Stock cooling on 9800xt...

[TheGhengisKhan]

I've seen a few times in here where people mention putting AS3 on their 9800xt cards. Before I go pulling my card apart to do this, I have a couple of questions.

1.) Is there any kind of trick to getting the cooling unit off? (has anyone had problems?)

2.) Should I gather my cleaning supplies before hand? (is there any kind of stock TIM anywhere other than the GPU?)

3.) Has anyone put other types of cooling units on them? And what results?

[DDR-PIII]

I've heard of people putting Silent AGP coolers on them, by vantec :) if i recall correctly the resulters were better :)

[SharkDiver]

I have the sapphire 9800XT and took off the stock sink and put some AS3 on it and placed it back on.Was not hard to do if you have done this kinda thing before.Mine only had 3 screws and 1 clip holding it together and it came apart just fine.Anyways I dont like this stock sink and here is why,Its too thin for starters and dont make good contact with the memory and probly not so good with the gpu either.After I put it back together I could tell that there was a bit of a gap on the memory chips.I then check it all out and made sure it was all set right and made sure the 3 screws were nice and tight and they were.The plate on the back of the card is so thin and were the screws are located it makes for bad contact and you cant put the screws tight enough because it just pulls and bends the back plate.
This prob. dont make alot of sence since Im at work here and have to keep getting up and tending doing things and coming back and typing but its all I got now.
shark

[TheGhengisKhan]

That made plenty of sense.

Do you think that maybe soldering (sp?) copper ramsinks to the backplate overtop of the ram would do any good or would I just be better off with a couple of thin copper pieces inbetween the chips and the plate?

[SharkDiver]

Im not sure if putting copper shims in there would work well since I think you would have to put some paste between all the layers but maybe it would work ok.heat sinks on the outside of the plate may work as long as you have good contact between the memory and the plate and then use some artic alumina to put the sinks on instaed of soldering.
For me Im jsut going with some good old flower copper heat sinks on the memory and a nice gpu cooler.I never was much for stock stuff in the first place even if it is better then most stock parts.
shark

[TheGhengisKhan]

ok, any suggestions on where to pick up some of the "copper flower" heatsinks? I've seen other people using them, but I haven't found a place that sells them at a resonable price

[Biznatch]

I hope neither of you are talking about the OCZ flower ramsinks. They are rectangle, and the ram on our boards is square. I bought some and they will not fit, they are made for the ram on like 9600pros and such.

[SharkDiver]

I hope neither of you are talking about the OCZ flower ramsinks. They are rectangle, and the ram on our boards is square. I bought some and they will not fit, they are made for the ram on like 9600pros and such.
Ya I seen that,So I bought 16 of them so I can try to cut a bit and put 2 together for my memory.If that dont work I ordered some of the copper sinks that are square so Im hoping to get something good from all this.
This (http://store.yahoo.com/svcompucycle/memmodheatsp.html) is were I got them,I ordered some of those BGthings and the flowers with a iceberg4.
Shark

[TheGhengisKhan]

Cutting sinks to fit is not a problem for me. Thanks for the link, I'll look into them.