Hi

You know the deal, you build a nice quiet system, stick a nice graphics card in it for some performance and the fan built on it makes an absolute racket.

Anyway after a few months of that I thought I should get a third party HSF which has arrived. I've successfully removed the original HSF which was about the only thing on the board other than the GPU - it looks really empty now - and I think I can suss out how to fit the new one (instructions are crap).

Anyway, my question, the stock cooler covered all the memory as well as the GPU. The new one covers just the GPU but is supplied with mini heatsinks to put on the memory. Great. Only they've supplied me with 4 mini heatsinks and I've 8 memory chips. Is it safe to leave 4 of them without a heatsink? Or do I need to order some more and leave the stock cooler on for now?

My card is an ATI X1800XT. New cooler is a Revoltec Graphic Freezer Pro.

I'm posting from my other PC before anyone asks.

In the pic it looks to me that the bits stuck on the original part are there purely to stop the RAM coming into contact withthe bare metal. If they were meant to transfer heat they would be thermal paste would they not ?

I would be tempted to try it but run a test for artifacts straight away.

Should be Ok, bob!

Those pads are made of a really soft substance, I'm not sure what sort of heat transfer ability they have. Although with the design of the heasink, the fan blows through the heatsink and onto the board below as well, so the 4 chips which won't have a heatsink will at least be air cooled. That also means the 4 chips with the little heatsinks will also be air cooled so should run much cooler.

I'll order 4 more mini heatsinks too (if I can find anywhere that sells them).

Anyway I'll give it a go and give it a good testing, fingers crossed. You're safe in East Anglia Jakq but if anything blows up I'll be around in a jiffy Bean0.

(j/k)

most Heatsinks use the airflow - you can pick up some high quality Swiftech Ramsinks for under a tenner

I had an old 9800XT and bought an Arctic Cooling Silencer for it and the situation was identical. They still use the very same pads.
I bought some cheaptastic heatsinks from the local store, glued them on and it worked like a charm (but watch out wether the new GPU cooler leaves enough space for the RAM-heatsinks!). It also worked without the heatsinks, but I intended to overclock the card (because it was damn slow!).

Vain

Kind of talking out of my ass here, but these thick pads cannot have had any significant cooling effect. I'd say you should be fine without the memory coolers, especially when considering that there will be a direct airflow on these chips now, which wasn't the case with the original design.

Even if they really do get too hot, you will notice graphics errors beforehand - they won't be immediately broken.

You are talking out of your ass, Android

They DO help you to get a better OC, but for a stock card they aren't neccesary

Well, I didn't read anything from overclocking in Bob's post and his question was whether it's okay to run it now or if he has to wait for the next delivery, but seeing a "overclocking fanatic" link in your sig makes me understand why you jumped on my post

I was just saying they DO make a difference, in things such as water cooling they are pretty much a neccesity, as when you get water you usually do it to overclock, and then you take out the fans and end up with virtually 0 airflow.

And yes, my card has the ram sinks, they add 20 hp each, don't you know

I never said they don't make a difference, just that having nothing on the chips + direct airflow cannot be any worse than those thick bedsheets that were on them before

On my original cooler all those ram chips had a blob of thermal paste on them that barely connected them to the crap stock heatsink illepall . It was awful and one card died from that, but the second one has a Zalman CF 700 Cu replacement cooler on it now. Never had a problem since.

Water cooling always seemed a bit OTT but without the uber-ness of liquid nitrogen cooling.

Anyway, fitted. Will try powering her up in a bit once all the new fans are wired in.

I didn't use the supplied thermal grease though, used some arctic silver instead (once the old stuff had be taken off, of course). One of the memory chips wil have to stay without a heatsink regardless, the heatpipes run right above it. Glory photo taken.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Water cooling always seemed a bit OTT but without the uber-ness of liquid nitrogen cooling.

Air<Water<Peltier<Phase (never seen it on a video card)<LN2

LN2 really isn't something you can just "set and forget"

Water is good if you (like me) love to squeze that every last MHz out of your hardware, and watch as it outperforms a faster Part, while making less noise and being 1337

EDIT, to all you non-overclockers

Air - Air cooling, Heatsink with a fan, the standard method
Water - a peice of metal (a water block) goes on the card, then water is pumped through the block, cools better than air
Peltier - Electric thermo-couple, one side gets hot, one side gets cold, the colder you make the hot side, the colder the colder side gets, couple this with water cooling and see negative load temsp
Phase - no idea how the hell it works, it aint quiet, but it makes load temps of -40! can be run all day, although expect to pay 800 bucks for a kit
LN2 - Liquid Nitrogen, a large tube is placed on top of the core, and then LN2 is pored in it, makes VERY cold temps, used by all the serious overclockers for super-benching, but of course its a VERY temporary thing, and bloody expensive.

Wish I'd have seen this earlier.. Make sure not to get any AS past the die of the GPU, it can become capacitive and damage the GPU.

Jakq - I think your >s should have been <s.

Bob, i NEVER know which way to get them. Fixed!

What I don't understand is why so many vendors put such a crapload of thermal paste on the chips. From my understanding thermal paste transfers heat really poorly, just not as bad as air does, so you use absolutely minimal amounts to fill all the little areas that don't get into contact when you put the heatsink on the die. Yet when you take off stock coolers you see the die overflowing in thermal paste more often than not (from my experience).

Quote from Jakg :

Bob, i NEVER know which way to get them. Fixed!

Err, you know, ">" means "greater than" (big side left, small side right), so you basically said "Air greater than Water". Dunno what you can get wrong about that

You want to use as little as possible, to use JUST enough to fill the gaps, and thats all you need, 1/2 a BB sized dot is enough

Seeing as i'd imagine the thing that applies the paste is either just a robot or a poorly paid worker they just splurge it on!

Well all is working great, still need to test for overheating by running a game but with the 2000rpm fan running at half speed, all other fans at half speed, and the Delta fan turned off (that's just for the summer when I need some airflow), my PC is nearly silent and the GPU is at 48 degrees idle.

The loudest item(s) in my PC now are my HDDs, anyone have a solution to quiet them down? It's mainly a resonance noise and vibration of the case. I've got some acoustic soft rubber bolts to hold the fans in the place (rather than conventional hard screws) but they won't fit (or support) a HDD. If I could stop that buzzing I won't know my PC is on (unless I open my eyes).

I found out the RAM "heatsink" on my 6800GT was made out of plastic.. It seems that for ddr3 you don't really need them! I know some 6800 Ultra cards have shipped without ram sinks and I believe I saw 7600GT cards that did without as well..

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19147 That should be a fun read for possible harddisk sollutions. Suspending them works great, although of course you're best off with as few HD's as you can, especially avoiding old ones..