How to Remove fan&Plate 4850

[Hitman]

Hello Gent's

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to really blow out and clean My Vid card
ATI 4850 stock cooler.
I removed all the screws and the plug for the fan and the housing was lose but it still would not come all the way off.
I tried to slide it back wards and lift
I tried to gently pull straight up
Pushed forward and pulled up on the back
and it still would only come up/move off a 1/2 inch or so and stop.
needless to say I did not get it off and I did not want to really pry on it or anything.
So I blew it out as best I could and put the back screws back in.
And reinstalled it.
But now every once in awhile I get Artifacts and lsat night it locked up well gaming.
The card was working perfect before this and had it clocked at 825 core Don't remember what I had the memory at but now it is acting up even at stock clocks.
It is not getting hot when gaming the temp was at 52c never ever seen it hotter the 58c
I am thinking that when I attemped to take the cooler housing off I missed unline a heat sink or something and now it is acting up.
I have uninstalled the drivers a couple of times and reinstalled but it is still going on.

Any ideas on what could be holding the housing on.

please help

Ruben M.

 

[sneekypeet]

my guess is that the thermal compound was holding the cooler in place. Keeping with the guessing, I assume you partly broke the contact of the thermal interface, and because of that is now artifacting, that is unless you didn't accidentally break something off the card trying to remove the cooler.

 

[Peter1986C]

Look between the blades of the fan and see whether there still are some mini crosshead screws in their positions. Check for other hidden ones as well if it does not come loose. Because as SneekyPeet says, dissasembling should be done to properly reaply thermal paste.

 

[Hitman]

Got it off

Hello
Well I had the day off so I got the Back plate off.
There is a also a back plate with 4 screws that hold the heat sink on to the core that I had to take off also.
So I got the back plate Fan off.
The Core has Thermal paste I cleaned and replaced that.
Problem the Memory modules have thermal paste pads and I went to a couple of local come places such as Frys but no one seems to carry the Pads.

Now the ones that are on there where not tore or any viewable damage but I would think they need to be replace once used ? Right.
Or can they be reused like this if not tore or actually remove.

In any case I would like to replace the pads
Anywhere I can get them ?

I am testing the card now see if it still starts to Fragment or lock up.
Temp is at 51c at more or less idle just posting this
put the fan to Manuel 45% and the temps is at 47c 48c
And it is cool in my home.
I have the OC at
Core 825 MHz
Mem 935 MHz

But I think I am just go stock settings until I get the thermal pads replaced

Ruben M.

 

[Peter1986C]

Assuming you live in the USA, here is a Bing search containing shops selling that stuff from Akasa: http://www.bing.com/search?q=Akasa+Thermal+adhesive+loc:US&form=QBRE&filt=all&qb=3

 

[Widjaja]

Yes those blu-tack type pads are indeed hard to come by.
Infact I don't think I have ever seen them for sale anywhere.
The best substitute I can think of is some thick mm thermal tape which almost seems as if it is double sided strip of sponge.
I am assuming the thick thermal tape is not as good as the thermal pads as the last time I saw them used was on my X1950pro.
The only time I have come across any thermal pads is when I have been replacing HP laptop heat sinks.

 

[Hitman]

Info

Hello

Thanks for the link Chevalr1c
I will go threw them and get some ordered.
I asked because I thought maybe there was different types and some better then others
as I would rather put in the better or best rather then some cheep stuff so was hoping for a recommendation.

I also found that my fan is not speeding up as the card gets hotter ie gaming.
During testing it got to 70c and went in to recover mode and the fan was barly pushing.
So I set it manually to
fan 45%
core 825 MHz
Memory 940 MHz
and went gaming for a couple of hours and it barly got to 60c and ran with no lockups or artifacts.
So I made 2 profiles one defualt settings no oc with Fan manuelly at 40% and one for gaming
fan 45% Core 825 MHz Mem 940 MHz.
And will just switch them when doing one or the other. I don't think the thermal pads have anything to do with the fan not coming up to speed when needed.
And I do not see any damage what so ever as any thing burnt or what ever.
It might be some auto censor that went bad not sure.

Anyway will get new thermal pads and start saving for a new card as I think this is a indication that it is going.

Thanks
Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

Yes this is correct depending on the BIOS version and manufacturer of your graphics card.

My Sapphire 4850 fan would stay idle until about 70degC before running at 30% fan speed but like yours mine would run at 45% fan speed during idle once the fan had kicked in.
This is how the early Sapphire BIOS fan speed for the HD4850 were setup.
If you extract your BIOS with GPUZ and view it with RBE you will see it either runs at 0 fan speed or 30% fan speed, the latter being the standard for for reference HD4850 graphics cards.

My HD4850 would also get up to 110degC max and continue without a hitch.
High temperatures for a HD4850 reference is normal.
You can edit the fan settings or alter them through software though.

I ended up installing a AC Twin Turbo on mine and edited the BIOS so the fans will run by themselves as the Twin Turbo fans needed a more aggressive fan setup for them to spin.

 

[Hitman]

nice

Hello

Widjaja Wrote:

Yes this is correct depending on the BIOS version and manufacturer of your graphics card.

My Sapphire 4850 fan would stay idle until about 70degC before running at 30% fan speed but like yours mine would run at 45% fan speed during idle once the fan had kicked in.
This is how the early Sapphire BIOS fan speed for the HD4850 were setup.
If you extract your BIOS with GPUZ and view it with RBE you will see it either runs at 0 fan speed or 30% fan speed, the latter being the standard for for reference HD4850 graphics cards.

My HD4850 would also get up to 110degC max and continue without a hitch.
High temperatures for a HD4850 reference is normal.
You can edit the fan settings or alter them through software though.

I ended up installing a AC Twin Turbo on mine and edited the BIOS so the fans will run by themselves as the Twin Turbo fans needed a more aggressive fan setup for them to spin.

Well after some hard testing and reading the above I don't think there is a major wrong with my card the Artifacting and lockups come with it is getting hot at 70c even though the specs say that is not a bad temp from what I am reading. although it might be just worn or something and now it can not handle the heat. Don't know if that makes sence :lol:

I do know that if I have the fan at 45% I can run it hard and it works with out a problem.
So I will invest a better cooling solution as the fan at this setting is loud and annoying.

So I will look into a AC twin turbo.
One good thing about this investment is that it will work on other cards when and if I need to get another one.

Thanks
Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

Really sounds like ram artifacts.
So maybe the ram sinks are not getting cooled properly anymore.

Looks like AC do not supply the Twin Turbo any more, just the Twin Turbo Pro.
I have a thread somewhere in TPU of the issues I ran into while installing my Twin Turbo.

So you will need some pliers, dremel, small hacksaw or file and some decent thermal tape on hand.

 

[Peter1986C]

The thermal tape I wrote about is a good one for the RAM.

 

[Widjaja]

To validate the need for extra thermal tape.
Last few days have been very hot here.
I had Dirt 2 lock up on me a couple of days ago.
reset and didn't have the issue again.
It happened again today.
Due to the heat I started looking towards the sinks on the GPU.
Low and behold what appeared to be one ram sink had come away and was resting on the GPU heatsink.
Opening up the case and removing the GPU I find not one but two of the sinks had come away.
One had clung to the copper heat pipe.

Fortunately I have thermal tape on hand, removed the old poor quality stuff and replaced it with some thicker stronger thermal adhesive which I KNOW sticks.

 

[Hitman]

Thermal tape

Hello
Ok ordering the thermal tape tonight getting some extra to have around.

I will have to wait until after Christmas to get the new AC Cooler
Things are tight around here right now.

But thank you all for your help and advice

Will put in the info when I reapply the Thermal tape.

Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

No problem it's Christams and we spend money on everyone else atm.

There has been talk about AC improving the performance of the adhesion of their cooling modules which come with their after market heatsinks so you may be in luck.

Foind the link to my thread on the process I went through during installation with pics.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117343

You will most likely come across the same issues

 

[Hitman]

Ok Back

Hello Gent's
Well after a long holiday and the Busy season with family and all.

I got back to this
I got the new thermal adhesive tape before Christmas but was not able to it applied until today.

So I took the card apart and removed the old thermal adhesive and the old thermal compound off and cleaned it really good see pic.
Used Artic cleaning liquid. With q-tips and soft cloth.

Cut to size the new thermal adhesive and the Thermal compound.

I am worried about the new Thermal adhesive as it is thinner then what ATI had used.

Ok put it all back together and let it set a bit 15 min or so
The thermal pads says can be used right away but still felt it would be good to let it set.
Reinstalled the card booted up no problem was happy about that.
And did a little testing with CC
GPU clock 825 MHz
Mem Clock 940 MHz
did a couple of test clock passes with the fan at default and it passed just fine temp went to 60c but no artifact.
I thought nice good sign.
So I let it run did some e mail and web stuff went to open photo shop and it started artifacting (Dam it)
Rebooted and redid all the same settings as above except fan on Manuel at 40%
And so far maybe a half hour and doing some pics and internet stuff no artifacts.
So it is there something going or is it a cooling issue ?
I don't know
Right now and the house is very cool and fan at 40% the temp is 49c 50c.

Is there a app or something I can run to work the card and watch the temps with out gaming to see what it do's. ?

Thank you gents
Ruben M.
Here is a few picks of it

 

[Widjaja]

What sort of HD4850 is that?
Judging by the cooler and the layout of the VRMS (area right below the fan) it is not reference design.

The reference design HD4850 has a single slot cooler.

Judging by the images you have posted, you still have dust in the fan.
Possibly mixed in with the grease inside the fan causing it to be hard to kick over.
Possibly too hard for the GPU BIOS to kick over with whatever it's fan profile is even when the temperatures get higher.

This is what I noticed after installing the AC Twin Turbo before editing the GPU BIOS:-
The fan speed in CCC was saying my fans were running at 70% but only one fan was piddling along with the other was not going at all underload.

When I set the fans manually it would run at the appropriate speed.

So I extracted the GPU fan profile and edited it in RBE so it started at a higher fan speed then flashed my card with ATiWinFlash believing it was going to run at the appropriate speeds if kicked off at a higher fan speed......and it worked.

This is similar to your issue where the fan is running right with manual fan setting but not auto fan in GPU BIOS.

So open up GPUZ, while in photoshop and look at the fan to see if it is moving and check to see what speed it is running at until it crashes.

Then, remove the GPU cooler, clean out the GPU fan thoroughly as possibly inside the fan center, then apply sewing machine oil and move the fan about with your finger to get the oil right around inside the center of the fan.

Reattach the GPU cooler and test again, the same as before with GPU and photoshop.

If this does not work, then you will have to extract your GPU BIOS with GPUZ and take a screenshot of it in RBE under the fan profile tab so I can take a look at it.
It will be simple to edit the fan profile to kick in at higher speed but may cause noise.

With my card and the AC Twin Turbo it is pretty much silent even though I have edited it to kick in at 60% fan speed at 30degC.

Right now in CCC it is running at 41degC at 72% fan speed.

There is a safer flashing utility than ATiWinFlash which will be noted in RBE section of techpowerup.
I used ATiWinFlash because I had no choice due to my old MB not being able to boot off USB .

 

[Hitman]

More info

Hello

Widjaja Wrote:

What sort of HD4850 is that?
Judging by the cooler and the layout of the VRMS (area right below the fan) it is not reference design.

Not sure I know what you mean by a reference card.
How do I find out or what info do you need. ?

The dust in the fan blades you are seeing in the pic is much cleaner as I took a q tip and got it out and reblew it out again before I did everything.
also I did not do the oil but the fan spin rather easy with a light touch it did not feel or look like it was umm sticking or forcing it self.

Right now in GPU Z
With no load or very little load and Fan on Auto
It got to 58c
and fan at 30% although it did not artifact Yet
This seems hot for it not being under load at least to me
When I have the fan at 45% and game (and that gives it a load) it gets to 55C and that is gaming for a good hour or so.
And it did not artifact or lockup and ran great.

Right now it is like at idle and it is 60c fan 30 percent not good.

I am going to see if I can rig a fan (somehow) close to it and point it at it and get a little more circulation around it and see if that helps.
I will also take it out and give a good once over again maybe there is dust got in the fins that is causing air flow issues.

I will post back and let you know if anything changes
I have flashed a ATI 3870 so I am not to worried but I don't think my MB boots on USB either.

Thanks
Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

The Sapphire HD4850 in this link is reference design (the card I own)
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/sapphire_hd4850/

You will see it has a 3850 type cooler.
You have a dual slot cooler.

Where you see the gold pointy plate on the reference HD4850 is where the VRMs are.
Two rows of four VRMs which get very hot.

On your card it's one row of 6 possibly.
The VRM layout of your card states it is not the reference design.

The card should be able to work fine without the addition of a external fan.

What you could do is download OCCT and run the GPU stress test with GPUZ running.
Monitor the fan speed and temperatures your card is running at in GPUZ.
See if the fan speed changes as the temperatures go up.

OCCT
http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php?Download

Out of curiosity extract the GPU BIOS and load it into RBE.
Go to the fan profile tab and post a screenshot of it and post it here.
You can use the TPU image host to upload the image.
http://www.techpowerup.org/

I am interested to see what sort of fan profile was given to this card.

 

[Hitman]

Info

Hello
Also my card has 2 4 pin power connectors not 1 six pin power connector.

Here are a couple of pics
Ottc it got hot pretty fast and and got no vid signal and then came back and got a recovery report.

Pic of fan settings RBE

Thank you
Ruben M.

 

[Hitman]

RBE pic

Hello
won't let me add more then one pic
so here is the 2nd pic

Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

That does not look like the HD4850 fan profile at all.

That looks like the HD4870 fan profile.

Something is fishy here.

Post the image of GPUZ as well and upload the VGA BIOS of your card so I can look at it in RBE.
I skipped back a few posts to get some clues and something is not right.

Whats the standard clocks for this card?

And this business about two 4pin power connectors on the back of your card.
Could you also post some images of your card.
A photo of your power connectors and one of the card top view and bottom.

 

[Hitman]

info & pics

Hello
Well the guy I bought it from said it was a ATI 4850 so now I don't know

Pic of GPU-Z


Pic top card


Pic bottom card


Pic front card


Pic back card


pic of chip set fan blowing hot air on card

Did not notice or think of this until today I would think this would add heat also ?
I took and put in a plate to deflect the heat from the card but I am thinking of getting 1 of those case slot blowers to help and take the heat from the chip set fan and blow it out the back.
Here is the GPU-z file
take not it says one of the plugs is not connected but everything is connected I have rechecked it all though maybe one plug do's not have power but I would think that the card would not work or boot if that was the case.
I also removed and exchange the plugs to diffrent plug in on the card and there was no diffrence. fan is spinning and all.

Ok I can not upload the GPU z file I put it in a rar file but it still will not let me invalid extention.
So give me a few minutes and see if I can load it somewhere else and put a link here

Ok try this link
http://www.usf1racing.com/tracks/RV770.rar
Should work let me know when you get it and I will remove from the server
Thank you again for your time

Ruben M.

 

[Hitman]

Hello
Since you said that I looked at the ATI 4870
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_hd4870/2.htm
And that is my card do I feel like a dumb a...s or what right now. pffft
Now I am going to see if I even have the right ati drivers don't know if there is a diffrence though

Ruben M.

 

[Widjaja]

That is a HD4870.
I don't think it will make a difference to your heat issues really and I don't think the fan on your evga MB will cause heat problems either.

I have your BIOS now and reading it.
It appears this card is an early reference HD4870 from ASUS.
This model is equipped with higher clocks than most of the HD4870s out there.
The BIOS has not been edited.
The reason your HD4870 is an early model is due to it's conservative fan profile.
Your GPU fan kicks in at 40deC at 20% fan speed.
There appears to be a later BIOS which is set so the fan kicks in at 40degC at 50% fan speed and is available here at TPU.

Where is the card saying one of the power connectors are not connected?
Only place you will find that is when you try to boot up.
The text will be in red words on a black screen and will go no further.

Other than that, RBE has an area which shows that text which is normal.
It is there so you can edit the alert text if you wish.

The card requires having two 6-pin pci-E power connectors to run and should not run if power not being sent to one or either of the connectors.

Since yuo say your card runs fine at 45% fan speed, flashing the BIOS to the latest ASUS HD4870 BIOS may solve your problem since the latest BIOS is designed to kick in at 50% fan speed instead of 20.

EDIT:-
Here's the fan profile comparison between the two BIOSES.
Otherwise everything else about the BIOSES are the same besides the date of course.
As you can see the top one has a more aggressive fan profile than the old one below it.

 

[Hitman]

Info

Hello Widjaja

Widjaja Wrote:

Where is the card saying one of the power connectors are not connected?
Only place you will find that is when you try to boot up.
The text will be in red words on a black screen and will go no further.

I do not see it on boot up
I saw it when I open the bios in RBE and that is what caused a little cation for me.
I kinda figured it was a error or something else but thought I should point it out just in case.

Yes except for the fan heat issue the card works great.

As I said it only artifacts when it gets hot and the fan just do's not spin/blow enough.

I will look for this
There appears to be a later BIOS which is set so the fan kicks in at 40degC at 50% fan speed and is available here at TPU.
And read up on the how to

Thank you again for your time & help

Ruben M.