Is it ok to use thermal grease on the GPU?

OneOfTheseDays

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2000
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I just got an Nvidia GF4 Ti4200. My core couldn't oc to 300 so i decided to see what kind of cooling they used. I squeezed the plastic tabs on the back of the card to get the HSF off then i pryed off the hsf from the core itself. They had some kind of yellow sticky thermal adhesive that didn't look like it was cooling too well. Anyways, i scraped all of that off and since i didn't have any thermal adhesive is used thermal grease (artic silver 3). My question is, is it ok to use thermal grease on the GPU? I would assume it would be fine. The only thing is that the grease has no adhesive properties, but the plastic tabs are enough to hold it in place right? I can move the hsf around slightly however which kinda freaked me out.
 

Actaeon

Diamond Member
Dec 28, 2000
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Heh, good question.

Well, I did the same thing with my Ti200. I poped the Heatsink off, threw some Generic Goop on there, and put the HS back on, and used the tabs. My GPU has not fried yet, and its running at 240/544mhz stable.

Its running fine, and I wouldn't worry too much about it. Though, I don't remember actually moving the heatsink when it was on the tabs... i assume as long as there is solid contact, it should run ok.
 

OneOfTheseDays

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2000
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ok great nothing to worry bout then. We'll i tested it out and still am not able to hit the 300 on the GPU/core like i wanted. However i can hit 290 with complete stability. So adding that grease gave me an additional 10 mhz higher on the core. So my GF4 is runnin at 290/550, not too shabby considerin its a 128mb card. Also, is this card supposed to run so damn hot? Even at stock speeds its hot to touch for more than 2 seconds.
 

sMashPiranha

Senior member
Oct 15, 1999
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I'm running my Gigabyte 8500le with AS2 on the GPU and memory chips on both sides of the card with no problems. As long as you don't put too much on there and have the paste short across any pins on the chips or anything you'll be fine.
 

lRageATMl

Senior member
Jun 19, 2002
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never even though of chaning the thermo compund used on teh video card in efforts of better cooling, I'm gonna give it a try also when I get home from work. I have some Artic Silver 3 sitting at home...although with my gainward gf3 ti200, i was able to push the gpu to 235 stable and memry (which I know has nothing to do with the gpu) to 545.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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I got a inno3d (128mb) clocked at 300mhz core speed. Using some as2 and a watercooled gpu block for 37c max temps
 

OneOfTheseDays

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2000
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the back of the pcb is what is really hot. Is this normal? It's really hot right above the gpu core.