Arctic Accelero L2 Plus on a Sapphire 6870

The installation was a success but the VRM heatsinks provided were not the proper size/shape for the VRM layout on this GPU, so I left the stock one heatsink from the stock cooling solution.
My problem is that said heatsink does not get hot to touch at all (while having gaming or running Heaven, for example) while the rest of the GPU bits are (65-75C... hot summer).
So my question is; ¿does it means the VRM are not getting hot because I'm not overclocking OR because the thick thermal padding and the push pins are doing a crappy job at transferring the heat?

I also followed the RAM heatsinks orientation to the letter on the manual but I feel the top ones should be facing sideways as well, ¿any idea on that?

Here are some pictures:

These is the peculiar VRM layout of my GPU:


And the HS with that dodgy thermal pad:

I'd check to make sure the heatsink is making contact with the VRMs. Also, where is this "chip" you're talking about? Can't seem to locate it, or figure out it's relevance to the VRM heatsink mounting location.

bamato said:

I'd check to make sure the heatsink is making contact with the VRMs. Also, where is this "chip" you're talking about? Can't seem to locate it, or figure out it's relevance to the VRM heatsink mounting location.

Click to expand...

Is making contact but I don't see the point of all that thermal padding ¿and why is that the left vertical line of VRM chips shows in the back of the board?

Forget about the chips I mentioned, I touched them and they don't get hot at all.

The thermal padding is there to transfer the heat to the heatsink.

And what do you mean "shows in the back of the board"?

bamato said:

The thermal padding is there to transfer the heat to the heatsink.

And what do you mean "shows in the back of the board"?

Click to expand...

Would it not be better to have it directly touching the VRM chips with some TIM? I can use the insulation tape that came with my L2 Plus.

This is what I mean:

Those are surface mount capacitors. They are only under the first set of VRMs because I'm assuming the VRMs are in series with each other.

And most card manufacturers use thermal pads on the memory/vrms rather than thermal paste.

bamato said:

Those are surface mount capacitors. They are only under the first set of VRMs because I'm assuming the VRMs are in series with each other.

And most card manufacturers use thermal pads on the memory/vrms rather than thermal paste.

Click to expand...

Okay, thanks for clearing that up! I notice that, I just don't understand why.
¿Would it not be better to use, lets say for example MX-2 INSTEAD of the thermal pad?

Hard to say, as I don't know. I'd assume if thermal compound was better to use on vrms, you'd see big name manufacturers using it (most I've seen all use thermal pads on the memory and vrm). Perhaps the surface texture on the VRMs isn't conducive to transmitting heat through compound, as the pads would be more useful on unpolished surfaces... just a guess...

bamato said:

Hard to say, as I don't know. I'd assume if thermal compound was better to use on vrms, you'd see big name manufacturers using it (most I've seen all use thermal pads on the memory and vrm). Perhaps the surface texture on the VRMs isn't conducive to transmitting heat through compound, as the pads would be more useful on unpolished surfaces... just a guess...

Click to expand...

I went ahead and did it;
Remove the thermal pad, cleaned the HS and VRM chips, used the provided "insulation tape" by Arctic on the areas where it was almost as high as the VRM chips just in case and applied MX-2 to the chips. The PC turned on and my graphics cards didn't shorted.
Now, temperatures-wise I see a difference of a few degrees lower on idle in GPU-Z/HWiNFO64 in the "Temp #2/MemIO" and Temp #3/Shader".
On gaming load "Temp #2/MemIO" was around 6c lower and Temp #3/Shader" around 8c.

So I would call this little experiment successful. Albeit I still have no idea where said sensors really are.

Glad to see you were successful!