First post, by tauro
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Hi everybody.
I recently started to do some tests with this PCI Banshee but I became very worried about its temperature.
It's puny original heatsink
So I looked and and I looked for a better heatsink, and in a strike of luck, I tried the stock Intel socket 370 heatsink and... it fits perfectly!
The problem now is, how to mount it? There's very little space and no mounting holes. My strategy is to use a weak epoxy on the four external corners, while on the center I use a high end thermal paste. It's a method I used on other hardware and while it's not hard to remove afterwards, it keeps the heatsink in place, even this big one. I don't think there's any way to fit a bigger heatsink with all these caps and ICs around it, so this might be as good as it gets.
This is the end product
As you can see I also added a small heatsink on the MOSFET, which gets uncomfortably hot too.
So... what about the temps now?
They aren't great. I'm measuring them with a thermistor on the other side of the PCB, right on the other side where the GPU is. The max temperature it reaches is about 60°C/140°F, but mostly stays slightly below at 58°C/137°F. If one measures the temperature on the heatsink side, it's much lower.
It now takes two PCI slots...
I added a small fan (in series with 5 diodes, and it's still too noisy for my taste) the temperature stays below 45°C but now it takes 3 PCI slots. With a 90mm fan it would have taken 4 slots...
The MOSFET reaches around 55°C/131°F, and it stays about there. While it would be better to lower its temperature, at less than 60°C it's well within the specifications (-65 to 175°C) Full datasheet.
What do you think about these temps? Is 60°C/140°F good enough for a Banshee? I couldn't find a TCASE value for the chip. Should I also go with the fan and lose 3 PCI slots? Is there a better alternative? I don't dare to imagine what the original temps were with that original heatsink... has anybody ever measured them?
