Ghetto Mods penny ramsinks ROCK!

digitalwanderer

A friend turned me on to this page over at Ghetto Mods about how to make ramsinks out of pennies, thermal paste, & superglue.....and since I had a pretty sh&tty day yesterday I got a bit nutzy into some serious geeking to take my mind off it.

Anywho, I made 8 ramsinks of 4 pennies each and tossed 'em on my 64MB retail 8500. I didn't do anything to the GPU yet 'cept to pull the stock fan/cooler and attach it a bit better, so I ain't really worried that it can't do much over 286 yet, but my ram before could only clock to about 300...and that was with some artifacting. After the mod I've got it successfully clocked at 286/315 without ANY artifacting and I can take it up to 320 with only very minor artifacts....and I haven't even thrown an old fan on them yet!!!!


Folks, for thirty-two cents and some left over bits I highly recomend looking into this mod!

dipstick

Oh man, that is nuts. But I would try it if I hadn't bought some. Good to hear it went smoothly

digitalwanderer

Have you ever tried to make your own GPU cooler using nothing more than a chopped bit of copper plate, some #12 stranded wire, a soldering iron/flux/solder, an old drill, and a 60mm volcano fan? I'm still lacking the soldering iron/flux/solder, (an embarressing admission, I know...but the wife is heading out to Target later and promised to at least "look"... ), which is the only way I can figure to attach the bare stranded wire to the plate and get good thermal conductivity. I know it seems a bit nuts, but:

1. I had already invested about an hours worth of sweat in a GPU shaped bit of copper plating cut painstakingly from a big bit of copper plating with a very old hacksaw and I hated to see it go to waste when my first "penny GPU cooler" really didn't work out so hot.

2. The little plate got the heat off the chip EXCELLENTLY...but it couldn't dissipate it. I figure a maze 2"x2" maze of thin copper wire with a volcano blowing on it should dissipate the heat rather nicely...so long as I attach it correctly.

3. I'm really bored and frustrated and desperately need a geek project to keep my mind of my aggravations & I'm still on a cash moratorium on the systems...so this is me happy compromise.

4. It's fun. (Honest, it really is!)

I never thought I'd be trying to fabricate my own heatsink...but what the hell, it's sort of fun and a definite learning experience.

dipstick

Now you are definitely nuts But really, that sounds like a nice project to keep you busy. I had thought of doing something similar a while back but gave up on the cutting(my arm was going to fall off) and never picked it up again. But I do wanna see how something custom would look like, so please post some pics when done if possible. Good luck and don't give it up

digitalwanderer

...but I'm probably not gonna finish it for a while yet. Soldering accurately is a lot harder than I thought, so I'm gonna take some time and figure out how to do it right before I try and do 100 connections on a little piece-o-copper.


EDITED BITS: You'd better best bet that I'm gonna be throwing some pictures of this puppy up when I'm done, I've actually been taking pictures as I go in case I want to turn this little project into some cheap content.

UberLord

Well, I just did my first "mod" in years. I reckon my Parhelia's ram chips were a tad too hot so I cut a couple of Thermal Take heat sinks in two that I never used from their RAM cooling kit, lapped em up, cleaned the chips and epoxed them on. Now I'm gonna test a few memory intensive games and see if it still works

digitalwanderer

I used some of those on my GF2 MX400 as memory heatsinks & they work great! I'm thinking you're gonna like the results. (I'm a sucker for TT though, I'm seriously thinking of saying "f-ck it" and picking up a copper orb tomorrow. )

UberLord

Matth

I have a totally heatsink-less Creative GB0030 (3dblaster 2MX DDR).

Any suggestions (UK) - at least it means I don't have the problem of getting the old heatsink off!
But I'd rather have NO heatsinks, than be supicious of their attachment (frag tape?)

JAV

CompUSA has a "Chipset Cooler Kit" w/heatsinks & a 5.3cfm fan for $10.99. I've hs'd both sides of the GPU & the all the ram & had enough sinks left over to do the chipset too.

Lotsa car stereos have good hs on them (find an old busted one) & you be surprised at the copper goodies available in the electrical section of Orchard Supply or such. Cheap! Aluminum you say? Check the window/door threshold section. A lot of the hs I've seen look just like finned thresholds (where the bottom of the door closes: between the floor & the door) or the channels a window slides in.

See: Cut to fit, naturally.

Have fun!

JAV
GBA!

digitalwanderer

I got me pictures back. I was going to post them here, but I had some trouble connecting to the server this afternoon....


Anyways, there's a few picts of my modding adventure over here if'n anyone is interested. It's not much, but it gets the idea of the evening across.


EDITED BITS: Screwed up on formatting, went back and fixed.

Impulse

[SIZE=x-small]Digital: Dude your ghetto mod rocks, nice [/size]

digitalwanderer

Just wait 'til you see the finished GPU cooler I'm working on...it's VERY photogenic at least!

Sourcer_2002

hey looks really good planin on making a HS out of Copper and Al myself but in a design

generalstupid

great, now all i need is some thermal stuff, i don't think i have any... someone wanna tell me where to get some?

reno

hehe, those things are great!

Too bad my vidcard ram is limited by more things than heat! hehe

DriveEuro

Wow....um guys.....Have you looked at this site....All of the things on this site are jokes.........Nothing is really intended to be used seriously, well.....the copper ram sinks are the only thing on here that were serious...kinda.

digitalwanderer

NOW you tell me! If you would have just mentioned that about half-a-year ago I my 8500 could still be maxing out at 286/300 rather than 292/320!






j/k

DriveEuro

But have you looked around on the site? It's all just stuff to joke about.

digitalwanderer

..it worked.

generalstupid

where do you get that. Everything i have seen on this site (and tried) has worked

digitalwanderer

Yes, I know that too. But some people just gotta have their rigs looking all pretty & shiny and just can't handle the concept of function over form.

If we have to explain it to them, they just ain't gonna get it. Sometimes it's a whole lot easier to just nod your head and say, "Uh-huh.".

I'm still looking for the right size truck air-filter for the side of Bubbles case my own self right now.

DriveEuro

WTF for do you need a truck filter? On the side of your case to filter the dust? Man, those things are rather restricting for a couple case fans....

digitalwanderer

Yes, they would be for a couple of case fans...but I already have more than a couple of case fans cut into my box, I'm thinking of something a bit more intense.

I got this cute little 10" mini-box fan just sitting in me basement that looks like it could nestle itself quite nicely into a rather large truck air-filter. Cut BIG hole in box, put fan in filter, put something on the end of the filter to force the air to be drawn in from the sideholes and hopefully muffle the roar a bit (and probably something that will have a big PPG sticker on it), and see what the system can REALLY do!

I figure to keep the fan on it's own seperate plug to eliminate system draw & it's a 3-speed and I plan to somehow rig the control to work thru the filter. (I haven't quite figured that bit out yet, it's under the heading of "field problem" for now. )