56K Dialup WARNING!!! LOTS OF PICTURES!

8-17-2008:

Sup guys. I just recently decided that nothing currently on the market really whets my appetite so I am going to mod the living **** out of my current rig. First off here is a list of specs and mods. Then I will be keeping a worklog of everything. My goal is to hit 20000+ points on 3DMark 2006 with my current hardware and mods.

Ready?

Specifications of the BugBox:
Motherboard: EVGA 680i A1 Revision (MaxFSB: 480-490)
CPU: Intel E8400 3.0ghz Stock (OC's to 4.2ghz @ 1.34v 1867FSB)
RAM: Geil High Performance 2GB DDR2-800 (4 of them @ 900mhz 5-5-5-15)
Video: 2x 8800GTX in SLi (Foxconn and XFX cards)
Misc: PNY eSATA PCI Express Card and PCI Aegia PhysX Card
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower 1000Watt
Hard Drives: 2x WD 500GB 'aaks' Sata 3.0
Optical: Sony and Samsung DVDRW IDE
Cooling: Thermochill HE Dual 120mm Radiator, Eheim 1058 AC Pump+Res, Thermaltake Smart 120mm Blue LED fans, Swiftech Apogee GT Waterblock, and Tygon 3/8id 1/2od tubing.
Case: CoolerMaster Stacker (Original Dual PSU model) Custom Paint.
OS: Vista Ultimate X64 SP1

Current scores:

3DMark 2006:


SuperPI:


The scores are recent and will fluctuate as I begin modifying my system. Wish me luck!

8-18-2008:

So today begins the actual journey down the path to maxing out my system. Lets have a recap. I just want to say that I do not have any screen shots of the benches as I was too wrapped up in the moment but I do have some specs and pics of the modded card.

Moving on!

Seeing as I will be hanging on to my beloved EVGA 680i and my trusty 8800GTX's I am going to treat them like the awesome parts they are. So I just ordered this slew of parts:

EK NF4 1.1 Southbridge Block
Danger Den 680i Northbridge Block
2x EK FC-8800GTX with Acetal tops
2x EK FC-8800GTX Acrylic tops
EK 680i/780i MOSFET 1
EK 680i MOSFET 2
Danger Den Fillport



Now this means that the ONLY parts not being water cooled in my system will be the RAM, HDD, and PSU. I have been contemplating moving my DVD drives external and moving my HD's into 5.25 hd coolers so I can install a triple 120mm radiator. I currently have a thermochill and will probably shell out the money for another one.

I am going to order 3 of these to mount the radiator upright in the front.



MountainMods.com-Computer Cases-Parts-5.25 Bay Covers-Mountain Mods Acrylic Triple Bay 120mm fan mount.

Here is the radiator that I am looking at:



ThermoChill PA120.3 3x120mm High Performance Radiator

Now moving on I got to reading and talking with my buddy about possibly volt modding my card so I decided to do some research and then go get the parts needed for the project. So I did! I got the Variable resistors and soldered them to the surface mount on the 8800GTX. Here are some pictures of the mod instructions and my installed test version:

Instructions:




My card modded (click the pictures for HQ pics):




After I measured the Vcore and the Vdimm with my multimeter I adjusted it to give 1.45v (idle) and 1.4v (load) to the Vcore of the 8800GTX and 2.3v for the Vdimm. After about 2 hours my stock (13389 with 1 8800GTX and CPU at 4.05ghz) 3DMark 2006 score was crushed when my 8800GTX ran stable at 715mhz on the core, 1.65ghz on the shaders, 2.25ghz on the ram thus giving my system 14532 with ONE card.

I then ordered the parts for the other card and removed the vmod so I could run my other card at the same speed.

There will be more updates! Thanks for reading!

8-20-2008:

Welcome back! So between about 6pm yesterday and 5am this morning I have been working on the Vmod on my FoxConn card. I was able to get it installed and looking great but my card kept raising the voltage on its own up to 1.61 and then the over-voltage circuit protection would stop the card. I removed the mod and tried different resistors and that still did nothing. Now I was told by a friend that works for EVGA that the measuring points that the Vmod guide gives you will cause the capicators to burn up/explode. Now seeing as there are 100's of people that did the mod and no one reported any issues I decided to stick with it...not a great idea. Long story short my FoxConn 8800GTX is now short 1 SMC (surface mount capicator) but amazingly it still works (2D and 3D). In addition to losing a SMC the SMR (surface mount resistor) that regulates the memory voltage got messed up from the heat of the iron. I was able to correct that by removing the bad resistor and just soldering one end of a VR to ground and the other to where the SMR was and it worked! I currently have a steady 2.35 volts going to the RAM. I guess this is my guinea pig card for mods and accidents. When I was trying out TRI SLI I was pulling out the middle card and the FoxConn was on the bottom. Long story short the middle card did not come out normally and the back plate of the middle card wreaked some havok on the DVI port 2 circuitry. I was able to fix that as well (see last picture). I will say that since my old FX5600 Ultra these 8800's are the cards that I am now most familiar with. I know that if you just add a 10K ohm resistor from GND to the Vram SMR you will get 2.3-2.35V and to get the Vcore to 1.4-1.45V you need to add a 250 ohm from CND to the Vgpu SMR. They are really nice cards and relatively cheap.
Now I just have to try this out:
"Alternative points to measure the volatge on GPU of capacitors c565, C566, C567, and on the memory c622, C647, C688. They are located not far from the microcircuits, which control the appropriate volatge." ~XTReview.com
Apparently all these capicators have the capibility to measure the Vram and Vgpu voltages. I do not know if they will have issues but seeing as I have the money to replace 1 8800GTX and the FoxConn has seen better days I will be giving it a try later tommrow.
That is basically everything for now. I have some pictures of the Vmod installed on the card. The only change is that instead of a 10K ohm resistor that is on the board in the pictures I have replaced it with a 1K ohm VR. The 1Kohm VR will only be on the FoxConn card because of the SMR for the ram getting killed.
Pictures:

Ah, a good bit of hardware rape. Love it.

Yup! Well after finding out that the FoxConn has the 470 ohm resistor instead of the 32 ohm I had to use a 20K VR to get the voltage up. The card is humming along at 1.5V idle 1.45 load and 715/1650/1075mhz. I have a video of me benching it at my buddy's house and it will be up here later tomorrow. I managed 15312 on 3DMark2006 with jsut ONE 8800GTX. I can't wait until I get my second one tested. Thanks for reading!

Awesome! Keep going bro.

Almost done! Just waiting on the water blocks.