Radeon's and WC. tips on fitting them

I was wondering how people are fitting the waterblock on Radeon videocards.

The Radeon uses a shim which is glued to the VPU, and thus there is a height difference between the top of the shim and the core of the VPU.

I do not really like the idea of having no shim, or something like a shim, around the core because fitting the waterblock right will be have troubles I think.

Since there is glu between the VPU and the shim, and therefore having space between it, I was thinking of getting the shim off and clean get the glue off. Then put the shim on and see if the height is the same as the height of the core.

If that won't work I will try to sand paper the shimm a bit to loose height.


Now, the problem I think is how the glue will react on the side of the VPU. What type of glue would be recommended? Something non-conductive of course. Would epoxy be ok?

If people have any other ideas, please let me know what and if possible add pictures on how you did it.

Why did ATI do that? Just as bad as Nvidia and it's uneven non-flat core. Though they fixed that with the 5900. I seen a few people here that removed the shim with no ill effects. Do a search and find it because I wouldn't be able to tell you how to do it without killing your card.

Well, that is a good question And I have both ATI and Nvidia in my system...

I think I will try to lap the shim and glue it back on somehow.
Not using the shim might brake the core when not attached very, very carefully. That is my main concern. It is a 9800XT which is not cheap to replace

With my 9700np I had to remove the shim, it was obviously higher then the core. Now with the 9800pro I just bought, it looked like the shim was exactly the same height as the gpu, and i did a test fit with a thin layer of AS3 and got a great imprint. I also can oc this 9800pro core to 450 which I think is good without a voltmod.

If you use reasonable care I wouldn't be overly concerned with damaging your 9800xt's core. This isn't a tiny XP core after all. Just place the block on easily/evenly and hold medium pressure while tightening each nut evenly to the pressure u desire.

I wasn't aware the problems with the shim were solved. I f they are that is.

I had a 9700 Pro before which had a huge gap, and I have to test my 9800XT. Gonna do that when I mount the waterblock.
This thread was mainly for pre-info.

Thnx for the info. I will test for the gap!

I believe the shim on the Radeon 9800 Pro+ is about 1mm lower or about even with the core. I didn't have to remove mine when I installed my Maze4 GPU. I didn't even had to remove the shim on my Radeon 9700 Pro since the Maze4 GPU's center is slighty raised.

These are good things to know Maybe I will check it tomorrow evening. Kinda really want to know hoe the shim is on my 9800XT

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the space between them, since the 9800's are running a lot warmer.

johan851 said:

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the space between them, since the 9800's are running a lot warmer.

Click to expand...

Could be the voltage specs. I don't know much about ATI. Nvidia voltage can be changed by a bios change. I was under the impression ATI had a IHS?

No, newer ATI cards don't have a heat spreader. I grabbed this from techspot:



That's the normal radeon core. The 9600XT doesn't even have the shim you see on the edge of the photo here. Also, the BIOS in the radeon cards doesn't affect voltage that I am aware of.

I wasn't aware that the 9600XT had a much larger core. My 9600 Pro in my other machine has a shim because the core is that of a 9700 Pro size type.

Does the 9800XT also have a larger core like the 9600XT?

You could just get a waterblock that already accounts for the shim.

The video block that i got from neo is a good example, if a block is made specifically for the radeon then it may take the shim into account.

Otherwise you just have to remove it

Get a Swiftech waterblock you won't need to worry about the shim.

I allready got the D-Tek GPU cooler, so I won't be getting another

Well in that case if you have to remove this shim if you want to watercool. I doubt you want to hack up the dtek block.