How do I Remove Heatsink from Radeon 32LE??

[freak4now]

Hello,

My buddy has a Radeon 32LE. He wants to remove the stock
Heatsink and install a Heatsink/Fan combo. The Heatsink
seems to be attatched pretty well. He wants to know how
to go about this. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[pen^2]

i am almost certain he wont be able to clock much higher with a new HSF, not that overclocking it over 183mhz rewards you with a noticable gain. if it aint broke, dont fix it!

 

[Duvie]

I slightly agree with the above...fps gains are minimal at oc'ing from 148-183...there is a website that showed the review on this.

I heard of the credit card and screw driver trick...don't quote me!!!...I would recommend going to www.overclockers.com and see if they have the article on that.
But you place th cc down to protect board slightly sliding it between the gpu and HS then wedge screwdriver under it and press down and it should pop off. The thermal epoxy they use looks rather sloppy on mine...then you are going to need rubbing alcohol and some fine grit sandpaper.

I am going to get an old 486 fan and hot glue it on the hs...even at 185/185 the hs really never gets that hot just mildly warm...I highly recommend ramsinks since you will be ocing these out of their reported capacity (I heard they were 166mhz mem)

sidenote: I have heard of many running these bad boys at 185/185 solid for days with no other cooling then the passive cooling that is there now...seems to be fine. Make sure you have decent case cooling and possibly use lower pci cards to keep separation if you can to avoid stagnant air.

 

[JimmyCrackwhore]

I'm the one with the Radeon LE that's trying to remove the heatsink. I got a Blue Orb fan from Thermaltake, and I would really like to put it on this Radeon card. I have a program called PowerStrip and it has a slide bar on the left side that takes the Mhz. up to 222Mhz. Is this for real or what? Is it possible to remove that heatsink without destroying the card? HELP....

 

[hans007]

yea you can probably remove it. use a butterknife. put card in fridge for a while first. it might seem like you are gonna break it, but you wont. use the long side. Also i had mine running 195/195 stable with just the heatsink, 200/200 made some wierd artifacts, but 183/183 is what i'm at now. you really shouldn't do it unlesss you are really itching to use that blorb

 

[Mykex]

Try this LINK it has some instructions. People have tryed freezing,heating up twisting ect with mixed results. I went for freezing on my V5 but every card uses different adheasives. Others have shatterd the GPU cold,cracked it hot and chipped it twisting. The most recent advice is to use something to protect the card and pry it off room temp. Its a hairy little project it can go wrong even if you do it right. My advice dont be in a hurry ask around and be fully prepaired to loose your card,cause there is no gaurantees on this type of tweak.
Best of luck......

 

[JimmyCrackwhore]

Hey Thanks Mykex, That was somewhat encouraging, Thanks for the link... I think I might research a little more though before I go and do it....LOL

 

[littleprince]

erg... ur planning to move it to 222/222??? u could slide it there.
i doubt u could bought after that.
gd luck man.
u got guts!
by the way, ur not just planning to move it straight to 222/222 are u?
i hope ur over 18, and u payed for that comp urself
coz ur parents won't be happy when the fire department comes calling

 

[littleprince]

erg... ur planning to move it to 222/222??? u could slide it there.
i doubt u could bought after that.
gd luck man.
u got guts!
by the way, ur not just planning to move it straight to 222/222 are u?
i hope ur over 18, and u payed for that comp urself
coz ur parents won't be happy when the fire department comes calling

 

[oldfart]

My $.02, Dont do it! The HS on the LE card is quite a bit larger than the one that comes on the normal Radeon cards. If you want to cool it more, simply mount a 50mm fan to the HS that is on the card. It will fit perfectly. You won't get 222. Not even close. The card has 6ns ram which is rated for 166 MHz. A BLORB does nothing to change that. People have ruined their cards trying to remove the stock HS. Not worth teh risk for no gain.

 

[Merc7]

I've installed blue orbs and ram sinks on two Radeons so far. The one in my system now is the 64mb retail version, I also did this to an LE. What I did was put a credit card in between the HS and the board, then used a flat screwdriver and put some pressure lifting up with the back end of the screwdriver. Popped right off both times. If you have a heck of a lot of epoxy still left on the chip you can use nail polish to get it off, or if you ended up with a small amount like me, just use your fingernails to scrape it off, that way you don't have a chance of that crap getting on any of the important stuff.

To attach your blue orb you will need to take off the little side hole pieces that stick out to make it fit on the board. I just used my dremel, but you can probably saw it off with a file or something. I used arctic silver epoxy to attach the blue orb and ram sinks. BTW, I got the ram sinks from 2cooltek.com. The 20mm square sinks work perfectly. Don't forget to clean you ram and GPU chip with isopropyl alcohol or something similar before you attach them with the epoxy.

 

[arod324]

I WOULD NOT DO THIS!! The core is concave, and the heatsink is made to match it. If you wanted to remove it, you would have to lap the core, until it is flat, and that would be dangerous. I think some guy went through 7 radeons before he got it correct. I advise again, DO NOT do this, just add a 50mm fan.

 

[Hawk]

The performance gain from overclocking a Radeon is minimal, especially since you can almost certainly oc your LE to 166 just as is already.

 

[Merc7]

One other precaution I forgot to mention is that if you put AS epoxy on the ram sinks make sure not to get any on the connectors. I put the epoxy in the middle of the chip and then let it spread out once the sink was put on.

As for those in the forum advising against this, just remember that there is a risk involved. They are probably right that you probably won't get the chip to clock higher than by just installing a fan on the HS. I feel that with the arctic silver epoxy you can get much better heat transfer, that way when the powerstip bug is fixed we might see some more performance gains over 200/200. Not sure about for the LE though, since that card uses the 6ns ram. Anyway, it's up to you as to wether or not you want to take the risk. Remember, nothing is overkill to an overclocker. At least that's my moto.

 

[kimcheeboy]

I have a Radeon LE with Blue Orb and ramsinks attached. Used generic thermal paste and super glue to attach. Then I have a case fan blowing on top and another case fan blowing from the side onto the card. Runs at 200MHz Core and 200Mhz RAM (DDR). Quite stable, but not really worth the trouble and extra cash for the fans, heatsinks, etc. The performance gain is minimal. If you can get 190MHz core and 190MHz RAM off stock cooling, be happy and stay with it.

 

[JimmyCrackwhore]

Hey Thanks everyone for all your help... I'll let ya know what I decide to do.... I am succesfully overclocking at 180 with the stock heatsink.. It seems to be pretty stable. I'll keep up on the posts, and let everyone know what I decide...

 

[Merc7]

kimcheeboy,
How did you attach the ramsinks and blue orb with super glue and thermal paste? Wouldn't the paste and super glue get all mixed together from trying that? Curious how you did this...