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thermal pad is gross and sticky and i dont know how to remove it

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EgoFumPapa

Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2003
Location
MN
i have a rev3 vga silencer that i need to make good use of. the only thing standing in my way is this sticky thermal pad on my 9700 pro's heatsink. ive read different methods used to get this stuff off, but last time i tried, i killed my card, so im a bit weary. before i do anything, i just want to clarify the proper way to get this goup off. on the vga silencer directions it says to heat it with a hairdryer until it loosens and comes off, is this safe to do? i also read that one guy put his card in an antistatic bag, but that in a ziplock bag, and threw the whole thing in the freezer for 45 minutes and scraped it off after that. i was thinking the hairdryer route, but i want to make sure to do the right thing to remove all of this stuff.
 
yeah i want to know the best way to pry this thing off. should i just yank it off? thats what i did last time, and there was a lot of left over gunk of the gpu that i tried scraping off but most of it stayed on. i dont like the idea of using force to pull it right off, but ill do whatever works.
 
humm. I dont know which is best the hairdry or the freezer trick.

/me waits for others to chime in with experianced anwsers
 
i would rather try the hairdryer instead of leaving it in the freezer for a while. but i wouldnt want the pad to melt all over and get anywhere where it could harm something.. but the more i think about it, the more i just want to go for it and see how it turns out.
 
lighter fluid eh? i could try some of that. when i used some isopropyl alcohol, it didnt do much, so maybe ill give the lighter fluid a go
 
Even when its been on a cpu for 3 years and is totally pink and hard? Or are you talkin about just taking off the pad before it's been used?
 
Im talking about when its sticky and imposible to fulyl get off by scraping it and rubbing it. I never knew the stuff can get Hard as a rock lol.

My 9700pro i never messed with it for like 2 years whe ni had it and decited to take the hsf off and put AS3 on and the pad was still sticky. I dunno why urs got hard.
 
CandymanCan said:
My 9700pro i never messed with it for like 2 years whe ni had it and decited to take the hsf off and put AS3 on and the pad was still sticky. I dunno why urs got hard.

Yeah,it was on a friends stock amd cooler.I was replacing the heatsink for him and this stuff was like incredible.I threw out the cooler but had to clean off the cpu core and nothing worked except lighter fluid.Weird.
 
Oh that stuff, yea on the AMD coolers the older ones at least iv heard and seen the stuff actually burn onto the core and heatsinks lol. My ATI card was using that pink stuff
 
I have had very poor results with nail remover (acetone mostly, careful around PCB) and the pink goop in the past... Had little to no effect in softening up the goops - it was very gummy and the nail stuff really made no difference.

I use a credit card to remove almost all, then give a quick gentle lapping.
 
Citrus based cleaner dabbed on with a towel works well if you give it a little time to work on the pad. I always heat things up with a blower dryer before trying to remove...
 
I want to remove the factory one on an ati radeon 8500. I had heard that you could run the cpu at full load for a while and then remove it and pry it off while it is still hot. That didn't work for me though. Is there any risk of overheating it and killing it with a hair dryer? I would think that the freezer method would be safe, as long as you let condensation dry before using it.
I am guessing that with the hair dryer you just heat up the heatsink till it gets loose and then pry it off?
With the freezer method do you just want to freeze it, take it out and pry it off right away, or do you want to freeze it and then hit it with heat (like a hair dryer) to get it too pop off?
 
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