The sticky cotton like nvidia thermal pads..

I'm sure alot of members here know what I am talking about. I am refering to the sticky weird cotton like thermal pads nvidia uses on their gfx card ram that takes up the space between the ram chip and the cooler.

I want to replace all mine but I am not sure of what product is available that will have good thermal properties and thickness needed to make contact to the stock cooler. ATI uses more of a rubber liek thermal pad on their ram sort of the like the oens abit and asus have been sticking on their northbridges on the p35 series mobos.

I was looking at these but I would have to buy atleast a dozen or so and they dont look thick enough to me.

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/shpc.html

is there some other kind of thermal pad or something out there I can use? Any ideas? it has to be thicker than a standard thermal tape or paper type application becuase of the gap between the ram and gts 512 cooler.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

i was thinking about this the other day when i took off my cooler to put a water block on.. thinking to myself..if i ever wanna shift this card what will i use.
the ones that was on there was about 1mm thick,and yeah stiky with a cotten type thread

There is someone who sells pads on eBay, I can't recall what product it was for, but give me a few minutes and I can find it.

This is the person that I got them from. http://myworld.ebay.com/arctic-bid/

1.4 mm thick
2.5 mm thick
3.5 mm thick
1.3 mm thick
1.5 mm thick
0.5 mm thick

I too was looking to replace the stock pads. I couldn't find anywhere that held anything like them

Someone pointed out that person to me, they work great

i went through the same thing as you back a while ago when i wanted to replace the thermalpads on my 8800gts 640 stock cooler... there are a total of 23 other components becides the core that need cooling and all had the "cotton" pads (they are actually a ceramique dough/paste thats bound together with fiberglass mesh)

ANYWAYS after looking and looking i found the RMA department of Arctic Cooling on ebay.

http://search.stores.ebay.com/Arcti...artsQQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQsaselZ238123228QQsofpZ0

There are many thicknesses to choose from and its cheap (50 cents for 4 squares the size of a ram chip for .5 1.4 2.5mm thicknesses... 1 dollar for 4 squares for 1.3 and 1.5mm ... and $1.50 for 3.5mm thickness)

Back when i bought mine i got like 8 (2x) squares of .5mm, 20 (5x) of 1mm stuff and 20 (5x) of 1.4mm stuff.... If they deal the same way which im sure they do they allow up to 3 different items for the same 5 dollar shipping... over 3 items you pay 5 dollars more for shipping. They ship from hong kong but they pads got here pretty quick... id say with in 5-7 business days.

What i would do is measure the gap between the components with a feeler gauge and get the closests pad on the bigger side (round up) but if you have to round up more than say .25mm then dont bother as these pads are hard to compress when you get multiple pads that are too large... (IE if the gap of your ram was .75 mm and the closest is the 1.3mm stuff you have to compress on your card 8 ram chips worth of pads down .55mm, which takes alot of force that should be devoted to core contact)... You can double up... so .5 + .5mm = 1mm thickness.

Hope this helps.

Hehehe, you are the one who showed me then

thideras said:

Hehehe, you are the one who showed me then

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ya most likely... it took me like a week of searching around for thermal pads... emails to evga... the works, and it never occured to me to look on ebay till someone at SPCR linked me to AC rma.


EDIT... looks like the 1.3 and 3.5mm thickness stuff is made out of a different material... they may squish down easier than the other thicknesses they may not!

awesome guys ! thank you !

so i noticed just by eyeballing that the gap is somewhat smaller than the g80 cards and if anyones familiar with the gts 512 cooling can you help me figure out what thickness and how much i need?

Rattle said:

awesome guys ! thank you !

so i noticed just by eyeballing that the gap is somewhat smaller than the g80 cards and if anyones familiar with the gts 512 cooling can you help me figure out what thickness and how much i need?

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Just doing a quick look, I would say get the thinest that you can (0.5mm). If that is too thick, you can cut it into thinner strips and flip them sideways

I had to do that on a card because I ordered them too thick

great stuff.. thankyou..
and cheers rattle for staring the thread.. it reminded me that i needed to get some

well from looking at the gap i would say its like 1/32 of an inch or .03215 and 1 mm = .03937
inches, so I would say the closet thing is 1.3's or the .5's doubled up which are 13x13mm
the 1.3's are 15x12mm though and seem more ram "shaped" lol

alright gentlemen I ordered 24 pcs of the 1.3mm for $7 shipped, I gues if they are too thick I will have plenty of other uses for them and hey it was only $7.

thanks guys

Rattle said:

alright gentlemen I ordered 24 pcs of the 1.3mm for $7 shipped, I gues if they are too thick I will have plenty of other uses for them and hey it was only $7.

thanks guys

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No problem

Keep us updated if those fit, I'll have to order some if they do

I personally would have gotten the some .5mm stuff also....

BTW the gap on my G80 8800gts varied from .8-.7mm on the ram chips

@thidras ... i dont quite get what you mean when you say "you can cut it into thinner strips and flip them sideways "

nd4spdbh2 said:

@thidras ... i dont quite get what you mean when you say "you can cut it into thinner strips and flip them sideways "

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I ordered like 1.5 and 2.5mm thick pieces. What I did was cut them vertically so that they were thin strips and put them on the RAM

nd4spdbh2 said:

I personally would have gotten the some .5mm stuff also....

BTW the gap on my G80 8800gts varied from .8-.7mm on the ram chips

@thidras ... i dont quite get what you mean when you say "you can cut it into thinner strips and flip them sideways "

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well i can always order some of them too

im assuming this material is not an adhesive ?

what do you guys recommend besides arctic silver thermal epoxy to replace some thermal adhesive material for some copper ram sinks for video cards.

cozmo_d said:

im assuming this material is not an adhesive ?

what do you guys recommend besides arctic silver thermal epoxy to replace some thermal adhesive material for some copper ram sinks for video cards.

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one side has 3m adhesive on it... its plenty stickey enough to hold the thermal pad to a heatsink.

thideras said:

I ordered like 1.5 and 2.5mm thick pieces. What I did was cut them vertically so that they were thin strips and put them on the RAM

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I dunno whats with me but i still cant picture what you did... so you cut the pad in thin strips and layed them down so that the adhesive was perpendicular to the ram chip or heatsink???

nd4spdbh2 said:

one side has 3m adhesive on it... its plenty stickey enough to hold the thermal pad to a heatsink.

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no man it has to be adhesive on bolth sides like thermal tape, im trying to find the best thermal adhesive that is like double sided tape...

cozmo_d said:

no man it has to be adhesive on bolth sides like thermal tape, im trying to find the best thermal adhesive that is like double sided tape...

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I think IKIKUINTHENUTS sells some 3M double sided tape. Wicked sticky stuff! Double sided and easy to work with.

The pads that we listed would "work", but they are no where near as sticky as the 3M. They are also very thick (3M is paper thin, these are at least 0.5mm) and don't transfer heat as well either

Sorry I didn't see this before you ordered. For the relatively large gap between the GPU heatsink and the RAM chips, you can use the cheap, white silicon paste. It holds it's place under vibration and doesn't lose it's goopy viscosity under heat. I've used this on more than one video card's RAM chips with the overhanging GPU heatsinks.