Water Cooled GTX 460 Completed!

[Chezz]

Just finished watercooling my MSI Cyclone 1 GB GTX 460 and thought I would share what I did. I used a Swiftech MCW80 waterblock with the G80 adapter kit and drilled holes on the adapter plate to accomodate the 460 hole pattern. One note, the Swiftech MCW60 will NOT work due to the 460 GPU size!

My current settings are as follows through MSI Afterburner:
Core Voltage: 1.087Volts (At max and no Bios mod yet)
Core Clock: 950MHz
Shader Clock: 1900MHz
Mem Clock: 2000MHz

While running full load on Furmark with these settings my GPU temp is 45°C. I plan on doing further tweeking in the future and will post any updates.

 

[Athlon2K15]

looks good man send me your bios and ill see if my nibitor can unlock your voltage

 

[slyfox2151]

THATS FUCKING INSAIN!

nearly 41% overclock on that GTX460 !!!!!! are you going to push it further? keep us updated!

 

[mdsx1950]

Thats one sweet overclock. You should reduce the memory clock and push the core clock further. Try to reach a 50% overclock or even more!

 

[Devil May Cry]

That is kick-ass!
Any plans of going SLi? That would be insane performance.

 

[mlee49]

Just finished watercooling my MSI Cyclone 1 GB GTX 460 and thought I would share what I did. I used a Swiftech MCW80 waterblock with the G80 adapter kit and drilled holes on the adapter plate to accomodate the 460 hole pattern. One note, the Swiftech MCW60 will NOT work due to the 460 GPU size!

My current settings are as follows through MSI Afterburner:
Core Voltage: 1.087Volts (At max and no Bios mod yet)
Core Clock: 950MHz
Shader Clock: 1900MHz
Mem Clock: 2000MHz

While running full load on Furmark with these settings my GPU temp is 45°C. I plan on doing further tweeking in the future and will post any updates.

Pics of the mod? I have the 80's on my 470's and they do keep cool, just restrictive as hell.

 

[wrathchild_67]

What type of performance increase did you get going from stock speeds?

 

[mdsx1950]

What type of performance increase did you get going from stock speeds?

Was wondering the same thing. But i doubt it's stable for very long periods of time.

 

[erocker]

Those are some great clocks! I'd like to see some game benchmarks/GPU-Z shots...

 

[Chezz]

looks good man send me your bios and ill see if my nibitor can unlock your voltage

Thanks! I have a voltage unlocked bios already. I just need to try it.

 

[Chezz]

I attached an image of the modification to the Swiftech MCW80 waterblock G80 adapter plate required to make it fit. I also included two screen shots to show performance in Unigine Heaven benchmark with stock settings and a 940/2000 overclock.

What I found in Unigine was at a GPU speed of 950MHz I had very minor artifacting and anything above that froze the computer. 940MHz was stable with no signs of artifacting after repeated runs. The voltage is currently set at the maximum stock voltage of 1.087 and I am sure with more voltage I can hit 950 or greater.

 

[Chezz]

Does anyone know what a maximum safe core voltage would be? I performed the voltage unlock and can now go up to 1.212V in Afterburner; however, it looks like 940-955MHz range may be the maximum regardless of voltage. I went up to 1.137V at 960MHz and still had very minor artifacting in Unigine.

 

[Grnkjr0]

Hey all

I too have bought a GTX 460 and I really wanted the Gainward "Golden Sample - Goes Like Hell", which is factory overclocked to 800Mhz core and 2000Mhz memory, but that was out of stock and I could not get that one until sometime end august and then decided to buy the "Golden Sample" which has an overclock of 700Mhz and stock memory of 1800Mhz.

I have not regret buying the "Golden Sample", as it turns out it will overclock to around 920Mhz, and it has no problem running 2340Mhz memory (max setting in Afterburner) - really not bad I think.

What I find a bit strange is the fact my score in Uningine 2.1 is a bit higher than Chezz´s score - using same settings running a lower overclock core of 918Mhz, though a much higher memory of 2340Mhz. My card do show minor artifacts in Unigine, but it does not crash and seem stable enough playing games. I do think I need some better cooling of the VRM, since the heatsink it is not covered on this card. I read that the cards Gainward and Palit had sent out to the reviewers had a VRM heatsink, but the heatsink had been removed once the cards hit the shelves

Anyway just wanted to show you my card and teel those thinking about buying one, that it really is fast and is about 10fps when overclocked faster than my also overclocked 285GTX, which is the card that I am replacing buy adding another "Golden Sample" and running SLI. I can actually get two of these 460GTX´s for the same price I payed for my 285GTX almost 2 years ago I attached a picture of my card running Unigine using the same settings like Chezz.

Poul

Edited: How do I unlock voltage and go higher than Afterburner?

 

[Chezz]

How do I unlock voltage and go higher than Afterburner?

I unlocked my voltage in Afterburner by flashing the bios with a modified MSI bios from this site: http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/781924-gtx460-1-087v-voltage-cap-unlock.html

I then downloaded nvflash for DOS, installed it onto a bootable flash drive along with the new bios and restarted my computer. Note: I have Windows 7 64bit, so I had to use the DOS version; however, there is a Windows version for 32bit systems. After restarting my computer I booted onto my flash drive. Assuming all your nvflash files are in the root director of your flash drive these are the steps:

Create a backup of your original Bios
C:\nvflash.exe -b oldbios.rom (this creates a copy of your original bios called oldbios.rom)

Flash
C:\nvflash.exe --protectoff
C:\nvflash.exe -r
C:\nvflash.exe -4 -5 -6 newbios.rom (newbios.rom is the volt modded)

Done...

 

[Chezz]

I ran through some stability and benchmark tests and was able to hit the following clocks:

Furmark 1.8.2 Benchmark Test (See Screenshots)

Maximum Stable Clock at 1280x1024; MSAA 0x With No Artifacting
Core Clock: 1000MHz (999.8MHz in GPUz)
Shader Clock: 2000MHz
Memory Clock: 2340MHz
Core Voltage: 1.175V
GPU Temp: 44°C
Settings: 1280x1024; MSAA 0x (anything above that and I saw artifacts)

Maximum Stable Clock at 1680x1050; MSAA 32x With No Artifacting
Core Clock: 940MHz
Shader Clock: 1880MHz
Memory Clock: 2340MHz
Core Voltage: 1.100V
GPU Temp: 40°C
Settings: 1680x1050; MSAA 32x (this was my maximum resolution)

I am impressed I was able to get to a core speed of 1000MHz; however, in Unigine the 940MHz was my maximum without artifacting, so I am sticking with that clock for now.

 

[arnoo1]

i am jealous ass hell! i'm stuck with 2 dead grx275's, i bought the second, put the sli bridge on it, and there was smoke, stupid thing, every thing supported, psu is a tx950, and almost everything is dead, but i like your cooling and stuff, goed work1

 

[Blix]

That's great, i have two Cyclones running in SLI and was considering trying the same thing, because i've decided i want to start recording music by my computer and want to quiet the whole system down. Any chance you could write step by step instructions for what you did?

 

[Mario N Luigi]

GTX 460 problems.

First time user here and I would like to know a little more about how you put a water cooled system on you GTX 460.

I'm currently thinking of buying a Corsair H80 but not sure if that's overkill.

I would also like to talk to you about the mounting plate you used. Do you think that there are mounting plates out that I can purchase instead of drilling, because I'm really bad at those things and don't wanna mess this up.

I did have a MSI Afterburner Twin Frozr II Nvidia GTX 460, but one of the fans went and now it's overheating BADLY, so, instead of trying to find dual fans that I'm sure I can't find, I would rather go with something that is better..hence the H80.

Anyone have any advice, comments, recommendations?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jack1n]

First time user here and I would like to know a little more about how you put a water cooled system on you GTX 460.

I'm currently thinking of buying a Corsair H80 but not sure if that's overkill.

I would also like to talk to you about the mounting plate you used. Do you think that there are mounting plates out that I can purchase instead of drilling, because I'm really bad at those things and don't wanna mess this up.

I did have a MSI Afterburner Twin Frozr II Nvidia GTX 460, but one of the fans went and now it's overheating BADLY, so, instead of trying to find dual fans that I'm sure I can't find, I would rather go with something that is better..hence the H80.

Anyone have any advice, comments, recommendations?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

An H80 costs about 100$+the cost of any adapter+ the hassle of installing it on your 460 is not worth it.
MSI N650Ti-1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB 128-bit ... - only 115$ after rebate.