Just wanted to share my experience after watching the YouTube video, I went ahead and ordered copper heatsinks and GC-Extreme paste from amazon, they were delivered within a day. I cut the metal bar further to allow me to install individual heatsinks on all 8 DC-DC modules. BTW, I replaced the stock fans with Noctua earlier. What an improvement, this cube would never run over 281 MHz, now it's been running at 325 MHz for over 24 hours. I see DC-DC temp as high as 86 but never 90, as I set that as my max temp on GenTarkin's mod. Cutting the metal bar was a pain though specially for the front 4 DC-DC modules.

Thanks for sharing. What were the DC/DC temps before the mod? Lower or higher?

I should have documented it, but as far as I remember cube was running over 90C and your mod kept lowering hash rate until it found acceptable rate at which temp will stay below 90 which was 281. Below is a screenshot of 2 cubes. Cube 1 was modified and currently running at 325 MHz, cube 2 always run at 300 MHz, haven't tried 325 yet but I will soon. Other 2 cubes are in the process of modification, waiting on USPS to deliver heatsinks and thermal compound from Amazon any time now. Ambient temp is 81F in my garage. So I would say that individual heatsinks were able to lower temp for my setup.

Do you know how DC-DC connections are numbered? The front 4s are staying low with individual heatsinks, I took out the adhesive back from one of the heatsink and applied thermal compound for the 1st DC-DC on the right after the 1st row of 4. I see that 1 of the DC-DC is 5C lower, was wondering if thermal compound is more efficient. 

You can definitely sink the E piece, throw some heatsinks from ebay on top of it.  That would dramatically increase the surface area of that E piece and probably cool the VRM's a lot better.

Well, I had vegasguy take a temp measurement of the top of the E piece and side of the inductor on a VRM, they were within 5C of each other ... So, I think those thermal pads are transferring heat quite well. It may be worth a shot to add more surface area(sink the top) of the E piece. It would be like the easiest mod one could do, and if it works good... then great!

Here're the instruction for applying artic silver thermal compound :

 http://www.arcticsilver.com/amd_application_method.html#

 there're 2 ways to do it, Center Dot & Surface Spread, all ways recommend using a creditcard to tint first. Surface spread recommends a cc or razor blade to spread it. Center Dot recommends a dot the size of an uncooked grain of rice(If you think that's enough in this application, go for it, but be prepared to be disappointed).

Somewhere in there it also recommends to spread the paste into the copper pipe cracks if any, to fill any voids.  Also notice that there is a break in period of up to 200 hours, where  it'll take multiple thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction, (results will improve over time). A thermal cycle is an on/off, heating/cooling cycle, but we never turn ours off so it may take longer than 200 hours to obtain max efficiency


Searing if you're feeling ambitious take a look at the intel instructions, there they have 2 add'l methods vertical line & horizontal line, however I really don't think they apply here, just if you're curious  

Only if you actually release it!  

I was able to run all 4 of my cubes at 325 MHz and gain a little over 60 MH by putting those small heatsinks on DC-DC modules and reapplying thermal compound to the big heat sink of 3 cubes. The 4th cube was able to run at 325 w/o any modification, it was running stable at 300 MHz and I didn't try 325 before since other cubes would not run at 300 for over 20 mins. Thanks for all the tips and link to YouTube mod video. If you are planning to do this, as TXSteve mentioned before don't forget to peel off the sticker on DC-DC, I forgot to take sticker off of 1 cube and it is running warmer than the other 2.

What would be the safest Maximum DCDC temp setting on advance page of your mod regardless of the ambient temp? I currently set it at 90 and all dies run at 325, should I lower it?