XFX 8800GT (Alpha Dog) Water cooling problems

[crax]

Hi

I have recently bought a XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog edition, and a Koolance Water cooling kit, which cools important areas such as memory etc.

The thing is, that when I install the water thing, I get the usual "no vga found" sound when booting. If I reattach the original cooler it works perfectly!

Does any of you know, if I need to do any "magic" to make the water cooling work on this particular XFX card?

It's really driving me crazy :)

/Crax

[xfxsupport]

That is odd, anyone else run into such an issue?

[crax]

What will the normal reaction of the XFX card be, if it thinks it doesn't get enough cooling at boot up?
Would it just reject to do anything (like I experience) or would it start up and die horribly due to overheating?

[werty316]

Maybe some is shorted by the water block.

[srpeters18]

I don't own on of these cards but here's a thought. Maybe there's a detect function on the fan power and since its not detecting a fan, it won't start up so it doesn't fry itself. Since it has no way of knowing that you're water-cooling it and not just trying to kill it. :wink: Try plugging a fan in and see if that fixes it.

[crax]

Oh my... I'm happy atm because my problem have been solved. On the other hand I spend well above 5 hours trying to figure out what was wrong, including taking off the water cooler, putting on the original cooler and vice versa, several times. And then - such a logical but yet not easy to think of solution.

Well - the problem was, that my RAM is 1600MHz and the Mainboard is "up to" 1333MHz, with a feature of automatically upstep the CPU (incl. FSB I guess) to match the RAM speed. This meant that the XFX card was overclocked quite some, which the water cooler couldn't match as perfect as the original cooler (the water cooling is also new, so I'm not sure if it's enough yet). But anyhow - I solved the problem by setting the correct timings on the RAM while the original cooler was on. Then I tried again, now with a success :)

Lesson learned... I hope >_<

/Crax

[Madpyro]

That is certainly weird, i'd think the watercooling would be more effective than stock cooling :S

Unless you got some crappy watercooling though ;)

[crax]

Well, after thinking more about it, I did do the install of the water block different on the last attempt. On several other attempts I used the original screws and washers from XFX card. But on the last try, I used the screws and plastic washers from the water block. This separates the water block from the card entirely, making it ungrounded...
I don't know... the main point is that it works now, and also does so after a CMOS clear.

What really happened - I don't know :)