- Jun 23, 2001
- 27,730
- 8
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Since I was going to a LAN party this morning, I took the liberty of opening my case to get compressed air the dust out, but, to my dismay, I discovered that one of the fans on my Gainward 6800GT wasn't spinning when hit by the air. Further inspection revealed the fan to be, not only completely inop, but also that it was somehow wedged itself into the hsf 'cage' surrounding the cooling mechanism. This explains why my card was idling between 65C and 67C, which I thought was simply because of the summer heat.
So, I am going to order an NV Silencer to put on the card from FrozenCPU.com. My question is, do I need some rubbing alcohol to get any old thermal compound off the GPU itself? And would I be correct in assuming I can use Artic Silver 5 on the GPU and the application of it would be identical to using it on the CPU? If these seem like nobrainer questions, they probably are. This will be my first time putting an after market cooler on a video card.
Lastly, I must say that Gainward builds one hell of a resilient card! This card has been without that fan now for a least a month, and I've been playing many games on it as well. No lockups or artifacts of any kind. Once I noticed the fan was out, I removed the side panel of my case, which dropped the GPU temp a degree or two though.
Edit - I see on the FrozenCPU.com website that Artic Cooling has pre applied the thermal compound, so thats taken care of.
So, I am going to order an NV Silencer to put on the card from FrozenCPU.com. My question is, do I need some rubbing alcohol to get any old thermal compound off the GPU itself? And would I be correct in assuming I can use Artic Silver 5 on the GPU and the application of it would be identical to using it on the CPU? If these seem like nobrainer questions, they probably are. This will be my first time putting an after market cooler on a video card.
Lastly, I must say that Gainward builds one hell of a resilient card! This card has been without that fan now for a least a month, and I've been playing many games on it as well. No lockups or artifacts of any kind. Once I noticed the fan was out, I removed the side panel of my case, which dropped the GPU temp a degree or two though.
Edit - I see on the FrozenCPU.com website that Artic Cooling has pre applied the thermal compound, so thats taken care of.