Hello all,
I have a GT1030 (GDDR5 version) which I am looking to perform a modification to increase the power limit. Here is my predicament:
This card can hit ~2000mhz core at only ~70C with old thermal paste & stock air cooler, however that is only when the memory controller is being virtually unused as any vram usage draws power away from the core. The only limiter to higher clocks appears to be the card's 30W power limit as the card sits at ~30W in HWInfo64 under load
Despite the solid core max, the card only comes close to 2000mhz in non-vram intensive loads as any memory usage siphons power away from the core and slows the core down to ~1200-1700mhz depending on the level of memory load.
Although this is the stronger GDDR5 version, the 2gb of vram is quite limiting in most games. Due to this, the card's memory controller is under near constant >70% load in any sort of vram intensive application (games) as the card is constantly swapping out textures from the vram. This constant memory controller load siphons power away the core which significantly hinders performance given the minimal power budget of this card.
HWBot records show the card hitting ~2700mhz (on LN2, not aiming for this), which I assume is impossible on the card's 30W stock power budget, so somebody in the world must have figured out how to bypass the 30W power limit.
vBIOS modding is currently impossible on desktop pascal cards due to encryption, so I'm looking to do some sort of shunt mod, however none of the videos or forum posts online about shunt mods are geared towards cards that only draw power from PCI-E.
I've looked through BuildZoid's videos, but he also has not done any PCB breakdowns on cards which only draw power from PCI-E, nevermind a breakdown on the GT1030. Despite this, his videos have been massively helpful in explaining the basics of a shunt mod.
What I've gathered is that in every Graphics Card PCB, there is a resistor somewhere across the board (usually 10 ohm) which an IC measures the voltage drop across in order to calculate the current and thus the power draw. The shunt mod involves removing that resistor to trick the Power IC into thinking that less power is being drawn than actually is, thus allowing the card to draw more power than the threshold in the BIOS, 30W in this case.
Here are the front and back of my card's PCB:
Front:
![Passive circuit component Circuit component Hardware programmer Electronic engineering Electronic component]()
Back:
![Circuit component Electronic component Font Electronic engineering Hardware programmer]()
I've looked closely, and my best guess is that the blue resistor marked "10" (Pointed at by green arrow) is the 10 ohm resistor in question, due to the fact that it has a "10" printed on it, but also due to its proximity to the power pins of the PCI-E slot. Does anyone have any ideas as to whether this may be the correct resistor? I have a multimeter and if needed can check resistances across the board, its just that I have no idea what values I am looking for since there is no documentation for this card so I have nothing to report yet.
If this is the correct resistor, what would I do to trick the IC in this case? Based on the videos of higher-end cards online, it seems that every card is different so I don't know if I can just remove/short the 10 ohm resistor, or if I need to replace it with some lower/higher resistance resistor. Any help/information is greatly appreciated!
I have a GT1030 (GDDR5 version) which I am looking to perform a modification to increase the power limit. Here is my predicament:
This card can hit ~2000mhz core at only ~70C with old thermal paste & stock air cooler, however that is only when the memory controller is being virtually unused as any vram usage draws power away from the core. The only limiter to higher clocks appears to be the card's 30W power limit as the card sits at ~30W in HWInfo64 under load
Despite the solid core max, the card only comes close to 2000mhz in non-vram intensive loads as any memory usage siphons power away from the core and slows the core down to ~1200-1700mhz depending on the level of memory load.
Although this is the stronger GDDR5 version, the 2gb of vram is quite limiting in most games. Due to this, the card's memory controller is under near constant >70% load in any sort of vram intensive application (games) as the card is constantly swapping out textures from the vram. This constant memory controller load siphons power away the core which significantly hinders performance given the minimal power budget of this card.
HWBot records show the card hitting ~2700mhz (on LN2, not aiming for this), which I assume is impossible on the card's 30W stock power budget, so somebody in the world must have figured out how to bypass the 30W power limit.
vBIOS modding is currently impossible on desktop pascal cards due to encryption, so I'm looking to do some sort of shunt mod, however none of the videos or forum posts online about shunt mods are geared towards cards that only draw power from PCI-E.
I've looked through BuildZoid's videos, but he also has not done any PCB breakdowns on cards which only draw power from PCI-E, nevermind a breakdown on the GT1030. Despite this, his videos have been massively helpful in explaining the basics of a shunt mod.
What I've gathered is that in every Graphics Card PCB, there is a resistor somewhere across the board (usually 10 ohm) which an IC measures the voltage drop across in order to calculate the current and thus the power draw. The shunt mod involves removing that resistor to trick the Power IC into thinking that less power is being drawn than actually is, thus allowing the card to draw more power than the threshold in the BIOS, 30W in this case.
Here are the front and back of my card's PCB:
Front:
Back:
I've looked closely, and my best guess is that the blue resistor marked "10" (Pointed at by green arrow) is the 10 ohm resistor in question, due to the fact that it has a "10" printed on it, but also due to its proximity to the power pins of the PCI-E slot. Does anyone have any ideas as to whether this may be the correct resistor? I have a multimeter and if needed can check resistances across the board, its just that I have no idea what values I am looking for since there is no documentation for this card so I have nothing to report yet.
If this is the correct resistor, what would I do to trick the IC in this case? Based on the videos of higher-end cards online, it seems that every card is different so I don't know if I can just remove/short the 10 ohm resistor, or if I need to replace it with some lower/higher resistance resistor. Any help/information is greatly appreciated!
