NV Silencer 5 Problems

[PumkinFest]

I installed this cooler on my 6800GT and initially my idle temps were in the 70's i new this was not right so i pulled it apart and put it back together looking for things i'd done wrong. Then when i put it back together my idle temps are around 65c, what is wrong??? my old idle temps were 55 on the stock cooler.

 

[Navid]

Does it make good contact with the GPU?

If you put paste only on the GPU and install, after you remove the sink, do you see paste on the sink where the GPU is located?
There may be components (capacitors) in the way that do not let the sink make good contact with the GPU.

 

[PumkinFest]

You were right, only half of it had paste touching, so i added more paste to that area. The temps are still the same though..... I will leave the cooler runniog for a few hours to let the paste settle in..

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: PumkinFest
You were right, only half of it had paste touching, so i added more paste to that area. The temps are still the same though..... I will leave the cooler runniog for a few hours to let the paste settle in..

You need to figure out why the paste wasn't squished across the whole gpu. What was keeping it from making good 100% contact. Adding more paste is not the answer. Too much paste can actually hurt your cooling ability.

 

[Navid]

Seat the sink on the card (don't tighten). Look from the side and inspect. Try to figure out what is holding the sink up. Or is the card or the sink warped?

 

[impemonk]

yah, don't tighten the HSF to the pcb... I tightened it too much for my EVGA 6800GT and wamo, it broke in two pieces. Oh well. At least it serves me the purpose of allowing me to buy an ULTRA now

 

[contusion]

Hah, oh man it took me so long to get this thing working properly. Here's what happened:
At first I put a decent amount of arctic silver 5 on the gpu and ceramique on the ram chips. I turn on my computer and feel the card where the gpu is. Immediately I think to myself, "Hm that feels really hot." Sure enough, I look at the temp reading right after booting to xp and it reads 120 C. So i quickly scream and kill the psu. I then replace the as 5 with ceramique and, after the as 5 incident, I decide to apply thin layers. My card maxes around 90 using rthdribl with the multisampling maxed out. That's way too high so I try different thicknesses of ceramique. Finally I realize what the problem is. Firstly, the heatsink surface is very rough so you need a relatively thick layer of thermal paste on the gpu as well as the ram chips. Secondly, you need to make sure the gpu is totally touching the heatsink, which is what others have already told you, and it most likely isn't due to the ram chips. So, you just need to make sure that the four metal screws are very tight. Just try not to crack the board by tightening them too much. Now my card is at 50 C idle which is good enough for me since it used to be at 60 idle. I forget where exactly it peaks, maybe in the low 70s.

 

[Hyperlite]

Yeah, while installing my NV5 a few weeks ago, i remembered people saying that you had to really crank the thing down...i never thought you could actually break the pcb in half =/. I kinda wish i had one of those X back plates now...