How To: Video card heatsink removal/AS5 application

[Quakindude]

This question has been asked on computer forums all over the internet. The fact is, this topic can, at times, be as hotly contested as the current political figures and God Himself. I set out to answer this question with a video card manufactured by MSI. Based on the 6800GT GPU, it's a fairly hot running card, especially since it's overclocked.

So the question is, does pulling the stock heatsink off, applying AS5 and reinstalling the heatsink make any difference? Prior to this exercise, I would have given my standard answer of, "Yes. By about 3-5 degrees C." Little did I know the changes that would happen, and the stupidity I would exhibit, by the time this task was completed.

Our subject today is an MSI made 6800GT.





Take careful note of where the screws are on the back of the card. Yours may be on the front, but where ever they are, I suggest your taking pics along the way to illustrate your reassembly. This particular card has nylon washers strategically located on certain areas of the heat sink to provide clearance between the heat sink and the PCB, that red card, and screwing up their location can, and most likely will, prove catastrophic. So MAKE SURE you pay CLOSE attention during disassembly. Also, be sure to note if certain screws are longer than others. If so, note their respective locations for re installation later.

Now, onto the items you'll need to properly clean this thing and prepare it for reassembly.


First off is the Alcohol. You can purchase this same bottle at any Lowe's or Home Depot and probably Wal-Mart.


This next picture shows a metallic scraper, which you DO NOT want to use, a Dremel tool and pieces of an old CD, along with my disassembled card.



So, now I have disassembled the card, taking painstaking efforts to note and record the exact locations of any and all washers and screws. I looked at my metal scraper and immediately decided there's no way in hell that thing is going near my video card, but with the way this other crap is all gooped onto my card, how am I going to remove it? And do so safely, without injuring the card?

Let's take a moment to note my pre-application temps.



This, dear reader, represents a fresh install of WinXP Pro on a new Hard Drive with Eve-Online and Quake 3 on a TimeDemo Loop running in the background. I get a relatively toasty, although nothing to worry about, temperature of 66C.

The heat sink has been removed and here's what's on it:



The PCB with GPU and Ram:



Both components side by side:



Here's where I pick up with the decision on what to use to clean these with. Now mind you, the Alcohol, which should be applied and not imbibed, will do little more than rearrange the goop on the specific surface you apply it to at this time. You quickly realize that a scraper of some sort is required, nay, demanded! in this situation to save your sanity. So, not wishing to use the aforementioned metallic scraper, I hit upon the idea of making my own out of a CD that I no longer needed. This is where the dremel comes in handy. I quickly cut said CD into "pie" like sections, please reference the picture below to see what I did.

I quickly, and near fatally for my finger I might add, decided to use the dremel tool to further refine one of the CD pieces so that it would have a sharp edge and thus, scrape off the goop better. Using the flat side of the cut-off wheel on my Dremel tool,



I proceeded to shape and refine a very nice edge on one of the CD pieces.



I then started scraping and removing all the old crap off the heat sink and the GPU/ram on the PCB. After removing all that I could with the scraper, I then used the Alcohol and a rag to remove the smeared remanents of the thermal material that MSI was so generous in using.

I would like to point out that said material was fibrous in nature and was, actually, the first time I had ever seen this type of Thermal Interface Material.



Anyway, the now cleaned Heat Sink and GPU were ready for thermal compound application. My compound of choice, and what I always have on hand, being Arctic Silver 5.



Now dear reader, I shall bore you to tears with my trip to the hospital. As I was using my newly made, and highly touted, scraping tool, I quickly realized that yes, a tool can make a tool! I had placed such a fine edge on the scraper that the first time I slipped while cleaning the material off, I managed to jab the corner of said tool into the face of my finger!!!



After applying generous amounts of water to the afflicted area, I placed a bandaid over the punctured finger and turned to complete my work. By the time I went from my kitchen sink to my work bench, the above picture led me to bleed upon my freshly cleaned Heatsink.

At this moment, I had a sudden flash of clarity. Common Sense, while notably absent from its normal head of Safety Department desk, returned with a vengeance!, screaming for me to go to the hospital and get my dumbass looked after!

So, mounting, heh, I said "Mounting", my trusty steed,



I slowly made my way to the hospital where the physician removed a small piece of CD material, aye fair reader, the very corner that had forced its way through my finger and almost to the back of my fingernail was lodged inside my now very painful finger. With its removal, and the generous injection of a local anesthetic and application of a bandaging device, I was once again ready to undertake the now arduous task of reassembling of my video card.

First thing to do, besides taking a couple of aspirins, was to apply Arctic Silver 5 to the proper areas. Here's the first look:



Second look:



Finally, the third look. I used a plastic sandwich bag wrapped around my now properly bandaged finger to spread the AS 5 around with. Be careful not to overlap onto the PCB and if you do, clean it up. This picture is before I did my touching up. Once you have spread the AS 5 around, you should have a nice, uniform gray appearance with no globs. You should have applied just enough AS 5 to make a thin coating. Not one you can see through, but one that isn't so thick as to get pushed over the sides of the application areas after reassembly of the two components.




In closing, I would like to point out that when you reassemble your video card, and no kidding here folks, place your washers in their EXACT locations. Use a small amount of AS 5 on them to get them to stick where you need them. When you are ready to reinsert the screws in their respective locations, STOP! Think to yourself, THIS IS WHERE I CAN SCREW THIS WHOLE THING UP BADLY!!! Insert screws and tighten finger tight from the inside out in a circular pattern. Once they are all finger tight, use your screw driver, the smaller the handle the better, to tighten the screws. As SOON as you feel a sharp rise in torque, STOP! Go to the next screw. Once all are tightened, go back over them once more. Once you feel the slightest drag on the tool, STOP! Go about 1/8 more in the tightening direction and call it good. If you over tighten these screws, you WILL bork your card!

Results:



A 14 degree temperature drop. This is the very best I've ever seen for performing this job, but it was gooped on pretty thick in the first place.

Some parting thoughts on this. This is a very easy process. It just requires your strict attention to hardware placement. I simply cannot stress the importance of this enough. PAY attention to where your hardware goes. The washers are of particular concern here folks. Anything that is placed in between the heatsink and the card itself needs to be carefully documented for location. These washers will need to be reinstalled exactly as they came off.

I've talked with other folks on this subject and it seems like a temperature drop of 5-10 degrees is fairly common. If you're overclocking your video card, and you just don't have the cabbage for a high-end after-market cooler, this could be just the thing you need to squeeze those few extra Mhz out of your card.

[pc_guy]

Thank you for this very informative article. I will have to try this on my X1600 card, which is running about 58C at idle and 78-80C full load!

[drew and not u]

and my 7800GT shall recieve the AS5 treatment. Great job Tom, and good luck with the finger! :P

[yurimxpxman]

A bloody finger - just what every article needs! Why didn't I think of that?

Very nice writeup. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you get a PM from Rich about this one

[gvblake22]

HAHAHA, wow, what an adventure that was. If you don't want to go through the trouble of dremeling out little slices of a CD, I suggest just using an old credit card or ID card or somthing similar.

Also, I want to make everyone aware of the fact that Arctic Silver 5 contains trace amounts of Silver (which I'm sure everone is aware of the fact it is a metallic element). Being a metal, it is ever so slightly electrically conductive, so when you are spreading it on the exposed GPU die and the memory chips, beware that if you get some on the transistors or exposed traces nearby it could potentially cause a short and do who knows what to your card. That said, I have also used Arctic Silver 5 on the the GPU die of several video cards without problems, but the chance for something to go wrong is there. If you don't feel comfortable with Arctic Silver 5, I suggest trying Ceramique (also made by the Arctic Silver brand) as it is non conductive but still yields great results.

To go along with the idea of using AS5 (or Ceramique) on the memory chips, there is a potential for poor contact. The heatsinks that cover both the GPU core and memory chips (like the one used in the tutorial above) often take into account the thickness of those stock thermal pads. So when you scrape those pads off and add a paper thin layer of thermal grease (like AS5 or Ceramique), then there is a chance that even when screwed down tight, the heatsink won't actually make full contact with the memory chips. This isn't usually a problem, but depending on how the stock heatsinks are designed, it may be something to keep in mind. So make sure you hold the card up horizontally with a light behind to see if you can see any gaps between the heatsink and the memory chips (and even the GPU for that matter) once you have put it all back together. If you can't see any gaps but still aren't sure, you can always go through the trouble of taking the heatsink all back off again to see if there are spots of TIM on the heatsink base where it made good contact with the memory and GPU.

Finally, make sure you clean off all of the stock TIM from both the heatsink and the card with the alcohol. Most alcohol is labeled as Isopropyl Alcohol and a 99% concentration is most desireable, but anything in the 90% range should be fine. The only reason most people don't suggest lower than that is because as the percentage goes down, that means it is just diluted more with water and won't evaporate as quickly or as clean as the 99%.

You also want to make sure you avoid static electricity while working on your naked video card as even one shock in the right spot could render your card useless.

[Quakindude]

Good points Blake. You could also bolt everything back up, then take it back apart to make sure the AS5 has spread and made contact between the heatsink and ram modules.

As with anything of this nature, there is some degree of risk involved. You can mitigate this risk by being as thorough as possible in conducting the task.

[Tyreal]

Great review but I agree with Blake.

when screwed down tight, the heatsink won't actually make full contact with the memory chips. This isn't usually a problem, but depending on how the stock heatsinks are designed, it may be something to keep in mind. So make sure you hold the card up horizontally with a light behind to see if you can see any gaps between the heatsink and the memory chips (and even the GPU for that matter) once you have put it all back together. If you can't see any gaps but still aren't sure, you can always go through the trouble of taking the heatsink all back off again to see if there are spots of TIM on the heatsink base where it made good contact with the memory and GPU.

Take my 7800GT for example. It came stock with these thick pads on the memory, similar to yours. If I had used your method, there is a chance that the heatsink would not have made contact with the memory afterwards. Again, as Blake mentioned, it all depends on the design of the HSF.

In my opinion, I would not apply AS5 on my memory chips in that manner, only because it's much easier to short something out and cause problems.

[drew and not u]

yeah so, good call blake. Did it to my 7800GT and there definitely was still a major gap between the heatsink and RAM. Dunno what I'm going to do now. Guess I'll buy another VF700. :P

[Tyreal]

Or make that a VF-900. They are killer.

[Quakindude]

Hmmm, didn't have that problem with my card. But to be on the safe side, don't do your ram. Just do the GPU.