Accelero S1 rev2 Ramsinks

jorwex · Post by **jorwex** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:28 am

Hi All,

I have an Accelero S1 that I'm about to install. I've heard that the provided thermal tape on the ramsinks isn't that great (I am a stickler for using Arctic Silver usually). I'm strapping it to a eVGA 9600GT SC and am worried about voiding my warranty. I asked eVGA and didn't get a straightforward answer:

Answer:

Hello jorwex and than you for contacting evga. Yeah we support any kind of after market cooler as long as you can still reassemble it if needed to do an RMA. So nothing that can permantly damage the board or wont be able to reassemble. best regards evga tech team.

Question:

Dear eVGA,

I have read that removing the stock cooler in favor of an aftermarket one will keep the eVGA warranty intact. What about installing ramsinks? Adding ramsinks can be a beneficial, but permanent change as thermal adhesive (e.g. Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive) is used and not merely thermal compound (e.g. Arctic Silver 5).

So I think they're telling me that permanent ramsink solutions (Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive) are a no-no. What should I do? Should I take a stab at the provided stuff? Should I go the "AS5 in the middle, superglue on the corners" method? How hard is that to remove?

Thanks,

Jordan

P.S. The card comes overclocked 25MHz from 650 to 675. I will not be increasing that any further. Will i Need the sinks at all? I've believe I've read somewhere that GDDR3 chips run fairly cool.

Thanks

Nick Geraedts · Post by **Nick Geraedts** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 11:08 am

My ramsinks are still stuck on after several months of use. I think the original releases had problems with the glue quality, but the new ones don't suffer from this.

Just make sure you press and hold each one for about 30 seconds (and that the RAM chip itself is as clean as you can get it).

nici · Post by **nici** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 11:20 am

Clean the chips with alcohol, the ramsinks should stick just fine after that.

jorwex · Post by **jorwex** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:06 pm

Should I use the eraser method as stated in the manual? I read on one forum post that this left pieces behind (or something to that effect). I'd normally just wipe it down as best as I could with a lint free cloth and rubbing alcohol.

Thanks for the replies!

Immortals · Post by **Immortals** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:28 pm

jorwex wrote:Should I use the eraser method as stated in the manual? I read on one forum post that this left pieces behind (or something to that effect). I'd normally just wipe it down as best as I could with a lint free cloth and rubbing alcohol.

Thanks for the replies!

Buy some articlean. It's not expensive and the s1 ramsinks stick unbelievably well after (so much so that when one was slightly crooked i couldn't pull it off). I've installed it on 2 videocards and never had problems with the ramsinks sticking.

jorwex · Post by **jorwex** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:57 pm

Sorry for making this thread go longer than it should, as I don't anticipate pushing this thing to the point where I might need an RMA, but still I'm paranoid about having warranties to fall back on. Thanks for the replies everyone.

So will the arcticlean help remove the sinks later? How will it if the sinks are stuck to the ram? Won't it not have room to do its job? Is the least maintence method the super glue tactic?

Now I'm scared of the provided stuff

Immortals · Post by **Immortals** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:13 pm

jorwex wrote:Sorry for making this thread go longer than it should, as I don't anticipate pushing this thing to the point where I might need an RMA, but still I'm paranoid about having warranties to fall back on. Thanks for the replies everyone.

So will the arcticlean help remove the sinks later? How will it if the sinks are stuck to the ram? Won't it not have room to do its job? Is the least maintence method the super glue tactic?

Now I'm scared of the provided stuff

Didn't mean to scare you into thinking they were superglue sticky... just that they weren't easy to take off. I'm sure with enough force they would come off just fine whereas with superglue you might just pull the memory from the socket. Videocards are reliable components generally provided they are adequately cooled. I'd say it's worth the "risk"

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:37 pm

clean rams well with isopropyl alcohol or use arctic clean kit and when you apply ram sink, press it hard and keep pressing 30 seconds to a minute. Then it will hold.

a) Clean well

b) press well

then you should have no problems.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:10 pm

Articlean is like totally ftw.

it strips the hell out of the gunk in two steps. one is an emulsifier and degreaser, the other strips the emulsified slime layer left behind. I never had the slime layer fully gone except with this articlean stuff. the smaller bottle set will last you years.

lodestar · Post by **lodestar** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:11 am

I can testify to the efficiency of using Arcticlean and then the Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive. Used it to fit a north bridge heatsink on a motherboard. This was a wire-clip fitted heatsink where the clip had failed.

Once allowed to set it is absolutely solid... no chance of removing it whatever.

But note that the instructions with the Arctic Silver adhesive do include some important advice about using it on ram. There is an online (pdf) version at

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinst ... asepxy.pdf

which might be worth looking at.

falcon26 · Post by **falcon26** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 7:57 am

I got tired of my ramsinks falling off on my 9800GT and I didn't want to use that artic silver thermal adhesive because once you use it your not getting those ramsinks off

So I picked up this

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/att ... 1209481161

It works perfect and it also cools the VRM area as well...

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 10:14 am

jorwex wrote:So I think they're telling me that permanent ramsink solutions (Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive) are a no-no. What should I do? Should I take a stab at the provided stuff? Should I go the "AS5 in the middle, superglue on the corners" method? How hard is that to remove?

I destroyed a Nvidia 6800GT trying to remove ramsinks that had been stuck on with thermal adhesive (a memory chip came off the card with the heatsink.) You can dilute the thermal adhesive with normal thermal paste for a weaker bond but it's still a gamble.

The thermal paste/ superglue method works well. The main thing to bear in mind is that you put thermal paste over 3/4 of the ramsink and only one tiny drop of superglue on one corner of the ramsink. That's all you need for it to stay securely in place. There's no need to put superglue on all four corners.

Accelero S1 rev2 Ramsinks

Accelero S1 rev2 Ramsinks

Re: Accelero S1 rev2 Ramsinks