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Take the heatspreaders off your cores!

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Quailane

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2003
Hey, last night I removed the heatspreader from the core of my 5900XT. Today when I got home from school I installed the card and all I can say is wow. I can play artifact free with the core at 500Mhz up from 450Mhz stable. I also took the ramsinks off my memory and they don't artifact on the desktop or in games at 1Ghz. In games it was 950Mhz before and on the desktop it was 925Mhz. Do this, it is good for a quick boost!
 
A razor blade. I just pressed in firmly on all corners and pressed it into the sides untill I could pull it off.
 
Wow...I'd never have the balls to do that on purpose. Seen it done to a P4 and it rendered it useless. Seen it inadvertantly done to a P4 (phase change cooling led to the change in expansion rates causing it to eventually pop off) render the cpu dead as well. While direct core contact is great, a good copper heatspreader likely improves the chip's ability to dissipate heat more effectively, as it provides a larger thermally conductive contact patch with the heatsink. It's also nice not to have to worry about cracking the core, or any interfernce/grounding problems with your cooling solution.
 
The core seems tough. I put a lot of pressure onto it at not exactly straight with my Zalman heatpipe sink and it worked after I got it settled straight. The core looks tough. It is at a 45 degree angle and is a square. The heatspreaders are just crappy aluminum with a crappy TIM that seems more like rubber than thermal paste. It was really easy to do. These nvidia cards are tough.
 
did you use rubbing alchohol/qtips to clean the tim like i ususally do?

got any pix? ;)

EDIT: i guess i'm assuming you changed out the paste... is that right as well?
 
I vouch for taking off the heatspreader off your core. Just make sure your HSF still fits once you take it off.

MAKE SURE NOT TO BEND THE SIDES OR CORNERS! Just incase you need to put the heatspreader back on.
 
if you were to do that to a X800/6800 it would hit 100degrees and quite literaly blow up in your face.did you know that?(just joking ...not joking about temperature however
and no i did not do anything to my card).prescotts?dont even think about it.
 
Prescotts and P4's in general... this thread wouldn't apply to. P4's cores are extremely fragile. However carefully removing the spreader then applying some AS5 undernieth would probably benefit temps a little. ;)

As for the FX line of cards, It's definitely worth it.
 
RAMMAN said:
if you were to do that to a X800/6800 it would hit 100degrees and quite literaly blow up in your face.did you know that?(just joking ...not joking about temperature however
and no i did not do anything to my card).prescotts?dont even think about it.
Uh, neither of those cards have heatspreaders on them, they're bare cores.

Some newer P4's have thermal epoxy under the sperader, so if you try to pop them off, your core goes with it...
 
agree... and pictures of this video card surgery being performed...
i'd end up slipping and knocking a transistor or some such off...
 
This is a picture with as5 on the core. Tha black stuff is hard as a rock. You can't get it off, you can only cut through it when you take the heatspreader off.

DSCN1089.jpg
 
In theory, taking heat spreaders off will reduce the temperatures because there is one less gap between core and cooling element. Think of it this way:

WITH HEAT SPREADER
core>tim>heat spreader>tim>cooling element

WITHOUT
core>tim>cooling element

We all know that the best heat transfer happens with thermal paste ONLY in the microscopic gaps and not completly pasted on the core. Thermal paste can also contain air if not applied properly and air sucks for transfering heat. If you remove a possible place for air to get in, you run a greater chance of lower temperatures.

If anyone can verify if the 9800p has a spreader, I'll cut mine. I don't think it does as the core is rather small and it has a shim around it but I don't want to take my wc system apart just to check.
 
Sorry, but the video card in question died of accidental lethal votage increase, or ALVI, as I like to call it. I was measuring 2d voltages when I increased it. I forgot that in 3d the voltage increases. It ran fine for a while in 3dmark 05 at 596Mhz core, not even done overclocking it, but before it could finish the comp restarted and the video was corrupted greatly. When I get a new leadtek 5900XT, I will remove the spreader and take screenshots of the temps. It should arrive here any day now.
 
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