Add a cooler to an ATI All In Wonder 9600 VGA card

The ATI All-In-Wonder card is a great value for the features, so I'm sure many people bought one when they were available. One reason that they were a great value was slower, cheaper components, so the card will do a lot, just slower than average. One area of cost saving was the heat sink for the VGA chip. All cards these days have a heat sink with a fan, but not this guy!

My PC overheated a while back. It was better after I cleaned the dust bunnies out of the heat sinks (remember to do this, kids - maybe when you change the batteries on your smoke detectors, about twice a year). However, I noticed that the VGA card got VERY hot - this was unacceptable, so I decided to upgrade the cooler.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any coolers available for this card specifically. There are many generic "compatible with all ATI 9xxx" coolers out there, but don't be fooled - these rarely work with the All In Wonder. I managed to alter one to work, and here's how I did it.

Step 1 Overview

The ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 (hereafter refered to as the AIW) uses the Radeon 9600 chipset, but it has a bulky TV tuner module and tall capacitors that prohibit using a typical ATI 9xxx VGA Cooler. You need either a very tall narrow cooler, like a 486 CPU cooler, or a cooler that uses heat pipes to get the heat sink clear of the board.

I decided to use the Accelero S2 VGA Cooler, made by Arctic Cool. It uses heat pipes. It is designed to run in a silent PC, so it has no fans, and the heat sink is HUGE (but surprisingly light). Arctic Cool does make an optional fan kit for this cooler, but I decided to increase the number of fans on my case instead.

The Accelero S2 isn't a perfect solution, as it needs to be modified to fit the AIW card, but the modifications are minimal. It just involves making a few cuts in soft aluminum with a Dremel tool or hacksaw.

The cooler kit has heat sink compound pre-applied, and comes with a blank case-card cover with vent holes in it, so that when you mount it next to the VGA card, there is an extra vent hole in the back of your case. The kit also comes with 8 heat sinks that stick on to the RAM chips, and even though I haven't noted any high temperatures at the RAM (I don't overclock), I installed them anyway.

Comments

[Punkguyta]

What in your right mind makes you think you need a 10 pound heatsink for an All in wonder?

[exabopper]

Heat must be eliminated at all costs. If we let heat increase too much, the universe will eventually overheat and life as we know it will end. I am just trying to do my part to save everything.

PS - don't write to me explaining the physics of how wrong this answer is - it at least required a little more thought than, "THE OLD HEAT SINK WAS FRIGGIN HOT, DUH." Anyone in their "right mind" would have figured that out, especially since the first paragraph of the Instructable explained that very thing.

[Punkguyta]

Actually your answer is possibly wrong, I will try to elaborate despite your 1-upism below: Given time for the computer to be on, the heat sink will eventually heat up as hot at that other smaller heatsink that was factory installed. So, we had a fan right? Well with such a large new heatsink, we'll need a bigger fan to keep it cooler because of the increased surface area on the heatsink takes more air moving around to cool it. Thusly using more electricity and not really saving the environment.

[_Scratch_]

Actually, you are wrong. The point of a passive cooler is to have a large surface area to disperse heat across. Hot air also wants to move up, so there is a constant movement of air, even without a fan. It does not require more air moving to cool it, quite the opposite actually, the reason why the passive sinks are so big. The more surface area, the more heat transfer to the air, which better dissipates heat, heating the air up more, which causes more hot air to rise, and more cold air to move up into the sink. Do not rely on electricity for everything, nature has its own tricks.

[exabopper]

The intro of this Instructable notes that the original heatsink had no fan, was small, and got hot. Other reviewers of this card also noted the heat, and that while it was excessive, was within the operational parameters of the card, so it was not necessarily dangerous. In my opinion, excessive heat can stress the appliance, and perhaps over time, the heat will prove to be too great after all. I therefore decided to upgrade the cooler. Step 1 of this Instructable notes that the Accelero is designed for use in a fanless environment, and for this reason has very large surface area. Step 1 also states that I will add more case fans to my PC anyway, so as to help overall cooling of the system. While my system now sounds like a C-130 taking off, it runs within a few degrees of room temperature. It is true that the larger cooling capacity of the new coolers I added on the VGA card (and also CPU) will increase heat in the case overall, however the new case fans move the hot air to the outside (my office). After extended periods of computing with the door shut, my office is noticeably warmer than the rest of the house, but not uncomfortably so. I also realize that the heat I produce is only transferred, not eliminated, so the universe will eventually perish, heat sink or no. However, I feel that by using my computer to help educate others, so that perhaps an older component remains in use instead of being sent to a landfill, that I am helping to save the environment that way. Besides, any increase in the overall education of the human race will ensure that, at some point, a human will come up with a solution to environmental problems, and perhaps save the universe after all. That's why this site is so important.

[punkatsub]

(removed by author or community request)

[exabopper]

The graphics cars is actually a small computer that works with the rest of your computer, so that your main PC doesn't waste its time drawing pictures while it is doing other stuff like keeping track of your game score and opponents and other calculations. When your PC is ready to draw something on the screen, it sends some very basic information to the graphics card, and then kind of walks away while the graphics card finishes the picture and displays it to your screen. Because the graphics card is its own separate computer system, having more RAM and more coolers attached will make it draw screens faster, so your whole computer runs faster. Some graphics cards are built right into the main board, and they use some system memory instead of its own RAM. This is slower, but it's also cheaper, so a PC that doesn't play games or draw complex 3D pictures will do fine. However, if you are playing a fast, 3D game, a separate graphics card is needed (otherwise the PC will be so slow that the game will be unplayable - system lag). Most high-end gaming PCs actually have two graphics cards working together.

[_Scratch_]

The only High end PCs ive seen running 2 or more gpus are Alienware, or home built computers. My computer isnt incredible., but i built it. Also, to punkatsub, if you play any graphics intensive games (pretty much any after 2007) need a independent graphics card to run on high detail and smoothly. Such as Modern Warfare 2 on the computer.