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I killed my card installing aftermarket cooler about 2 weeks ago and since I took many pictures during the install I though I'd write what and how I did it and verify what I guess was the cause so I could at least learn something from this costly mistake. Looked like a really nice setup and it's shame not knowing how cool would it run.
REPASTING THE STOCK COOLER
my sapphire 6950 2GB (unlocked to full 6970, running 6970 bios, stock 6970 voltage, 930core 1375mem) started getting kinda hot lately and the memory temperature was touching 80 even with my custom fan profile which was keeping it around 75 in the past with 50-60% fan speed. Since the card was almost 3 years old and never opened I thought it's time to repaste it to bring the temps down to where they were when new or possibly even lower since many hw manufacturers skimp on the TIM used.
the vrams were the main issue for me, core was fine at 70-75. at about 84-85 the memory would crash and reset the driver so I was getting quite close to that. happened to me few times when my fan profile wasn't properly initialized after reboot and lately during the hot summer it happened as well even with my fan profile thus I was forced to raise the fan speed to over 60% in load to keep the temps under 80 and it became quite loud even for gaming with headphones (open circumaural sennheiser hd558 wih 598 mod)
this is how it looked like when first opened after almost 3 years after purchase (memory pads are already taken off - didn't take pic with them still on)
I wanted to get some quality thermal pads and after some searching I decided to get "Phobya Ultra 5W/mk". Phobya makes 4 grades of pads, these are actually the least powerful at 5W/mK but it's still significantly more than what the cheaper ebay ones are (1.1-3.2W/m*K). I wanted to get the ones with higher transfer rate since the price was almost the same but read on some forum that someone got the 2nd weakest (one step above the ones I got) and said the pads were too firm and would not compress easily and ended up getting the softer 5W/m*K instead (also the seller verified that the better ones are a lot firmer and that the difference is not that big and suggested to use the ultra ones). Also read somewhere that the 0.5mm was the suggested thickness so that's what I got.
installed new pads and core repasted with thermalright chillfacor 1 that I had lying around
this was the test fit and looked ok, I could see the edges of the vram chips "printed" into some of the pads and also I put all the pads on the heatspreader and one of the was stuck on the ram after the test fit so there was some contact
to my surprise the temps went a little up so I took it out and tightened the screws more...that got me little below the starting point but the card was not stable at my previous overclock...I ended up messing with the screw tightness and trying different TIM application techniques and all I could get while stable at my old OC was about 2 degrees above the starting point...factory applied 3 years old was topping at 79.5 for the vrams right before the TIM replacement (in summer it was a bit higher) and after it was topping at 81.5
core I think might have raised by about 2 degrees as well, wasn't watching it as close as the vrams since it always was around safe 70-75
so no improvement from repasting this time. interesting, I've seen about 15-20 degree drop on notebooks and about 10 degree drop on video cards after repasting with quality thermal material. maybe the chillfactor was past it's best days since it was about 1-2 years old and maybe the pads were not as great as I thought. I always use arcticlean to clean the surfaces so I wasn't sure why it didn't help and thought I have to come up with something better.
CHOOSING AFTERMARKET COOLING FOR MY NEEDS
after some time of researching aftermarket coolers I decided to go for Zalman VF3000A. I would get the Alpenfohn Peter but it is huge and I didn't want to sacrifice my hdds to gpu cooling since even the classic reference blower cooler was very close to my hdds in 5.25" slots in the front of the case. the accelero extreme was also too long and the zalman was pretty much battling for the first with accelero xtreme in all the reviews, max 3 degrees difference, usually within 1 degree and in some even ahead
on this picture I already have new ssd so I moved it in front of the video card because it was so close to a 3.5" drive that I had to use 90 degree data cable and even that I wasn't able to disconnect with the video card in place
based on this review picture of VF3000A installed I decided to get bigger ram sinks since it looked like enough space unused under the cooler and ordered 2 of Primecooler PC-RHS2 heatsinks hoping the bigger ones would fit (or I would make them fit) since the ones supplied with the zalman looked kinda small compared to those from alpenfohn
also got Zalman ZM-RHS69 VRM heatsink for 6900 cards since the one supplied with VF3000A only fits 5800 cards. I also ordered some JST-PH 4pin connectors to make an adapter for the zalman 3pin fan to run temp-based managed by the graphic card port
INSTALLATION
when I finally got the zalman I had to wait for a long time I had everything except the JST-PH connectors so I though I'd use the fan controller instead. I had a scythe kaze q 4-channel fan controller I bought for pc but I ended up using it to cool my av receiver I got cheap (onkyo TX-SR707 EU version 7x160w@6ohm that imho has overheating issues and is known for hdmi board failures resulting in no sound probably because of the heat it makes....a weak old psu and some fans just laying on the top of the reciever and running at the lowest speed they would spin keep the receiver really nicely cool). Didn't want to run the receiver too hot and since 4 channels anyway weren't enough for the amount and variety of fans currently in my case I bought another controller, the same one but with 8 channels (fits my 12th bay which is only 3.5" one). It got here in just 3 days after order so I started the build the next weekend
disassembled the stock cooler (think I've used the blob of TIM in the middle on the last try hence there is a bit more TIM than I usually put there)
cleaned everything with arcticlean and started with the VRM heatsink. The instruction suggested using dops of thermal paste so I thought I'd try the fitment as suggested and see how it sits. Used a small screwdriver to tape the rubber washers accurately in place. The result as you can see wasn't very good, there was a good contact on only 3 of the 8 phases and absolutely no contact on the small vrm chips
time for some pads then, first I used the 0.5mm phobya everywhere and that got the bigger vrm phase chips covered nicely but still there was no contact on the small vrm chips so I used some ebay 1mm pads I had (3.2 W/m*k, the best of the unbranded cheap chinese stuff) which did finally made nice contact on them. good enough for me so I had the vrm sorted
time to test the bigger primecooler memory heatsinks clearance...after closer look I found I have to shorten them about 1mm to fit under the heatsink. Didn't want to dremel it as it would be pita to do in hands and would never get it similar on all the fins so I just marked it with cd marker and used small cutting pliers which are actually guite good and sharp and wasn't very hard to snap those aluminium fins quite accurately.
Testfiting the roughly cut ramsink and comparing it to unmodified bigger one and also the smaller one which is exactly the same size as ones supplied with the zalman vf3000a
all 8 shortened and also smoothed and flattened with a flat file, looked nice placed on the card, just a bit longer than the vrm heatsink which is what I wanted
put the vf3000a heatsink on to verify the ramsink height won't interfere anywhere and looked good
there were still some uncovered chips that were big enough to hold the smaller ramsink so I decided to add some more heatsinks to various places on the card
I wanted non-permanent solution on the heatsinks and wanted to up the cooling performance compared to the supplied thermal tapes and ordered ARCTIC Glue G1 from Arctic Cooling which is non-permanent and according to manufacturer description cures into something like thermal pads. regrettably the order was cancelled due to many buyers returning it recently for falling off and the whole batch was discussed with the manufacturer for return. They might have been too old already since it is a discontinued product. The only solution I read about was mixing thermal epoxy with thermal paste and used what I read about on some forum
Arctic Alumina Premium Ceramic Thermal Epoxy & Arctic Alumina Premium Ceramic Thermal Compound both from Arctic Cooling
some time before the installation I tested some advised ratios in that thread (2/2/1 to 3/3/1) plus some more and most I couldn't get off even hitting with a hammer...I have used the zalman supplied red ramsinks for this testing since they only give you 7 standard size and one is bigger to cover some other chip on the pcb which is close to one ram module...they were exactly the same size as the smaller primecooler blue ones I also had and I had 8 of them so I kept those for the card in case I couldn't make the bigger ones to fit
I ended up using 1/1/2 ratio (epoxy a / epoxy b / paste) which seemed to hold enough but still able to take off without using too much force
this was what I came up with - had to modify the one close to heatsink mounting holes (guess installing these additional heatsinks was that bad decision that killed it)
finished card - the cooler fits perfect, just a tiny bit shorter than the reference blower, so was quite happy....also the testfit looked good
some after install pics, looked good, no pcb bending and fits great....also I installed scythe kaze q-8 fan controller and changed some old fans - two 120mm ones up front and two 120mm ones on cpu. added a later picture of the case from outside with the fan controller - already with a 7970 I got so the last channel is not used
everything looked good until I turned it on and there was just darkness ;o[
tried some fiddling with it and nothing helped, with other card the pc ran fine. nothing on the pcb looked burnt or smelled, not quite sure what exactly killed it. Guess it must have been some of the additional heatsinks I've put on, probably the one close to mounting hole I had to cut a bit. It is covering 2 chips at once but they looked quite similar to that chip on the 5800 that was cooled by one bigger ramsink on the 5800 cards. Both the epoxy and paste are non-conductive and read the anodizing actually reduces conductivity as well. I even tried to take it off and run the card without it and it didn't help. Maybe it was too late or it was something else that killed it.
any advice is appreciated although it turned to be quite long so not sure if anyone will ever read it and reply ;o]
REPASTING THE STOCK COOLER
my sapphire 6950 2GB (unlocked to full 6970, running 6970 bios, stock 6970 voltage, 930core 1375mem) started getting kinda hot lately and the memory temperature was touching 80 even with my custom fan profile which was keeping it around 75 in the past with 50-60% fan speed. Since the card was almost 3 years old and never opened I thought it's time to repaste it to bring the temps down to where they were when new or possibly even lower since many hw manufacturers skimp on the TIM used.
the vrams were the main issue for me, core was fine at 70-75. at about 84-85 the memory would crash and reset the driver so I was getting quite close to that. happened to me few times when my fan profile wasn't properly initialized after reboot and lately during the hot summer it happened as well even with my fan profile thus I was forced to raise the fan speed to over 60% in load to keep the temps under 80 and it became quite loud even for gaming with headphones (open circumaural sennheiser hd558 wih 598 mod)
this is how it looked like when first opened after almost 3 years after purchase (memory pads are already taken off - didn't take pic with them still on)
I wanted to get some quality thermal pads and after some searching I decided to get "Phobya Ultra 5W/mk". Phobya makes 4 grades of pads, these are actually the least powerful at 5W/mK but it's still significantly more than what the cheaper ebay ones are (1.1-3.2W/m*K). I wanted to get the ones with higher transfer rate since the price was almost the same but read on some forum that someone got the 2nd weakest (one step above the ones I got) and said the pads were too firm and would not compress easily and ended up getting the softer 5W/m*K instead (also the seller verified that the better ones are a lot firmer and that the difference is not that big and suggested to use the ultra ones). Also read somewhere that the 0.5mm was the suggested thickness so that's what I got.
installed new pads and core repasted with thermalright chillfacor 1 that I had lying around
this was the test fit and looked ok, I could see the edges of the vram chips "printed" into some of the pads and also I put all the pads on the heatspreader and one of the was stuck on the ram after the test fit so there was some contact
to my surprise the temps went a little up so I took it out and tightened the screws more...that got me little below the starting point but the card was not stable at my previous overclock...I ended up messing with the screw tightness and trying different TIM application techniques and all I could get while stable at my old OC was about 2 degrees above the starting point...factory applied 3 years old was topping at 79.5 for the vrams right before the TIM replacement (in summer it was a bit higher) and after it was topping at 81.5
core I think might have raised by about 2 degrees as well, wasn't watching it as close as the vrams since it always was around safe 70-75
so no improvement from repasting this time. interesting, I've seen about 15-20 degree drop on notebooks and about 10 degree drop on video cards after repasting with quality thermal material. maybe the chillfactor was past it's best days since it was about 1-2 years old and maybe the pads were not as great as I thought. I always use arcticlean to clean the surfaces so I wasn't sure why it didn't help and thought I have to come up with something better.
CHOOSING AFTERMARKET COOLING FOR MY NEEDS
after some time of researching aftermarket coolers I decided to go for Zalman VF3000A. I would get the Alpenfohn Peter but it is huge and I didn't want to sacrifice my hdds to gpu cooling since even the classic reference blower cooler was very close to my hdds in 5.25" slots in the front of the case. the accelero extreme was also too long and the zalman was pretty much battling for the first with accelero xtreme in all the reviews, max 3 degrees difference, usually within 1 degree and in some even ahead
on this picture I already have new ssd so I moved it in front of the video card because it was so close to a 3.5" drive that I had to use 90 degree data cable and even that I wasn't able to disconnect with the video card in place
based on this review picture of VF3000A installed I decided to get bigger ram sinks since it looked like enough space unused under the cooler and ordered 2 of Primecooler PC-RHS2 heatsinks hoping the bigger ones would fit (or I would make them fit) since the ones supplied with the zalman looked kinda small compared to those from alpenfohn
also got Zalman ZM-RHS69 VRM heatsink for 6900 cards since the one supplied with VF3000A only fits 5800 cards. I also ordered some JST-PH 4pin connectors to make an adapter for the zalman 3pin fan to run temp-based managed by the graphic card port
INSTALLATION
when I finally got the zalman I had to wait for a long time I had everything except the JST-PH connectors so I though I'd use the fan controller instead. I had a scythe kaze q 4-channel fan controller I bought for pc but I ended up using it to cool my av receiver I got cheap (onkyo TX-SR707 EU version 7x160w@6ohm that imho has overheating issues and is known for hdmi board failures resulting in no sound probably because of the heat it makes....a weak old psu and some fans just laying on the top of the reciever and running at the lowest speed they would spin keep the receiver really nicely cool). Didn't want to run the receiver too hot and since 4 channels anyway weren't enough for the amount and variety of fans currently in my case I bought another controller, the same one but with 8 channels (fits my 12th bay which is only 3.5" one). It got here in just 3 days after order so I started the build the next weekend
disassembled the stock cooler (think I've used the blob of TIM in the middle on the last try hence there is a bit more TIM than I usually put there)
cleaned everything with arcticlean and started with the VRM heatsink. The instruction suggested using dops of thermal paste so I thought I'd try the fitment as suggested and see how it sits. Used a small screwdriver to tape the rubber washers accurately in place. The result as you can see wasn't very good, there was a good contact on only 3 of the 8 phases and absolutely no contact on the small vrm chips
time for some pads then, first I used the 0.5mm phobya everywhere and that got the bigger vrm phase chips covered nicely but still there was no contact on the small vrm chips so I used some ebay 1mm pads I had (3.2 W/m*k, the best of the unbranded cheap chinese stuff) which did finally made nice contact on them. good enough for me so I had the vrm sorted
time to test the bigger primecooler memory heatsinks clearance...after closer look I found I have to shorten them about 1mm to fit under the heatsink. Didn't want to dremel it as it would be pita to do in hands and would never get it similar on all the fins so I just marked it with cd marker and used small cutting pliers which are actually guite good and sharp and wasn't very hard to snap those aluminium fins quite accurately.
Testfiting the roughly cut ramsink and comparing it to unmodified bigger one and also the smaller one which is exactly the same size as ones supplied with the zalman vf3000a
all 8 shortened and also smoothed and flattened with a flat file, looked nice placed on the card, just a bit longer than the vrm heatsink which is what I wanted
put the vf3000a heatsink on to verify the ramsink height won't interfere anywhere and looked good
there were still some uncovered chips that were big enough to hold the smaller ramsink so I decided to add some more heatsinks to various places on the card
I wanted non-permanent solution on the heatsinks and wanted to up the cooling performance compared to the supplied thermal tapes and ordered ARCTIC Glue G1 from Arctic Cooling which is non-permanent and according to manufacturer description cures into something like thermal pads. regrettably the order was cancelled due to many buyers returning it recently for falling off and the whole batch was discussed with the manufacturer for return. They might have been too old already since it is a discontinued product. The only solution I read about was mixing thermal epoxy with thermal paste and used what I read about on some forum
Arctic Alumina Premium Ceramic Thermal Epoxy & Arctic Alumina Premium Ceramic Thermal Compound both from Arctic Cooling
some time before the installation I tested some advised ratios in that thread (2/2/1 to 3/3/1) plus some more and most I couldn't get off even hitting with a hammer...I have used the zalman supplied red ramsinks for this testing since they only give you 7 standard size and one is bigger to cover some other chip on the pcb which is close to one ram module...they were exactly the same size as the smaller primecooler blue ones I also had and I had 8 of them so I kept those for the card in case I couldn't make the bigger ones to fit
I ended up using 1/1/2 ratio (epoxy a / epoxy b / paste) which seemed to hold enough but still able to take off without using too much force
this was what I came up with - had to modify the one close to heatsink mounting holes (guess installing these additional heatsinks was that bad decision that killed it)
finished card - the cooler fits perfect, just a tiny bit shorter than the reference blower, so was quite happy....also the testfit looked good
some after install pics, looked good, no pcb bending and fits great....also I installed scythe kaze q-8 fan controller and changed some old fans - two 120mm ones up front and two 120mm ones on cpu. added a later picture of the case from outside with the fan controller - already with a 7970 I got so the last channel is not used
everything looked good until I turned it on and there was just darkness ;o[
tried some fiddling with it and nothing helped, with other card the pc ran fine. nothing on the pcb looked burnt or smelled, not quite sure what exactly killed it. Guess it must have been some of the additional heatsinks I've put on, probably the one close to mounting hole I had to cut a bit. It is covering 2 chips at once but they looked quite similar to that chip on the 5800 that was cooled by one bigger ramsink on the 5800 cards. Both the epoxy and paste are non-conductive and read the anodizing actually reduces conductivity as well. I even tried to take it off and run the card without it and it didn't help. Maybe it was too late or it was something else that killed it.
any advice is appreciated although it turned to be quite long so not sure if anyone will ever read it and reply ;o]