my opinion the small passive heatsink on the backside doesn't provide appropriate cooling for high-end OC and you'll also need RAM heatsinks, if you want to do so.

kind regards
soggi

There are all kinds of unpopulated pads on the back. I don't know what would happen if these are shorted so I didn't risk using a larger heatsink.

You wouldn't short the pads and solder points with a usual self-sticking thermal pad as they aren't conductive. As said above, I had such a cooling solution myself back in the day.

kind regards
soggi

To my surprise my Voodoo3 3000 with 5.5ns RAM is only my second best overclocker. It reaches 200MHz without artifacting or glitching while one of my V3 3k with 6ns RAM reaches 210MHz without any issues. (Both even go a few MHz higher before consistently glitching but I didn't feel comfortable running them right at the edge.) The cards both had an 80mm fan blowing directly on them for the overclocks. The only modification I made to both cards was replacing that thermal foil pad with thermal paste.

This is of course purely anecdotal but it goes to show that sometimes chips will work much faster than what they're rated for. I got very lucky with my card I think because when overclocking all parts have to play along. The OC will only go as far as the slowest chip allows. Having eight 6ns chips that will do 210MHz on the same board is unlikely but evidently it does happen.