Arctic cooling NV5 installation, help!

[imported_Adonis]

Ok, first off I have a chaintech 6800gt..

I removed every single component of the vid card relating to the stock HSF, I dry tested the NV5 to check clearances only to come across 2 issues:

1. The copper plates that sit on the ram chips are too thick, in other words they force the rest of the plate to sit too high and is approx. 1 mm from the surface of the cpu (I checked using a flashlight, and could see light shining in between the two surfaces).

2. At the back end of my card (under the fan of the NV5 if it was installed) is a steel heatsink, rectangular shaped, going across the board sideways, it has two prongs on either side and sticky surface which holds it on some small chips, all in front of some capacitors.. What is it, and is it safe to remove the heatsink? The heatsink is too tall and forces the NV5 even farther (maybe 0.5 mm's) from the cpu surface.

Thanks.

Here's a picture of the card from the chaintech site:

http://www.chaintech.com.tw/tw...Vgacard/AA6800GT_L.jpg

At the back end of the card, you can see a black long rectangle and the capacitors .. the rectangle is the heatsink (it's supposed to be chrome).

 

[LoneWolf15]

Your best bet on the Ramsinks is to sand them down, using either a dremel and sanding wheel, and/or multiple grits of wet/dry hobby sandpaper going from coarser to finer grit. I've had better results using the sandpaper wet rather than dry. A secondary benefit is that you'll smooth out the surface some, which will give better contact between the heatsink and the memory.

Can't tell you a lot about the heatsink; my Geforce 6800 doesn't have it. But, it's unlikely to do a lot more than decoration due to its small size, so it's probably okay to remove it if you can do it carefully. I'm assuming you're talking about the long black heatsink put in with push pins (For me, the part of the card with the power connector is the front though, the back is near the back of the case, so maybe I have it wrong).