It's crazy how much these things go for now. Retro anything has shot up in price.

Prices are pretty stupid, I agree. I've seen GeForce FX 5200s sell for over $50. It wasn't long ago that you couldn't even give these away.

Slap the cooler on a voodoo 2 and commit ultimate sacrilige.

I bought a Quadro variant with that cooler . It was supposed to be working, but was DOA with similar symptoms . Starting to wonder if that cooler design actually looks better than it performs . I have 3 working FX 5900 variants and none of them has that cooler design .

EDIT : Corrected typo

Photos don't do this cooler justice. The fins are THICK and metal is extremely dense and heavy. The weight feels like copper instead of aluminum.

The backplate too is extremely heavy too and not just for show.

As a rule, whenever I see "untested" in a classified, I read "not working".

mihai wrote on 2021-08-24, 21:18:

As a rule, whenever I see "untested" in a classified, I read "not working".

Of course. It's still nice to have this unit with the stock cooler. Usually when I see them the fins to cool the memory are either damaged or missing. This one is in excellent cosmetic condition.

These heatsink design is poorly designed. Low density fins and radiating out in spoke-like slows the air down on exit. And not covered let air escape eariler instead of channeled through fins. Plus it is painted top and bottom hinders heat transfer too.
Modify using a heat pipe heatsink. Lighter and best performance and best of all quieter.

Cheers,

I think it's iconic for the time and very attractive. This is also the dawn of double-slot coolers and I don't think any of the OEMs knew what to do. It was only a few years prior that GPUs didn't come with heat sinks at all.

Heatsink design is fine. Memory on FX5900 does not require any additional cooling.

Anyway, these cards can be repaired with high success rate. Unlike something like 8800GTX.

This would require the BGA memory to be removed and replaced. This is very difficult and has a high risk of damaging other parts of the board if not careful. I don't do enough of this kind of repair to be confident that I won't destroy it in the process.

I've replaced BGA chips before. Soldering them on isn't difficult. It's removing them is a challenge as you can easily blow away surrounding components.

FX5900 and Quadro 3000 both use unreliable DDR chips. You're better off with an FX1000 or FX2000 or FX5800/FX5800 Ultra (the FX5800 Ultra was a good card with a vacuum cleaner heatsink that only helped squeeze maybe 50 more mhz of core and memory and came at the expense of having a turbine engine in your PC... You can use pretty skimpy HS/F combos if you clock these cards reasonable. 400/800 is reasonable).

If you do get an FX5900 or Quadro 3000 in a working state then the benefit with them is is the better mounting holes which gives you a whole lot more options for a good after market HS/F.

I considered re-balling my Quadro 3000's RAM... There are 16 chips total and the RAM is very expensive unless you find a donor board. Not to mention the mentioned skill that is required for this kind of job.

mockingbird wrote on 2021-08-26, 01:15:

I considered re-balling my Quadro 3000's RAM... There are 16 chips total and the RAM is very expensive unless you find a donor board. Not to mention the mentioned skill that is required for this kind of job.

You and I need more friends. Who own BGA rework stations.

mockingbird wrote on 2021-08-26, 01:15:

FX5900 and Quadro 3000 both use unreliable DDR chips. You're better off with an FX1000 or FX2000 or FX5800/FX5800 Ultra

I missed out on a 5800 Ultra that appeared on eBay a few years ago. It was an auction and I happened to miss it as it ended. It was one of the original review samples and came in a "cinematic" film roll tin. Maybe someone here is the person who won it. 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-08-26, 01:48:

You and I need more friends. Who own BGA rework stations.

I was going to try my hand at it with a heatgun. I bought the stencil for the DDR chips a while back, and I have a donor card (a 5900XT someone mutilated by drilling their own mounting holes through traces - though I don't know for sure that the RAM is even good). Heatguns are too strong in terms of air force for very delicate work, but it should be able to do this kind of job as long as you tape around the IC with kapton tape so that the small components don't become desoldered and blow away from the force of the air.

mockingbird wrote on 2021-08-26, 01:15:

I missed out on a 5800 Ultra that appeared on eBay a few years ago. It was an auction and I happened to miss it as it ended. It was one of the original review samples and came in a "cinematic" film roll tin. Maybe someone here is the person who won it. 😀

Keep your eye open in local ads for Quadro FX1000 or FX2000... Either are fine. Heck, the FX1000 does 400 core without breaking a sweat and out of my 5 FX1000s, only one has the "GC22" suffix ram, and the rest are GC1K, which means they do 800Mhz perfectly fine (The GC22 does 800Mhz fine as well).

You set Rivatuner to 'mod' the card to a 5800 with the 'straps' option, enable coolbits, and then overclock the 3D to 400/800 (leave the 2D at the regular clock). This way you can get a FX5800 for less than $50.

mockingbird wrote on 2021-08-26, 02:00:

I bought the stencil for the DDR chips a while back, and I have a donor card (a 5900XT someone mutilated by drilling their own mounting holes through traces...

What are you implying?

😁 😁 😁

mockingbird wrote on 2021-08-26, 02:00:

Heatguns are too strong in terms of air force for very delicate work, but it should be able to do this kind of job as long as you tape around the IC with kapton tape so that the small components don't become desoldered and blow away from the force of the air.

I've experimented with this technique on dead boards before and it's still risky even with Kapton tape. The surrounding SMD components can still desolder beneath the tape and move or create other problems. You'll need a lot of flux which also ends up getting blown under the tape, etc. It's possible to do but is very risky without experience.

I might attempt such a repair if I had a pre-heater; this makes BGA rework with a heat gun much safer because the board won't cool as quickly and you can get away with using less air from the heat gun. The ground plane would instead assist by retaining heat rather than acting as a sink as well.

You make some very good points, thanks.

Heh, honest, didn't see that post... Don't you dare do that to that PowerVR card... Got the same card here, BTW.

Also, check your PM.

If you have proper heat gun and some experience, you can do a lot 😉 https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=101801