Cooling Conundrum

I used the d-14 and the c-14 on the same chip with the same volts with the same ambients and the difference was minimal to say the least. I would temper my expectations. Do you have the budget or desire to go with a water loop ? Also, how are your temps right now ? I have trouble imagining that c-14 is having difficulty cooling a 955 @ 3.6ghz. Also, I wouldn't overlook the silver arrow or the phanteks cooler.

Regarding the cooling of your Sapphire HD6950 2GB Dirt3

Its cooling has five heatpipes (3 inner ones are 5mm while the 2 outer ones are 10mm, according to Hardocp. These are odd sizes and I suspect their measurement is wrong. I think they are 6mm and 8mm respecively. Anyway....) and two 70mm fans. According to a few reviews that I scanned, this is a very effective cooling, making this card one of the coolest of high end cards, unless you begin to seriously overclock it. But from your sig, I see you are running it at stock clockings (ie factory overclocked).

I do not think AC Twin Turbo II will bring a significant improvement over this stock Sapphire cooling. AC Twin Turbo II has also five heatpipes, each of 6mm and two 92mm fans. Granted that the fans are larger, I just do not think the improvement will justify the cost.

What GPU temp you are getting? Has the temp been always like this since the card was new?
I suspect, the culprit for unsatisfactory GPU temp is either high ambient temp or poor air management inside the case or the heatsink fins have been clogged with dirt or the thermal paste has dried prematurely dried out or a combination of these factors (and perhaps some others).

I suggest, removing the plastic shroud and do a through cleaning of the heatsink fins. And, if you wish, remove the heatsink and reapply the thermal paste.

Additionally, re-evaluate the air management of your CM 690 II Advanced. It surely is a case with excellent airflow. But this cannot be taken for granted. As you do not have a pic with description of how you design the airflow (ie incoming fresh air path and exhausting hot air path), I cannot offer more specific comment.

One thing I notice is that you have an Asus Xonar DG PCI sound card. I surely hope you have installed it to the lowest PCI slot of your motherboard (Asus M4A88T-V EVO). I expect the HD6950 is installed to the top (dark blue) PCIEx16 slot. Its non traditional cooling design really does need an empty slot next to it for effective cooling. In other words, the Xonar DG sound card better not sits in the PCI slot directly underneath it, causing higher than usual temp.

Last note:- as your Sapphire HD6950 2GB Dirt3 is a non reference card, double check any aftermarket cooler that you are interested as many only fit reference cards. Beware!

Regarding the CPU cooling
I wonder why you said fitting the H100 with push/pull is not going to be easy with the 690 II Advanced.

The H100 rad is 27mm thick. So, doing push+pull fans will yield a total thickness of 27 + 25 + 25 = 77mm.
Perhaps you can use this to check against the space between the case ceiling and the top of your motherboard.

In the meantime, I looked into this thread to find people fitting H100 into a 690 II.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1144409/h80-h100-case-compatibility-thread-page-1-for-full-listings

There are four listings and one member mentions his H100 fits in at the ceiling without modding but he said this depends on hardware. I suppose he means depending on the motherboard as some motherboards have big heatsinks along the top edge, thus conflicting with the fans.

Then, I compare his motherboard (EVGA P55 FTW) with yours (Asus M4A88T-V EVO). My visual comparison says that your mobo has a high chance of not conflicting with the fans. Look at my pic below to compare the top edge of the 2 mobos.


But, of course, your measurement should be the final judge.
Edited by windfire - 5/27/12 at 6:00am

playing the silicone lottery sucks. to be honest, to gain 8°-12° with a custom loop
or 8° with a H100 for a better load temp, just doesn't sound good for a .2-.5MHz
processor bump in speed. you might want to look into alternate processor speed
solutions. water-cooling can only do so much, but its not a magic bean for CPU
speeds.

airdeano