Fitting an Arctic Cooling cooler to an X800XL

[8bit]

Hi all,

My new Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 rev.2 arrived yesterday and today I was thinking of fitting it. I've done a similar one before on my old 9800Pro using the little tube of thermal material that came with it, however this time round not realising that the new cooler comes with a little square of TIM already applied to the heatsink I bought some Arctic Silver 5, was thinking of re-TIM'ing my CPU as well see?

So I was thinking of removing the pre-applied stuff from the cooler and using some AS5. First of all, is that a really bad idea for any reason? Second, I was going to use the instructions on the Arctic Silver website ( http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_s...structions.htm
) and just stick a small blob onto the GPU then give it a wiggle about when I attach the cooler. Sensible?

The other thing about this cooler is that it will cool the memory chips on the card as well. The bits of the cooler that interface with the RAM have little sticky thermal pads. Would I be as well to take these off and use some AS5 on the memory chips as well?

Apart from the noise, the card is pretty much sufficient for my current needs. As it's an AGP model I don't want to upgrade my graphics again until I'm able to do the whole thing and get a new PCI-E mobo as well so I'd like to have some cooling headroom for overclocking the GPU and it's RAM. Basically what I'm wondering is would any benefit in using AS5 over the pre-applied stuff and the sticky pads be worth the effort? I've no real idea of the cooling potential of the stuff that comes on the cooler vs. Arctic Silver 5...

TIA for any advice
8bit

[sawyen]

AS5 and mem chips are sworn enemies.. try that and say bye bye to ur X800XL.. really..

The TIM that came with the ASilencer should be fine, no need to rip it off and put it somewhere else.. instead use the AS5 for the CPU, makes better sense really..

[8bit]

AS5 and mem chips are sworn enemies.. try that and say bye bye to ur X800XL.. really..

well if a reason to upgrade presented itself, who might I be to turn it down? OK though, noted. I'll leave the mem chips alone.

The TIM that came with the ASilencer should be fine, no need to rip it off and put it somewhere else.. instead use the AS5 for the CPU, makes better sense really..

I wasn't really bothered about keeping the pre-applied gunk for the GPU, just wondered if AS5 would be much better if I'm going to be oc'ing the card in the near future.... think i'll probably just fit the thing as shipped but thanks for the advice!

[YorkieBen]

I dont think it will make a huge difference, tbh X800XLs are huge overclockers (you wont get more than 450mhz on the core in all likelyhood)

[ExceededGoku]

seriously 8bit don't apply AS5 to your X800... I did it to my pro it worked fine but I had to reapply the paste because it was basically conducting electricity between the metal parts aroundthe GPU. I didn't really understnad at that point what was causing the problems but I think it was pretty obvious after I had this stuff all over my card lol.

[8bit]

/puts down the tube of AS5...

/backs away from the card...

Thanks all, I'm glad I decided to ask about this particular silly idea of mine this time

cheers for the warnings!
8bit