G400max cooling question

[nakeddoug]

Ok so I am borrowing my friend's G400max card and have been noticing it getting really hot here lately. Hot enough that you don't keep your finger on it too long at all unless you just like burning your fingers. Not the brightest way to keep tabs on the temp, I know i know. Anyway the original heatsink and fan would possibly be alright but someone had removed the heatsink and had a thermal pad underneath, then proceeded to scrape it off and gave up part way so now there is a far from smooth surface to mount together to move the heat across the heatsink. I would like to go with a better heatsink anyway due to the really cheap quality of the existing one. Does anyone know where a person could find one that would fit the existing mounting holes on the card, or can ya give me some pointers on how to modify something to go on there better? I would just slap a huge super spreading one on with a shop fan mounted on top but he is all about keeping it neat and not wanting anything permanently glued or stuck on the chip. Also what is safe and works the best for removing the old thermal pad residue, or for cleaning any chip for that matter? Thanks in advance

ND

[KeiFront]

I've got the impression thats it's only cooled by a heatsink atm am I right? A G400Max gets pretty hot so just try to slap a fan on the heatsink it could be sufficient enough.

[nakeddoug]

no it still has the factory fan on it as well. I think in all actuality if the old thermal pad is properly cleaned off the chip and heatsink and a new one applied it will start cooling properly, as is now it doesn't seem to be transfering the heat to the heatsink as it is cool to the touch, like its not making a good connect.

[Jon P. Inghram]

That might very well be possible. My old G400 Max's heatsink was a tad warped which caused the original thermal pad to make very poor contact. I just took some time experimenting with different amounts of heat sink grease until I had just enough to fill the gap without being so excessive that it made a mess when the heatsink squeezed the excess out.

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?t=30280&highlight=heat+sink+grease

[Jozsef]

If it's still relevant, the Vantec CCB-A1C is a very nice copper heatsink with fan that fits the 55mm. spacing of the G400 heatsink. Wholesales for ten dollars Canadian (and is probably far more in a store because accessories are the only items with any profit margin these days.) This should be far better than the stock cooler.

Thermal pads are easily removed with methyl hydrate (methyl alcohol), cheaply obtainable from any paint or hardware store.

The pcb behind the RAMDAC was discolored by heat on all three of my G400 Max cards. This concerned me so I replaced them with G450s. Cooler and no fans.

[sehsuan]

i bought a thermal take blue orb... sanded off the base by hand, only to find out that it doesn't fit. urgh.

i now use a 80 mm fan ziptied to a bookend stand to blow at the card, with the broken aavid fan taken off. been using this for at least two years now.

[Mcollector]

Pure (99.9%) isopropyl alcohol is generally used for removing any thermal pad/paste residue. In my experience, it works great. You can get it in at some electronics supply houses (but not a consumer one like Rat Shack), but it would probably be cheaper at a drugstore, though you'd probably have to order it at 99.9% purity. The local Thrifty/Rite Aid drug store had only 90% on the shelf, and it wasn't pure enough (left some streaks).

Arctic Silver makes a fancy cleaning compound for cleaning residue off HSes and CPU/GPUs, but it's expensive, and I question how much better it really is than 99.9% pure isopropanol (isopropyl alcohol).

I've come to prefer massive, passive heatsinks (a la the FireGL2) on video cards over HS+fan. Those damn little GPU fans fail, and getting replacements is very hard since they seem to be proprietary in form factors, connectors and there is no voltage standard (they can be either 5V or 12V in my experience, and maybe even 3.3V?). I had one fail on a Quadro, and the system ran for I don't know how long before I accidentally discovered it during routine maintenance/upgrade of the system. I noticed a slight image quality difference about the time I loaded DirectX 9c, so I blamed it on DirectX 9 and Nvidia's drivers at the time before I discovered the totally dead, totally unrecoverable GPU fan, and I've not been able to find a replacement. I'm running a better card in that system now anyway, I'd just like to recover my Quadro 1 if possible.

Unfortunately, w/ the newer cards, it seems you can't build an HS big enough to fit into 2 slots, so you can't get away from on-board fans. Maybe some water cooled option would be best.

(btw, someone in this thread mentioned just the big HS. G400's have a slightly oversized HS and no fan. G400 Max's have a smaller HS + a fan.)