Thermal Compound & Performance With Stock Cooler

diver · Post by **diver** » Tue May 16, 2006 2:27 pm

Has anyone around here removed a stock VGA cooler and applied a high quality heat sink compound like Arctic Silver?

What effect did this have on reported temperatures at idle and under load?

I am just as interested in people that got great results as those who saw little or no change.

roadie · Post by **roadie** » Thu May 18, 2006 3:51 am

I saw no change really going from the stock thermal compound on my x1900xt to AS3. I guess with the temperature that the x1900's run at and the efficiency of the stock heatsink that the compound does not contribute much.

diver · Post by **diver** » Thu May 18, 2006 8:18 am

What I am startiing to think is there is litle or no benefit unless the contact between the heat sink and the GPU has been broken. In that case replacing the thermal compound is really more of a repair than an upgrade.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Thu May 18, 2006 1:16 pm

I replaced the stock TIM with AS5 on my Gigabyte X800XL passive and noticed the heat pipes were noticeably warmer to the touch, implying better conduction. I didn't measure temperatures, sorry.

The stock TIM was quite thick and didn't look to me like it would be particularly effective.

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Thu May 18, 2006 3:24 pm

It's been said before; how you apply thermal paste is more important for it's effectiveness than what kind of thermal paste you use. Video card manufacturers often put a blob of thermal paste on the core and then just mount the heatsink, a user normally put more effort into applying the thermal paste properly and I believe any substantial temperature differences is due to this circumstance.