playing with an old tnt2

[dgrmkrp]

it's late, i should be going to sleep.. but neah! i wanna learn more about overclocking! so first i'm gonna ask u guys for some tips:

i've got a dull old riva tnt2 m64 w/ 32mb sdr to play with.. have no idea what the current freq. are.. i wonder how much they might go..

as an exercise, i'm building an air cooling thing-a-majig on it, using some scrap parts and plastics..


i wanna overclock it and rewrite its bios settings any help on that will also be appreciated

[GT40_GearHead]

for trashing the freqs you could use riva tuner
for the rewrite i have no idea

[dgrmkrp]

i have acomplished, in my great boredom, as another exercise, to create something by far ahead of it's time.. if it happened 10 years ago that is :p

bear with me:

..the victim.. riva tnt2 m64.. kog something brand?!

..board was cooled by a.. plate with a fan on it.. i changed that

..glued the sinks together with superglue and then put some TIM on the chip.. then glued the HS on it.. i'm wondering if it will still work it should, because i used glue on the edges only, to give the sink a good fix only.. didn't put glue on the top of the chip..

..compare this to...................... that..

but oh no! it won't be just another fan on a heatsink! i'm doing a dual slot cooling, like on an X1900 XTX

new shell marked on a cd case..

thing taking shape..

i wanted a blower, so i cut a piece of the fan and sticked the rest in such a way that it would suck air and blow it out..

test fit..

final assembly i frosted the plastic becasue the glue left some weird nuances on it..

..intake..

.. and exhaust..

view from side.. what could be seen if in a pc..

and a small etch to show what this actually is..

..the fan works nice on 5V, cool on 7V..and is loud as hell at 12V.. the thing has ~4krpm at ful blow.. i was thinking of adding a resistor in series with the boards +12V, but hell.. this is a test piece.. if it goes in a build (now who would use this today? it doesn't even have 24b color), i'll set the fan at 5V.. can't hear it even from 1cm away..

sooo, what remains is to install this "beauty" (crap is what i would first call it, but..), overclock it and reflash it
again, any help would be nice, because windows/riva tuner can't detect it's frequencies

[DaveW]

Wow, nice little toy you made there! Can't wait to se how fast you can get that peice a' rubbish to go.

-Dave

[dgrmkrp]

well.. all i need now is:

a crappy psu, cpu, ram and hdd frankenstein them too and ... i'm thinking of doing a really weird thing with these.. 'cause i have a "few" spare parts and i need just a few more, a very small/cheap/silent pc could be born.. think of a "cram-it-all-together-box" case it annoys me to have to remove my current board.. all the screws (1), the dsub connector.. and the agp latch.. bleah.. i'm sleepy.. and my folks should be coming home.. so till tomorrow to find out :hihi:

or just a dang digital thermometer.. the board was cool before too =)), wonder how cool it can get

[dgrmkrp]

ok.. so half an hour ago i installed the riva board.. before i could get my system to boot, i had to reset the bios data.. well, i rebooted and a weird brand showed up.. i have a "milky" riva tnt2 lol never heard of this name before.. then i reentered my bios settings and went on to windows testing.. until now, the cooling solution proved more than noisy!
again, like when this crap was installed in its old system, i couldn't see the frequencies, nor change 'em... weird.. but it still works it could have died in the process of modding, but it didn't.. yey... so.. i think this will make a nice gift someday.. but it most definately needs a resistor for quieting..

edit: just in case someone is finding this valuable/interesting (now, not 10 years ago :p), i have som pics:

..the board installed in a super-cooled (overkill..) kt266.. my ooold mobo.. doesn't do anything, but this is the core for my future wanna-be SFF PC.

..this was the previous HS of the tnt2.. lol.. what were they thinking?

..the other sinks on the mobo: a gf4 passive HS for the nb and a mosfet HS from a small amp.. (this are now glued on the board.)

..board installed in my working system.. looks kinda deserted with this in.. wonder why?..

..this is why! my gosh, tnt2 is a really small thing, isn't it?.. compared to a 7900 or 1900 this is a ..NIC

so, after not being able to do anything to it except making it noisier.. i painted it:

i don't think i have any other comments to make here/now.. i just hope i'll be able to use this someday, 'cause now i like how it turned out.. a bit..

[nil8]

Sell it on ebay to a chump.
Or put it in a box that doesn't require high graphics, like something your parents or a business might use.
Or a linux box.

[dgrmkrp]

ebay can't do that from here... i would put it in a box, and i might just get almost all parts i need.. but then again i might not.. so i'll keep it for a while.. no chumps around either my my, i live so far from my suppliers

[nil8]

Well, I think you did a good job considering the equipment.
Just for a lark, put in any mod project logs to show the difference between modern vid cards and old cards.
You might consider someday upgrading the fan so it isn't so loud. P3 heatsink fans would probably fit.

[dgrmkrp]

Just for a lark, put in any mod project logs to show the difference between modern vid cards and old cards.

that would be hilariously funny, right?
hmm.. i don't know.. r u saying i should put it in a worlog.. unrelated to the video board itself?

probably will make a new project, unrelated to my current work log.. just need more parts.. and i wanna go with the white/black flames and some more weird things.. :evil laughter:

You might consider someday upgrading the fan so it isn't so loud. P3 heatsink fans would probably fit.

an upgrade in my opinion would be an even louder fan because if i use a lowrpm fan, there is no (easy) way to get it rev up... right? but with a high rpm and some resistor padding.. i get the low rpm too (read: i'm a cool maniac)