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combatus
I’ve had a bit of a time of it recently PC wise. I’ll start first with my dissatisfaction with a certain watercooling manufacturer, or should I say two, who produce full cover cover blocks for graphics cards. The first I bought for my 6800GT a few years ago and that was fine. Indeed the second for my X1900XT was also fine. Then the trouble started…
I upgraded this block to one with higher performance and less restriction but never got to find out just how good it was because fitting it fried the card. Oh how I hate the smell of burning silicon. It’s still unknown what happened but from the looks of things the VRM plate didn’t fit particularly well and may have shorted something. I blogged about my watercooled Crossfire setup and those who read it will know I again had issues with one of the blocks fouling a capacitor on the board. A bit of modding with a dremmel sorted this but neither the supplier nor manufacturer have mentioned this on their websites following my emails so use these combinations of block and GPU at your own risk!
I’ve now moved to a setup with a single 8800GTS 512MB (G92) and things have got worse! The first block I bought came with the wrong screws so that is on it’s way back, although the block did fit the card at least (read on). The second block appeared to have come from another planet in that it fouled practically every component on the card.
My 8800GTS is a reference card so seeing that these companies should be using it as template you’d think they should fit?
On closer inspection, I noticed the layout of the block looked suspiciously like it should fit a 3870. I also noticed that the picture of the 3870 block from this manufacturer looked identical to the block I had and not like the block for a G92 card. My suspicions were confirmed when I test fitted the block on a 3870 and it fitted like a glove. This issue was confirmed by the supplier who said they’d recently noticed it to. In desperate need to finish my system and re-attach the sidepanel for good (yeah right!) I ordered another card from a different supplier. Shock horror this one is on it’s way back to with the same issue - G92 block in an AMD HD 3870 box!!! ARRHHH!!! Do you ever wish you didn’t fiddle? Oh well. If you ever wandered what 5 £50 full cover GPU waterblocks looks like then check the pic below outor pop round and see my desk. Not a pretty site and Combatus is not a happy bunny! Does anyone have a waterblock that actually fits a G92 8800???
If you need an AMD HD 3870 waterblock then you can probably find one any Royal Mail van given the number I’m sending back…
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