Artic cooler

[Sham B]

Is this a manufacturer dependent issue, or are they all subject to
poor assembly ?

No its a design thing, dependant on what the manufacturor puts between the GPU and original sink.

some cards use one of those awful pads between the GPU and sink. these are petrochemical based, and
work by melting when there is heat (they are solid when cold) and work best with a slight gap to
live in (if there is no gap, the pad gets squeezed out over - albeit long - time).
Other cards use a paste, which needs a much smaller clearance, or none at all. Paste is designed to
harden over time and doesnt get squeezed out, so no gap is required. In these cases, the shim is
almost level with the GPU.

My Connect 9500 pro had a pad, and the shim had a slight clearance. My Sapphirre 9800 pro had
thermal paste, and no clearance at all.

Given that most users will add paste when they put on a new cooler, the low clearance shims are
desirable. If you have a high clearance 'designed for a pad' shim, you have a problem, because the
shim was not designed for paste, and the clearance is too big for best conductivity.

You have two choices;
1. remove the shim. this defeats the original point of the shim, which is to prevent the sink
crushing/cracking the GPU chip due to uneven pressure (they are on pretty tight in many cases), or
2. accept the slight clearance and fill it with paste.

the trouble is, of course,that most people want to replace the stock setup with an arctic cooler,
and the arctic cooler is larger than the normal heatsink, and somewhat heavier. You *really need*
the shim in this case, because the pressure needed to keep the arctic attached to the card is more
than the stock cooler (which typically weigh less than a quarter of the arctic.

Although some people remove the shim when adding an arctic, the consensus seems to be that it is a
little dangerous to do this, and it is safer to leave the shim on whatever the clearance. some
people also decide to take the shim off and sand it down a little (you only have to sand it down a
little to solve the problem).

IMO, the issue is much ado about nothing. On the 9500Pro, I simply filled the gap with paste, and
got a measurable increase in max OC, which was around the same as everyone was getting. You prolly
lose a degree or two through the gap if you are using something like arctic silver, but that still
gives you far better cooling thatn the stock cooler, so its not a big worry and the change of cooler
is still worth the effort

HTH

S

 

[Dark Avenger]

So you're saying that someone knocked off the entire Arctic Silver product
line and is selling it as "Artic Silver"?

Well all artic silver I have seen being sold has been genuine till now


I have read that..is was thermal take I belief that also sold
silvercontaining stuff, and one batch when tested by a hardware site
was found NOT to contain any silver... but a mix with aluminium!

thermaltake did also test it and..well the fabric that made it under
their name lost their order

Nowadays thermaltake silver stuff is said to be Artic Silver... well
could be worse!

 

[jamie anderson]

FOR GOD'S SAKE THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS ARTIC IT'S ARCTIC OK?

 

[patrickp]

FOR GOD'S SAKE THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS ARTIC IT'S ARCTIC OK?

I think, apart from Dark Avenger, we mostly seem to be aware of that,
jamie. However, in response to your previous post, Noozer stated that
'But there is "Arctic Silver" and "Artic Silver" Both exist and they
are not the same thing.'

I was asking what he meant by that, as the only links I could find for
"Artic Silver" pointed either to review pages that, like Dark Avenger,
hadn't noticed the correct spelling, or to "articsilver.com" which
Arctic Silver have obviously obtained and use to point to their own
pages.

patrickp

(e-mail address removed) - take five to email me

 

[Neil]

FOR GOD'S SAKE THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS ARTIC IT'S ARCTIC OK?

Of course there is. It's a contraction of
"articulated" . It is more commonly used in
reference to large vehicles, but in this case
there must be two products: "Arctic Silver" which
does something to make things cold (or at least
cooler); and "Artic Silver" which bends in the
middle. I'm not sure what use I'd have for the
latter, but it appears to sell quite well, so it
must be good for something.

Neil

 

[killer bee]

Just fitted my Rev 3 to a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro and it fitted perfect
first time. Simple swap job after removing the cheap ass paste they use.

Sweet.