Trying to improve a Tesla M40

[Bastiaan_NL]

After some guys here on EHW triggered my interest in the Tesla M40 cards I decided to start looking for one in Europe. 
Last Saturday I found one in Belgium for a reasonable price, so I did not hesitate and buy it. Besides that I bought an MSI 980ti cooler, a few screws, washers and nuts and a few m.2 SSD coolers. 

 

The idea I have is to improve the air cooling on this M40, in such a way that it is usable in the air cooled workstation I'm (slowly) building. See it as a little side project to get my fix of GPU's in this time of shortage, not that I can complain. 

 

[An interruption of this post, to post the final product]

 

 

 

 

[And we continue the original post]

 

So let's start with the card itself:

Looks pretty with those red lights reflecting on the original cooler, which looks even better in person. A shame I have to remove it..

 

 

The old paste and pads:

The paste was pretty dry, but it wasn't hard to clean it.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is original, it looks like someone replaced the pads.

 

 

Looks good after cleaning, but we will have to wait for the cooler to arrive.

 

 

New pads on the aluminium backplate:

I did some measuring to get the thickness right for the pads next to the Vram.

I'm pretty sure I don't have any option to cool anything on the other side of the PCB, so I try to cool this side of the card as good as possible.

 

 

A lot of bolts to get some pressure on the back, and not too tight for obvious reasons. 
Also, an IO shield from a GTX580 installed on the card. Not the strongest solution with only one bolt, but at least it's a good fit.

 

 

And here are the m.2 coolers on the back with some double sided tape/coolpads. As soon as I can fire the card back up I'll measure the temps on the back with a digital thermometer, to see if I have to improve it.

 

 

That's it for now, I'm waiting patiently for the cooler!

Edited September 23, 2021 by Bastiaan_NL

[damric]

This looks like it will be a very fun project, but the beverage in picture 5 has me most interested.

[ENTERPRISE]

Nice, I look forward to seeing what temperatures you manage to bring them down to. The cooling to the rear of the card is important, certainly saw a good improvement with 120mm pushing cool air down onto the cards inline with the rear of the GPU core.

[UltraMega]

1 hour ago, damric said:

This looks like it will be a very fun project, but the beverage in picture 5 has me most interested.

Have you tried the serenity prayer? 

[Avacado]

1 hour ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

After some guys here on EHW triggered my interest in the Tesla M40 cards I decided to start looking for one in Europe. 
Last Saturday I found one in Belgium for a reasonable price, so I did not hesitate and buy it. Besides that I bought an MSI 980ti cooler, a few screws, washers and nuts and a few m.2 SSD coolers. 

 

The idea I have is to improve the air cooling on this M40, in such a way that it is usable in the air cooled workstation I'm (slowly) building. See it as a little side project to get my fix of GPU's in this time of shortage, not that I can complain. 

 

So let's start with the card itself:

Looks pretty with those red lights reflecting on the original cooler, which looks even better in person. A shame I have to remove it..

 

 

The old paste and pads:

The paste was pretty dry, but it wasn't hard to clean it.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is original, it looks like someone replaced the pads.

 

 

Looks good after cleaning, but we will have to wait for the cooler to arrive.

 

 

New pads on the aluminium backplate:

I did some measuring to get the thickness right for the pads next to the Vram.

I'm pretty sure I don't have any option to cool anything on the other side of the PCB, so I try to cool this side of the card as good as possible.

 

 

A lot of bolts to get some pressure on the back, and not too tight for obvious reasons. 
Also, an IO shield from a GTX580 installed on the card. Not the strongest solution with only one bolt, but at least it's a good fit.

 

 

And here are the m.2 coolers on the back with some double sided tape/coolpads. As soon as I can fire the card back up I'll measure the temps on the back with a digital thermometer, to see if I have to improve it.

 

 

That's it for now, I'm waiting patiently for the cooler!

Just so you know, there are thermal pads under that backplate there. 0.5mm. Is yours the 12 or 24 GB variant?

[J7SC_Orion]

8 hours ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

After some guys here on EHW triggered my interest in the Tesla M40 cards I decided to start looking for one in Europe. 
Last Saturday I found one in Belgium for a reasonable price, so I did not hesitate and buy it. Besides that I bought an MSI 980ti cooler, a few screws, washers and nuts and a few m.2 SSD coolers. 

 

The idea I have is to improve the air cooling on this M40, in such a way that it is usable in the air cooled workstation I'm (slowly) building. See it as a little side project to get my fix of GPU's in this time of shortage, not that I can complain. 

 

So let's start with the card itself:

Looks pretty with those red lights reflecting on the original cooler, which looks even better in person. A shame I have to remove it..

 

 

The old paste and pads:

The paste was pretty dry, but it wasn't hard to clean it.

 

 

I'm not sure if this is original, it looks like someone replaced the pads.

 

 

Looks good after cleaning, but we will have to wait for the cooler to arrive.

 

 

New pads on the aluminium backplate:

I did some measuring to get the thickness right for the pads next to the Vram.

I'm pretty sure I don't have any option to cool anything on the other side of the PCB, so I try to cool this side of the card as good as possible.

 

 

A lot of bolts to get some pressure on the back, and not too tight for obvious reasons. 
Also, an IO shield from a GTX580 installed on the card. Not the strongest solution with only one bolt, but at least it's a good fit.

 

 

And here are the m.2 coolers on the back with some double sided tape/coolpads. As soon as I can fire the card back up I'll measure the temps on the back with a digital thermometer, to see if I have to improve it.

 

 

That's it for now, I'm waiting patiently for the cooler!

 

 ...very nice and clean ! 

 

BTW, do you have a link / detail for the ' double sided tape/coolpads' ?

 

Also, perhaps more for other GPU (and even CPU !) water-cooling and folding projects, you might want to keep the item below in mind...I have 8 of them left over from my HWBot days, and they work really, really well (copper base). They can also be transferred between different GPUs and come with adapters for both NVidia and AMD. That said, you'll need a separate VRM fan and VRAM heat sinks

   

Edited May 13, 2021 by J7SC_Orion

[Bastiaan_NL]

11 hours ago, damric said:

This looks like it will be a very fun project, but the beverage in picture 5 has me most interested.

Yeah, I'm already enjoying the simple mods. And it's not expensive, so that's a bonus!

The beverage was a NEIPA from a local brewery, we have a subscription with a group of friends. We get a box of beers every two weeks, share/drink and review them together

 

 

11 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Nice, I look forward to seeing what temperatures you manage to bring them down to. The cooling to the rear of the card is important, certainly saw a good improvement with 120mm pushing cool air down onto the cards inline with the rear of the GPU core.

I hope it'll be enough to keep it at a good boost clock for folding, that's the idea. And every bit helps for that, so I might have to use a higher profile m.2 heatsinks on the back to cool it even more. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Avacado said:

Just so you know, there are thermal pads under that backplate there. 0.5mm. Is yours the 12 or 24 GB variant?

I already replaced those, but on my card they were 0.75mm. 
This one is a 12GB card, does that impact anything?

 

 

3 hours ago, J7SC_Orion said:

 

 ...very nice and clean ! 

 

BTW, do you have a link / detail for the ' double sided tape/coolpads' ?

 

Also, perhaps more for other GPU (and even CPU !) water-cooling and folding projects, you might want to keep the item below in mind...I have 8 of them left over from my HWBot days, and they work really, really well (copper base). They can also be transferred between different GPUs and come with adapters for both NVidia and AMD. That said, you'll need a separate VRM fan and VRAM heat sinks

   

Thanks

The pads came with the m.2 heatsinks, I'll see if I can find some info about them and I'll let you know!

 

I will keep those blocks in mind, though I don't plan on doing any water cooling on the workstation and both the pc's are done. (besides a block for the 3090, dammit Watercool..)

[ENTERPRISE]

1 hour ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

Yeah, I'm already enjoying the simple mods. And it's not expensive, so that's a bonus!

The beverage was a NEIPA from a local brewery, we have a subscription with a group of friends. We get a box of beers every two weeks, share/drink and review them together

 

 

I hope it'll be enough to keep it at a good boost clock for folding, that's the idea. And every bit helps for that, so I might have to use a higher profile m.2 heatsinks on the back to cool it even more. 

 

 

I already replaced those, but on my card they were 0.75mm. 
This one is a 12GB card, does that impact anything?

 

 

Thanks

The pads came with the m.2 heatsinks, I'll see if I can find some info about them and I'll let you know!

 

I will keep those blocks in mind, though I don't plan on doing any water cooling on the workstation and both the pc's are done. (besides a block for the 3090, dammit Watercool..)

You should be able to keep the cards and max boost. So long as you have powerful through flow cooling blowing through the GPU heatsink as well as good exterior back plate cooling, you should be golden.

[Avacado]

2 hours ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

I hope it'll be enough to keep it at a good boost clock for folding, that's the idea. And every bit helps for that, so I might have to use a higher profile m.2 heatsinks on the back to cool it even more. 

 

 

I already replaced those, but on my card they were 0.75mm. 
This one is a 12GB card, does that impact anything?

 

 

Thanks

The pads came with the m.2 heatsinks, I'll see if I can find some info about them and I'll let you know!

 

I will keep those blocks in mind, though I don't plan on doing any water cooling on the workstation and both the pc's are done. (besides a block for the 3090, dammit Watercool..)

As long as it stays <85c, you should maintain boost clocks. The M.2. Sinks are a great idea, though I am not entirely convinced that the backplates are metal alloy. I am pretty sure all of mine were hard plastic. That is one of the reasons I bought backplates, I didn't see the rational with thermal pads on the back try to move heat through plastic. I was just curious to which model you got a hold of as I know that the 24GB models are out there, should not make a difference. 

[Bastiaan_NL]

1 hour ago, ENTERPRISE said:

You should be able to keep the cards and max boost. So long as you have powerful through flow cooling blowing through the GPU heatsink as well as good exterior back plate cooling, you should be golden.

I have a pair of Noctua NF-A20 fans on the workstation to blow through the system, and a room fan to help if needed. Should be alright, but the cooler the better!

 

 

12 minutes ago, Avacado said:

As long as it stays <85c, you should maintain boost clocks. The M.2. Sinks are a great idea, though I am not entirely convinced that the backplates are metal alloy. I am pretty sure all of mine were hard plastic. That is one of the reasons I bought backplates, I didn't see the rational with thermal pads on the back try to move heat through plastic. I was just curious to which model you got a hold of as I know that the 24GB models are out there, should not make a difference. 

Below 85°C should be no problem, maybe some OC headroom or possible mods.

I drilled out a hole in the backplate a little bit to fit the io shield, so I knew it was metal. But here is a little display for you, I scratched a little bit of paint from the side and did a resistance check.

Also flipped the picture around in the original folder a few times but the forum keeps uploading it upside down

 

 

[Avacado]

12 minutes ago, Bastiaan_NL said:

I have a pair of Noctua NF-A20 fans on the workstation to blow through the system, and a room fan to help if needed. Should be alright, but the cooler the better!

 

 

Below 85°C should be no problem, maybe some OC headroom or possible mods.

I drilled out a hole in the backplate a little bit to fit the io shield, so I knew it was metal. But here is a little display for you, I scratched a little bit of paint from the side and did a resistance check.

Also flipped the picture around in the original folder a few times but the forum keeps uploading it upside down

 

 

Show off. 

[BWG]

Oh man,  this looks like cheap fun in the mining era.  Avacado's doing well in etf now with his!

[Avacado]

3 minutes ago, BWG said:

Oh man,  this looks like cheap fun in the mining era.  Avacado's doing well in etf now with his!

I wish brother, I wish. Tesla's only get about 3 MH/s each. Not worth it, which kills me because

 

https://www.betterhash.net/NVIDIA-TITAN-X-(Pascal)-mining-profitability-9981235.html#:~:text=NVIDIA TITAN X (Pascal) can,- Ethash (Phoenix) algorithm.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Avacado

[BWG]

I meant the mining era makes anything GPU related expensive, and these are not expensive, so cheap fun.

[Bastiaan_NL]

6 hours ago, BWG said:

Oh man,  this looks like cheap fun in the mining era.  Avacado's doing well in etf now with his!

That's the whole idea, and another 1mil ppd doesn't hurt with Avacado breathing in my neck every competition

But that's not the reason, just trying my luck with a product I've never used before. 

[The Pook]

weird timing

 

 

was tempted to get one just for curiosity's sake but I don't really have a need for it. 

Edited May 13, 2021 by The Pook

[ENTERPRISE]

2 hours ago, The Pook said:

weird timing

 

 

was tempted to get one just for curiosity's sake but I don't really have a need for it. 

 

Do it to satisfy not only your curiosity, but mine also

[BWG]

16 hours ago, The Pook said:

weird timing

 

 

was tempted to get one just for curiosity's sake but I don't really have a need for it. 

 

Well, you do need to fold more? Come on, whatcha say?

 

13 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

Do it to satisfy not only your curiosity, but mine also

 

And this ^

[Bastiaan_NL]

Ah great, so that means we can have a benchmark competition with M40's! @Avacado@ENTERPRISE, and you too @The Pook 

 

And yes, you really should do it to help us all with this part of our M40 investigation. Enterprise works on the stock cards, I try the air cooled route and Avacado works on the water cooling. Now we need someone who works on the software and drivers, to optimize the cards!

[damric]

I see some K40s for cheap on ebay. How difficult is it to get one of these folding in Windows 10? These are basically OG Titan right?

[Avacado]

5 minutes ago, damric said:

I see some K40s for cheap on ebay. How difficult is it to get one of these folding in Windows 10? These are basically OG Titan right?

Very difficult. I have 3 Tesla K80's on the shelf. I have never been able to get them consistently folding. If you want to play with one, I'll send it to you. 

 

There is a reason they aren't on the Lars.sys database.  Roughly equivalent to a 780. There are 2 GPU die on the PCB. 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Avacado

[damric]

1 minute ago, Avacado said:

Very difficult. I have 3 Tesla K80's on the shelf. I have never been able to get them consistently folding. If you want to play with one, I'll send it to you. 

I'd certainly mess around with it. Is it because it's just not intended to work in Windows?

 

Check this out too. I'm watching this listing. Do you think this a good deal or a snake in the grass?

 

 

[Avacado]

4 minutes ago, damric said:

I'd certainly mess around with it. Is it because it's just not intended to work in Windows?

 

Check this out too. I'm watching this listing. Do you think this a good deal or a snake in the grass?

 

 

Thats a good deal which will most likely be a lot higher before it ends. The 1900x itself looks to be in good condition on the contacts. I would ask for a closeup of the MOBO socket. I actually have one of those boards and love it. 

 

The K80 will show in Windows just fine as 2 GPU's, but getting it to fold is another story. 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Avacado

[J7SC_Orion]

...I have some old Radeon 8990s (which need some attention) - essentially 2x 7970s per card...are they any good for folding these days ?

 

...Tesla M40s, but with custom coolers 

not really

 

 

[Avacado]

4 minutes ago, J7SC_Orion said:

...I have some old Radeon 8990s (which need some attention) - essentially 2x 7970s per card...are they any good for folding these days ?

 

...Tesla M40s, but with custom coolers 

not really

 

 

Only one way to find out. That looks cool AF BTW.