is it a pain in the ass to replace the heatsink on a video card?

[spanky]

specifically... a gf4mx... i am thinking about buying one from someone on the boards, but right now, it does not have the heatsink on the gpu. i was told that the fan was removed also. if i wanted to put decent cooling on it... just light gaming... i figure i would need a heatsink at least, right? what would i need to reattach the heatsink? or if i wanted to get a heatsink fan... where can i buy one? can i just use a cheezball old school hsf from a pentium cpu?

 

[UncleWai]

I don't think it's worth it.
You need to buy a vga hsf and a tube of epoxy to stick the hs on, that's ~$15 shipped.
To have that much troubles for a gf4 mx... not worth it.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

For the most part spending money on coolers for graphics cards is not needed unless you want BIG overlcoking on the core and memory. I run a Radeon9700 Pro overclocked to 378-688 and I use the stock cooling with no ram sinks either.

 

[spanky]

well the video card i am thinking about is a gf4 mx440. i was told the fan was removed from the heatsink, and the heatsink was removed from the gpu. it runs with no cooling... he uses it for 2d only. now for me... i would want to do some light gaming... like CS. i was offered some thermal tape... would that be enough to get the heatsink back on securely? would just a heatsink be suffice for light gaming?

 

[Megatomic]

Doesn't the card have holes around the GPU for pushpins? If it does, there you go. If not, Arctic Silver Epoxy (or equiv.) is your friend. I don't trust Frag tape on GPUs when the coolers are going to be dangling upside down like that.

Oh, I have a Blorb (retail kit) I can sell you for $7 shipped. LMK if you want it.