Success! 1st card modded and working and it's even a cleaner mod than I had hoped!!
Here's the stuff that arrived and the pics of the finished card. I still have to re-mount water blocks and do the other cards.
The solder job
The 2pin socket mounted
The cable connected
Installed for testing
The 1st card vcore (VGA1) registering in software @ 0.978v (default 2d volts with VGA tweak disabled)
