Cyco-Dude's crappy website

Well, I don't have much on this page yet. I was planning on doing a smoothvision comparison showing the differences (or lack thereof) and image quality of the Radeon 8500's smoothvision AA, but I still have to edit my screenshots. In the time being, here's a look at my R8500 mods. Very typical mods here folks; the Thermaltake Crystal Orb GPU cooler, and a set of Tweakmonster tin-plated copper RAMsinks, both purchased from the Heatsink Factory. I lapped the RAMsinks to a mirror finish (removing the tin on the bottom). I tried lapping the CrOrb, but the nickel plating is too thick! I'd need a belt-sander to take all the plating off. Both the CrOrb and the RAMsinks were very flat on the bottom. The CrOrb did have some light grooves from the machining process tho.

You will notice that the fan grill of the CrOrb has been removed, as some of the little spokes prevented the card from being fully seated. I have fixed the problem by cutting some of the spokes off, but I can't put the cover back on! LOL!! To remove the grill, you'll need some pliers. Put the top of the bottom jaw on the underside of the grill, and put the bottom of the top jaw on top of a fin. Just close the pliers, and that section of the grill will lift up. Do that all around the CrOrb, and the grill should come off. You're on your own for putting it back on, hehehe.

If you want to mod your card either for better cooling or just for looks, you might want to check out my V3 cooling mod article. Here are some additional tips for removing the stock HSF; put something hard (like a credit card) in between the PCB and your screwdriver! Otherwise you can gouge the PCB, and cut a trace (not good). And when scraping the epoxy off the top of the GPU, don't force it. Otherwise it may give, and your razor will slip off the GPU and possibly hit something on top of the PCB, like a capacitor or resistor. And befor you put your thermal epoxy onto the RAM chips, put some scotch tape over the traces, because you WILL get epoxy on the traces if you don't!

Anyhow...looks good, and cools good. I'm still hammering on it; 300/300 core/mem is somewhat solid (default is 275/275). Not great, I know, but it increased my 3DMark2001 SE score from ~7564 to ~7897. Not too shabby...

Questions? Comments? E-mail me!