ATI 5850 & Arctic Silver Thermal Paste?

[MatTheCat]

The fan on my reference 5850 has started misbehaving off late and so I decided to take off the heatsink/fan in order to take a look and try and clean it out.

I have already ordered a Zalman VF3000A to replace the default heatsink/fan.

My question is however, what is the correct manner in which to aply thermal paste to the GPU?

Since putting my card back together using arctic silver thermal paste, my GPU temps are 10-15 C° higher across the board. Although the fan is packing in, this temperature increase is clearly due to the method I have used in putting the gfx card back together. Either I have used to little paste, too much paste, or applied it incorrectly.

Whilst thier are plenty tutorials around the internet on how to apply paste to all the various CPUs, I havent yet found anything that helpful with regards to GPUs.

 

[MT Alex]

GPUs require a thin layer over the entire chip, the small dab in the middle doesn't cut it.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Id use a non conductive thermal paste such as AC MX-2 or MX-4 rather AS5. temps are around the same anyway plus or minus a few degrees here and there but they all do the same job anyway.

as far as thermal paste is concerned, I think we've reached the limit of what is currently capable and theres almost no difference at all in temperatures.

make sure you clean all the OLD paste off first using rubbing alcohol. then place a small pea sized dollop of it in the center of the gpu and use an old credit card or something to spread it evenly and youre good to go.

 

[Bo$$]

MX-2 is good for me, try a lil dolop in the center then apply constant pressure as you screw it on properly

 

[MatTheCat]

I replaced my failing stock cooler/fan with a Zalman V3000F.

Wow!

Seriously, with the Zalman twin fans running at 50%, I have halved my GPU temperatures and it makes a damn sight less noise than the stock cooler/fan did, especially when an overclock profile is loaded with a more demanding game.

I guess i will now have room to do go for a higher overclock pending BF3s release, which will have to do me until the 7000 series cards are released in early 2012.

(The Zalman V3000F dont get a gold star though, cos the heatsinks for the VRAM kept falling off and I just ended giving up on a few of them......dont suppose they are that important though as the card as ran for almost 2 years without them)

 

[FreedomEclipse]

(The Zalman V3000F dont get a gold star though, cos the heatsinks for the VRAM kept falling off and I just ended giving up on a few of them......dont suppose they are that important though as the card as ran for almost 2 years without them)

small future tip for making the ram heatsinks stick.... Rub the chips with an eraser before you attach them. it forms a layer that the adhesive on the ramsinks can 'grip' and old onto.