der8auer

Hi there Just tested the EPower Board on my 8500 GT after the 8800GT didn't realy scale. Result with stock VRM at 1,8 ± 0,2 vGPU: 1026 MHz Powered by EPower Board I could reach 1107 MHz. 81 MHz more than with stock VRM which means total overclocking of 141%. Voltage was 1,81 vGPU Pics of the Mod: Mod done: So the result depends quite much on the card you use.

Haha Yea I'm sure your system will run stable now!

Line app doesn't seem to be available for my Nokia Lumia 800 Whatsapp would be better.

You're welcome Awsome work there Thanks!

Yea I will also test cards like 8500GT, 8600GT soon Yea I bought it myself. You can just purchase it from eu.evga.com it's available for sale there

nice points my friend

Yea I will test on LN2 aswell. Just don't have anything left at the moment. I picked this card because I also benched it on LN2 few weeks ago so I will have something to compare http://hwbot.org/submission/2229926_der8auer_3dmark03_geforce_8800_gts_512_mb_66349_marks

Simply everywhere

EVGA EPower-Board "Untouchables" Review Already announced few months ago the EPower-Board is available for retail customers now. The overclocking community asked for real before and after comparisons. Here are my results on a 8800GTS G92. Modifications at your own risk! Make sure you know what you're doing. Be aware that you will lose the warranty of your graphicscard. Note: This is just a translated and shorted version of my original Review you can find here: [vMod-eXtreme] EVGA EPower-Board "Untouchables" im Test EPower-Board: "Unboxing" The EPower-Board comes in a small brown box. Included in the delivery is just the EPower-Board and a small manual. A closer look: This external power supply will change the 12V direct current coming from your PSU into the needed voltages for GPU and Memory. Therefor you will find a 10 phase unit for your GPU and a 3 phase unit for the RAM. On the PCB of the EPower-Board you will also find readpoints for vCORE and vDIMM voltages. Make sure you put a aditional fan next to the EPower Board to keep it cold. EVGA already provided a 3-pin fan connector on the Untouchables. The EVGA EPower Board can only be used together with an EVGA EVBot! Voltmod-Basics:The equipment Let's have a look on the needed equipment for our plan. To solder everything together I will use the soldering iron station ERSA RDS-80 with a 80W soldering iron - adjustable from 150°C to 450°C. We will need some quite thick wires so make sure you have various soldering tips. Soldering iron station ERSA RDS 80W Soldering tip: ERSADUR 0842CD 3,2mm (big tip for thick wires) Soldering tip: ERSADUR 0832CDLF 2,2mm (average tip e.g. to desolder chokes) Soldering tip: ERSADUR 0832UDLF 0,4mm (small tip for SMD stuff) Small flat pliers Small wire cutter Big wire cutter Dremel 10mm² copper wire 16mm² copper wire Soldering tin Apart from this you will also need a digital multimeter and some solid caps. I used 2.5V 1500µF for everything even tho you should normally use 6.3V caps aswell for the RAM-area but I don't have some at the moment Mounting the EPower-Board: 1. Preparations Here you can see the 8800GTS before I mounted the EPower Board on it. The black stuff on the front is LiquidTape for electrical insulation. On the back you can see the normal vGPU, vMEM and OCP Mod. Here a picture of my work area: 2. Detect the soldering pointsThe easiest way to apply the EPower-Board is to desolder the stock chokes and replace them with the EPower-Board. On this 8800GTS we find a 3 phase power supply unit for the GPU and a 1 phase unit for the RAM. You can find these areas here highlighted: 3. Remove the stock VRM The next step is to desolder the stock chokes to deaktivate the stock VRM. In the following pictures I marked the right spots. And few minutes later: Now we have three empty spots where we can apply the EPower Board. I also found an additional spot we can use aswell: In the next step we'll check the GPU and Memory resistance to make sure we don't have any shorts. Write these values down as you will need them later again to check whether everything is okay My results: GPU: 0,9 Ohm MEM: 49,8 Ohm 4. Ground soldering areas Now it's time to finde the right ground spots. The easiest spots are the areas around the screw hole on the backside of the card. But we'll need some additional spots which I marked with blue colour on the following pictures. The yellow marked spots are ground areas of the PCB. We'll have to use some sandpaper on these areas to remove the protective mask: Be careful by removing the protective mask and make sure you don't harm any surrounding parts. This can easily kill your card. My result: Now check the GPU and Memory resistance once again to make sure you don't have any shorts. Should be same values you measured before. Values below 0.5 Ohm means you have a short somewhere. 5. Prepare the EPower-Board Before you start with the soldering work you should find the right spot for the EPower-board. The connection between your graphicscard and the Untouchables should be as short as possible. Always keep in mind that you'll mount a pot later so keep enough space for this aswell. I also applied some soldering tin on the EPower-Board first. This will simplify the soldering later. 6. The real soldering To connect vGPU and vMEM with the EPower Board I used some 16mm² wire to keep the resistance as low as possible. Also make sure you connect as much ground-wires as possible. I used six 10mm² wires for this. 7. The first check The next step is to check the GPU and RAM resistance once again. If your values are fine you can continue and put the pot on the card to check whether it runs fine. Make sure you connect all 6-Pin connectors and the EVBot. If the card boots you should straight check the voltages of GPU and memory. They should be around 1,2vGPU and 1,5vMEM. After this is done swith off your system. 8. Add some capacitors The final step is to add some caps on the backside of the PCB to keep the voltage drop as low as possible. I added a picture where you can find alot of possible spots. Of course you don't need to put 20 caps there but the more the better. I added 6 Caps for the GPU and 5 for the memory. Once again measure the resistance of GPU and RAM. If they are fine again - the mod is done successfully Test: Stock VRM vs. EVGA "Untouchables"Testsystem: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4500MHz 2x2GB Corsair Dominator GT (933MHz CL7-7-7-19 2T) Windows XP SP3 Test with stock VRM: Before I applied the EPower Board on this card I did a test using a normal vMod. Therefor I used my der8auer Raptor GPU Pot and some DICE to keep the card cool. As TIM I used some Gelid Extreme. Why DICE? I wanted the temperature to be exactly the same for both tests so we can be sure the temperature won't have an influence on the result. The temperature during the benchmark was -66 ± 1 °C. I used a GPU voltage of around 1,4V which should be fine for DICE. You'll find the detailed voltages in the table below. vMEM was 2,21 ± 0,01 Volt as voltages above didn't scale anymore on higher clocks. Using these voltages I could reach a GPU clock of 1008 MHz and a memory clock of 1274 MHz. EVGA EPower-Board: To use the EPower Board you will need the handy EVGA EVBot to change the voltages. Due to the voltage drop you need to put some voltages there which are abit higher. I had to use 1,43125 Core Voltage to get the real voltage of 1386mV on the GPU. The temperature during the test was -67 ± 1 °C which is quite the same to the temp in the first test. I straight noticed that the voltage ups and downs were not as high as with the stock VRM. For example the memory was straight 2,21 V and didn't change during the whole benchmark. The result was quite surprising to me. I didn't expect the memory to profit from this modification at all but I was wrong. I was able to run the Benchmark with 1026 MHz on the GPU and 1296 MHz on the memory. Comparison: The following chart shows the GPU Voltage during the Test 3DMark2003 "Nature". You will straight notice that the two power supplies act different. During high load (48s to 55s) the stock VRM raises the GPU voltage quite much while the EPower Board lowers the voltage. The average vGPU on stock VRM was 1385mV and using the EPower Board it was 1383mV so quite the same Still we could reach a higher clock. Conclusion: A lot of you discussed the EPower Board here on the forums recently and we had no real proof whether this tool provides you an real advantage. Well I can say it does. This test is just a comparison using DICE, fixed voltage and the same temperature. I'm sure there will be a even bigger advantage using LN2 and pushing this thing to the limit. For sure this time you won't have annoying OVP or OCP Surely you can't transform a 8800GTS to a GTX580 but you can still get some higher clocks and even if it's just a little bit - we on HWBot know this could mean the next world record Don't kill me if there are spelling mistakes in it I just quickly tanslated this review for you guys Roman "der8auer"

Nice points Crap that your CPU doestn do higher clocks

And I thought my room looks like a mess

I will test this tweak later today to confirm it but at the moment it looks just like a realy nice tweak and I agree on Sweet's post

Holy sh*t

Nice work Crap that you are cpu limited

Good idea

Everything booked SF3D, ryba and me will join the party from 8.-11.

Haha great work

Yea I'll be there by car

Okay I got something different. Here they offer cheap appartments for several persons and days. http://www.ates-travel.de/appartement.php I already talked to the owner on the phone but he needs to know how many ppl we are exactly and how long (which days) we want to stay during the CeBIT. Anybody interessted?

I'm also searching for a place to stay atm Would be awsome if we could stay e.g. at same hotel. Will post here if i find something edit: seems like I found a hotel. Unfortunately there are no cheap hotels left Think we'r abit late for that. On the website they say that rooms are available from 6.-9. with a price of 108€ per night. I will fone them tomorrow in the morning and ask whether there are still empty rooms. If yes I'll let you know. Distance to CeBIT would be about 8km.

nice points! want to see LN2/DICE on the card

strong score

Will be there this year Just not sure yet which day(s)

Holy sh*t You maybe want to sell one of the 57er chips?

Awaiting new WRs Awsome chip!