Modding Quadro 4000, advice welcome. - Page 2

Quadro's have always sucked in Furmark

Your Max CPU temp is crazily low :s. Ours hit 89-90c regularly when running CUDA tasks :O

The Q4000 card uses a "powered down" GF100 chip, on it says GF100-XXXX but it should have a couple of CUDA blocks disabled, at least that's what I heard, Q5000 should be a GTX470/480-equivalent chip (1 CUDA block off) and Q6000 the full version. Being a "little" GF100 the VRM section is rather small, a group of 3 stages just under the OEM fan towards the PCIe connector, where there's the three ferrite core chokes (that don't need cooling, since switching regulator core chokes don't heat up), right above them there's the three DIP-SMT sized MOSFETs, in circle around the fan (under the blades), those might need a minimum cooling or air circulation nearby, since they work like P4 stages, regulating the PEG12V line to ~1V for the GPU with high currents. No need for massive sized VRM heatsinks (the TR GTX470/480/570 VRM HSFs wouldn't fit anyway, holes don't match and capacitors in the way...), just some air near them if you decide to remove the stock fan, using a MK13 with active blow-down cooling is excellent, in my case having the GPU main cooling surface up and away from the card itself, if removing the fan some suggest placing RAM (or smaller MOS) sinks on the VRM MOS section, keep in mind if you do this with standard ramsinks you have to modify them since there's some SMT capacitors between the three MOS chips which are slightly higher than the MOS themselves, they'd be shorted by the ramsink (and it wouldn't stick correctly).
BTW: Quadro cards always use conservative clocking compared to equivalent Geforce cards for reliability, also for memory (don't remember if it has ECC check), RAM chips heat up less than "superclocked" Geforce cards and are generally of better quality (mine uses premium Samsung chips).

Hello friends

I am having major heating problems with my quadro 4000.

I even got it replaced once.

Check out this thread to know more about my problem.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/368505-33-reduce-heating-quadro-4000#t2773975

I was looking to how to open the quadro and found this thread.

If I just open the thin casing by removing the star shape screws, will I be able to clean and dust the fan and all without having to void warranty and reapply thermal paste?

I am in India and I am not even sure how to apply a thermal paste.

If it doesn't avoid my warranty then I should try this because it does appear very dusty.

Please suggest?

Thanks Saibok

Yes I know it is supposed to run very hot but it is also supposed to do all the 3D stuff which normal graphic card cannot.

I am running an octane renderer which uses solely GPU power and temp. goes upto 100 degree, a little more and it will shut itself up.

How am I supposed to work in such a case?

I mean I spent so much money on this card so I could do 3D work and that's what I am not able to to.

If I add another CPU fan below it in the cabinet, will it help to cool it down?

Ok there was a layer of spongy dust completely blocking the vents, let me see how it works now.

Now after booting temp is about 57 degrees, after opening chrome it went up to 62 degrees.

I ran octane render with 99% GPU being used for 10 minutes and the temperature went up to 81 and is now constant at 76 while rendering a turntable, I manually fixed the rpm of GPU FAN to 4000 through Afterburner.

It is silent and working.

Thanks Saibok for this post and the images. This is probably the only post available right now online, which solves the Nvidia Quadro 4000 heating problem. If the moderator can , they should sticky it , so that in future people can find it easily. There are lot of people who have the same quadro over heating problem and may help anyone in the future.

Lately did some modding on my Quadro heatsink

Cut protruding center fins to flush fit a 1/2" thick fan or a standard fan with more room upfront. Why? Because now I mounted the heatsink reversed, i.e. downwards, to leave upper room for tower CPU radiators, you can place fan blowing towards cards but that would heat up particularly sensible cards (i.e. SAS controller with battery), I mounted it blowing towards the side panel now, have yet to finish mod but it works. 45°C in dual screen mode without exhaust ducts.

Thank you guys for the advice. I was inspired by your posts and managed to modify my Quadro 4000 with MK-13 by retaining a stock fan. Average idle temperature dropped from 60 to 40 degrees and under load from 80 to 50. Awesome!
It took a while for me to cut through a standard aluminium frame to fit MK-13 though but it was worth it at the end.