GeForce2 MX200 Poly Mod

[linuxguru]

I have a generic GeForce2 MX200 (low-profile) card which had a Samcon (not Samxon) 470/16 as the main GPU bypass cap. All other caps are low-value caps. The GPU became too hot to touch the heatsink within 10 mins of powering up (maybe partially due to the fanless heat sink). However, the display was fine throughout with no anomalies.

I replaced the Samcon 470/16 with an NCC 180/16 PS-series polymer. The board works just the same as before, and the heatsink still gets too hot to touch. Display is fine, as before.

Conclusion: Inconclusive. Maybe the polymer cap will increase the endurance in spite of the high dissipation from the adjacent GPU - we'll see.

[Logistics]

Re: GeForce2 MX200 Poly Mod

Should have run time-demo's in Quake3 or Unreal Tournament 2004 before and after for extended periods of time to see if it helped with frames-per-second.

[linuxguru]

Re: GeForce2 MX200 Poly Mod

I didn't touch the clock crystal - the polygon and frame rates will be the same as before. I just wanted to improve the durability and reliability, and make it run cooler if possible. That does not seem to have been achieved, but it's no worse than before, so I'm ok with it.

[willawake]

Re: GeForce2 MX200 Poly Mod

i dont see how the cap replacement is going to affect temperature (much). the only thing thats gonna affect that is underclocking or new heatsink (or case cooling change might be useful)

[370forlife]

Re: GeForce2 MX200 Poly Mod

those old geforce2's had a pretty high manufacturing process, so it is to be expected that it runs hot even with the little transistors (compared to todays cards) that it has.