Ghetto Mods

[Frick]

That's not how condensation works.
Anything colder than ambient attracts moisture


The PC would have to be airtight and thermally insulated from the surrounding environment completely.


go look up anything on PC's cooled with a TEC or LN2 and you'll find that's absolutely not true.
It's like you've been on a kick lately, this is thread 3? 4? That you've derailed by arguing pointlessly about something I've quoted with zero evidence to back up anything you're saying.

Outside-air Cooled PC

[Brian] came up with an interesting PC cooling setup. He lives up north where it’s chilly in the winter. Using a bit of dryer ductwork and he was able to harness the outside air to cool his b…

hackaday.com

This was very popular back in the day where I live. Piping -25C straight into the computer. I even know of a guy who opened a permanent hole in the wall for this specific purpose.

 

[P4-630]

This was very popular back in the day where I live. Piping -25C straight into the computer. I even know of a guy who opened a permanent hole in the wall for this specific purpose.

Would even work better with a fan(s) sucking in air from outside..

Too bad it's useless when Summer.

 

[lexluthermiester]

With chiller parts from a fridge?

Minifridge very likely.

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

They mostly use a tec and cooler/fan combo. Like the innards of that x-box mini fridge.

 

[delshay]

Since i got the Asus RTX 3070 my Audigy 5/RX started to receive a noise over 12V and 3.3V lines from the GPU coil whine.
So i decided to make an separate/external PSU/VRM for the audio card. I use an external power supply controlled by the PC with an relay to isolate the circuits. Only the ground is the same fo obvious reasons.

And 3 downsteps from 19V to 12v; 5v; 3.3v.

No more humming and other crap from internal components.

View attachment 311834

This is what I have (extra fans) blowing down the gap to feed the GFX fan, but I connect two Noctua 120mm fans together using stacked motherboard spacers.

 

[taka]

This is what I have (extra fans) blowing down the gap to feed the GFX fan, but I connect two Noctua 120mm fans together using stacked motherboard spacers.

For me that 140mm fan in front of the GPU reduce the temp with 5 Celsius. 67 without it and 62 with.

 

[Mussels]

I had big issues with a laptop charger, when hooked up to my parent's TV and stereo, where as soon as the laptop was plugged in, there was so much static coming through that it was unusable.

We have a thread on coil whine that dipped into that, ferrite bead on the laptop charger (and making sure the rest of the system has a working ground even if the laptop charger is only a 2 pin) should help that sort of situation a lot

It's frustrating how high end devices can come with really low quality chargers/PSUs that cause a lot of grief, I ran into all this where it was known that some TP-link VDSL routers had power bricks that jammed VDSL signals. They failed at their own job, but it was common knowlege on the whirlpool forums to slap any other 12V power brick into them for better DSL sync

I'm loving the new USB-C standards since i can run USB-C PD 12V and run these routers from alternate power sources - 20v ones exist for laptops as well (But care must be taken that you dont try and run them from an older USB-C device that cant output the 20v, things can go weird or break)

 

[Nuckles56]

I did end up solving it exactly that way. I've never had any issues with any other computer. We could always tell when there was a short on the electric fence as you'd hear a click at the same timing as an electric fence come through the speakers. I think part of the problem was the house earth wasn't as good as it should have been.

It is kind of amazing how many devices cut corners like that to save cents.

 

[80251]

@masterdeejay
8 sticks of 16 GiB DDR4 at 4000Mhz. was that a difficult thing to do?

 

[masterdeejay]

@masterdeejay
8 sticks of 16 GiB DDR4 at 4000Mhz. was that a difficult thing to do?

These are single rank Registered ecc modules so not so difficult, same imc voltage and freq than 4 sticks b-die.
This cpu can handle 4ranks per channel eccreg up to 2TB

ASRock X299 Motherboards Get BIOS Support For 256GB RDIMMs, Up To 2 TB Memory Capacity Support

ASRock has officially released the latest BIOS for their X299 motherboards, enabling support for RDIMM memory with up to 256 GB capacities.

wccftech.com

 

[80251]

@masterdeejay
So are registered DIMMs easier to overclock than regular DIMMs?

Are single rank, 16GB DIMMs something you can only get w/registered DIMMs?

 

[masterdeejay]

@masterdeejay
So are registered DIMMs easier to overclock than regular DIMMs?

Are single rank, 16GB DIMMs something you can only get w/registered DIMMs?

The registered dimms just make less stress on the imc, so i can use more sticks. Oc is the same per stick These are hynix DJR die-s so it can oc to 5000+. 1rx4 so same chips count then 2rx8 dual rank i think. There are advantages using x4 rams but only in server motherboards.

 

[taka]

@masterdeejay
That thing in your profile picture is a PCI-e to PCI to AGP chain?

 

[masterdeejay]

@masterdeejay
That thing in your profile picture is a PCI-e to PCI to AGP chain?

Yes.
It was my project to use 3dfx glide in x99.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/voodoo3-2000-windows-10-x64-driver.280021/

 

[Macro Device]

Radeon RX 6700, 6700 XT & 6750 XT users club

@Lew Zealand Sorry for bad English, it's my 3rd lannich... ;D 2300 MHz at 132W seems considerably lower power usage than mine. I will retest at that speed this evening and undervolt until it fails to see what I get. I believe you're in the Demo portion of the benchmark there, which I...

www.techpowerup.com

Finished my job. Still an honest chunk ghetto so it's still appropriate in this thread.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Radeon RX 6700, 6700 XT & 6750 XT users club

@Lew Zealand Sorry for bad English, it's my 3rd lannich... ;D 2300 MHz at 132W seems considerably lower power usage than mine. I will retest at that speed this evening and undervolt until it fails to see what I get. I believe you're in the Demo portion of the benchmark there, which I...

www.techpowerup.com

Finished my job. Still an honest chunk ghetto so it's still appropriate in this thread.

At first I thought it was a factory XFX. What was it originally?

 

[Macro Device]

What was it originally?

XFX RX 6700 XT Speedster SWFT309

What was it originally?

I bought it mined out for negligible amount of money so whilst I had no legitimate reason to complain about that... I still had my fans too loud and too inefficient. They were exhausted, almost rotten to the core.

I decided on playing it Bogart and changing the good half of GPU's design.

 

[Darthgrey]

From local aftermarket:

 

[Macro Device]

From local aftermarket:

View attachment 313585
View attachment 313586

I did the same thing with my "lemme test this for a couple days" systems dozens of times.

 

[80251]

My system has been giving me random system resets, which I figured was because of my overclocks (which were stable w/my reliable, tough 1080ti), but wasn't, it was all down to my 4090. So now my 4090 (the power hungry bastage) gets its own PSU:

 

[80251]

Interestingly enough, the PCIe +12V leads on the 4090 don't seem to be connected to the +12V PCIe slot -- they seem to be entirely different circuits.

 

[Mussels]

Camping solar wifi setup (works as a VoWifi booster, handy out bush - works while driving, too)
Router that runs off 12v, it does have a stock UPS battery but with a 240v in, so an inverter adds a lot of loss to recharge it.
It's a gigabit rated AC2200 router, but with a 4G LTE backup sim that runs 25Mb/5Mb almost anywhere in the country, free. And it has external LTE aerial sockets so the signal is drastically boosted, while keeping the main unit covered and out of the way.

UPS spade terminals to molex, molex to router jack (Forgot the actual size, same as most external hard drives)

Then of course, i just click in a 10w solar panel

Here it is, outside my doggy door flap for testing

Considering the battery was at 12.2v before connecting the router, i'm going to say it's actively charging while powering the router. Handy.

Edit: Pulling 0.68A from the panel, averaging 13.04v so ~ 9.1W in from a 10W panel. As the voltage goes up the battery passively loses it, with a 14.4v peak on the battery) that'll actually hit it's advertised goal.
The router uses around 5W at idle, 12W or so with multiple devices hammering it.
Disabling 2.4GHz wifi and using 5GHz only drastically lowers power consumption (~12W<8W) - and then it idles lower.

As an estimate vs the stock router, this should give me around 8 hours of internet/wifi from the battery, with the sunlight recharging it so it'll go for most of the night too and recover more or less immediately in the morning - the router shuts off around the 10.5v-11v volt mark, so the battery doesnt take damage from being drained flat like an analogue device would.


I'll solder the wires instead of using the joiner, and call it a day - leaving the spades uncovered lets me connect the solar panel easier.

This setup can obviously be used to run anything 12v that's low enough wattage - water pump for a camp shower, LED lights, 12v car acc (USB-C chargers, etc)

 

[taka]

Interestingly enough, the PCIe +12V leads on the 4090 don't seem to be connected to the +12V PCIe slot -- they seem to be entirely different circuits.

Prety much same design since the first video card with an external power. PCIe slot has the load of memory VRM in 98% cases and the external connector separate circuit to GPU chip VRM.
Some video cards don't use the PCIe slot power at all and use only external power. You can identify the circuits after the 5 miliohm ressistor (R005).

This board uses 3 12v circuits.

 

[Mussels]

By the time i got back to the router the battery was at 16v (no explosions) so that panel is far more than the router needs - a good warning to let it run off the battery and not leave it connected

 

[Mussels]

Abusing the same "10W" panel with its 22v 'voc' (voltage open circuit, 0.6A locked, no matter the voltage)

The idea is that under load the voltage drops - but what if you pair it with lithium batteries that dont drop?
Like 18v ryobis that naturally charge at 21.5v?

1.5AH Battery at 3/4 charge:

Solar panel to the input of a stock AC charger - I simply cut off the AC brick, and i'm using it as DC-DC

It's cloudy, measuring that got me a 0.05A reading - Just over 1W. Trickle charge levels, but hey - that's still awesome for 'emergency' power.


The battery has its own thermal protection while the charger has the voltage cutoff - so this will slowly charge up at 0.6AH, the charger will cut out if the voltage is too low (preventing the panel draining the battery) and cut off when it's full, and the battery has thermal protection in case it gets into direct sunlight accidentally.

Utterly stupidly simple and safe universal charging method since the voltages lined up perfectly for me.


This idea came to be because i own this and use it camping with my collection of 4AH and 5AH batteries as an overnight USB charger/LED light

And they now sell a newer version with USB-C input and a 21W solar panel

The new design is awesome because it has USB-C input and seemingly a boost circuit, so it can charge from 5/9/12 volt - that'd be insane with the solar panel, because it'd still work as the voltage drops.