Working on a friends P3, I found this ATI video card with a nasty fan on it. As the pictures explain, it was badly clogged up with dust, but after cleaning it of course still whined like mad, and removing it produced far too much heat to run without (that aluminum piece being basically a fan-holder, hardly a heatsink). So I snapped it off and attached a Zalman NB32 Heatsink, which worked very nicely...

I did a similar thing with my old Geforce DDR - ripped off the fan (way too noisy) and chucked on the NB32J. I still needed a fan though, as without it the heatsink quickly got too hot too touch! So I rigged up my old northbridge fan @ 7V and now its happy

Nice work Alistair.

I was thinking about doing the same thing on my ATI AIW 8500 card. What is your advice on removing the old ATI HS?
Just get a knife and twist?
Did it come off easily?

Looks the part now and should run much cooler than the weedy ATI HS.

I was very careful prying it off, a knife would work fine. I imagine they are all a little different. I used a screwdriver for a little leverage, wedging in from all sides to crack the seal. Took some time to remove the epoxy residue from the chip, i used a plastic scraper (like a credit card) and a cloth with rubbing alcohol.

good luck!

I did it, but used the older Black NB32. This has a flat bottom that completely covers the chip.

Now I am using a ZM17CU on the card, and the NB32 is in my mobo's northbridge.

I officialy welcomes you in the now 3 members club of the 'NB32J on a ATI' club.

Other members include me (9000Pro) and oogabooga (8500DV).

I have an nVidia Riva TNT2 that has a dying fan on it, and I am looking for the Zalman ZM17CU as a passive replacement, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. I don't want to pay $30.00 for a heat pipe for this thing, because it will probably go in a dedicated game server and I would rather drop those dollars into a new Radeon 9600 Pro for myself (with ZM80HP of course)

Does anyone know where I may still find the ZM17CU?

Just you wait! Now that I have my computer back up and running, I'm going to have a whole page on the ATI fanmod!

Alistair, I think you need to buy your friend a can of compressed air for his birthday. That thing's disgusting!



Now while you were working on it you installed F@H as a service, right?

Alistair (or anyone else who's performed the mod) did you lose the use of more than one PCI slot in the process of installing the NB32?

As I understand it, that first slot next to the AGP shouldn't be used anyway, but in my very similar situation (ATi graphics card with a loud fan that is, NOT the state of squalor inside that case ) I can't afford to lose a 2nd PCI slot.

thanks!

I've lost one PCI slot; I can *just* fit a card into the second slot away. Mind you, if you have a card in that second slot, you are going to have a hell of a time cooling that Radeon, espcially the 8500 which gets HOT!

Looks like both siliconacoustics.com and sharkacorp.com still have 'em...

Yes, you lose 1 PCI slot.

You've got to balance between that and the price difference with a better Zalman (HP80).

Otherwise, a possibility would be to ... dremelize (oh, horror !) this little zalman heatsink and ev. use a fan over it. It cannot be that bad compared to the standard ATI heatsink^W fan holder.

worked on my geforce 4 4600
with zalman fan bracket and 7 volt 120 mm NMB from Dorothy
Attached using artic thermal epoxy