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My eBay fiasco & How to remove Voodoo 2 Tennmax Stealth coolers.

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First post, by Retromangia

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Hey guys,

So a few weeks ago, I placed an order for 2 sweet Creative Labs Voodoo 2 3D Blasters, complete in minty box with all cables & games.

Within a few days, they arrive at my door. Right away I knew something was wrong. The shipping box was SQUISHED on one side of the box, big time. Of course, this had to be the same side both video cards were packaged on.

The picture I'm about to show is not for the faint of heart... 😢

Not only was the minty box CRUSHED, but it turns out now 1 of the cards was broken as well! I swear, why can't people take 15 minutes and package things correctly. Luckily, the seller was very accommodating, and offered me a very nice refund.

One of the cards still works great however, and is chewing games up in my new retro rig.

If you take a look at the cards, you can see they came equipped with the very elusive Tennmax Stealth Coolers. Unfortunately, this guy had NO IDEA how to install them! (see pics) - The card that works is the one with the cooler hanging off the top of the card 🤣

my question to you is, how can i safely remove these coolers without damaging the card? I believe there held on with some thermal glue. ultimately I want to remove them, then re-install them correctly.

Lastly, is it possible to repair the broken voodoo card? When I purchased these, my plan was to run these in SLI. The 2 cards must of been smooshed together during shipping, breaking one of the cards.

thanks again,
Retro

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Last edited by Retromangia on 2017-05-06, 16:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 5, by firage

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The coolers are a nice find.

Looks like they're already halfway off. I guess freezing the entire cooling apparatus is going to take a while with cold spray. Maybe heat 'em up and twist?

My big-red-switch 486

Reply 2 of 5, by SSTV2

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Retromangia wrote:

how can i safely remove these coolers without damaging the card?

I don't know what kind of glue was used there, but i would try to heat whole thing with hairdryer and simply lift it off, you can even grab heatsink on the sticking-out edge on top with your fingers.

Retromangia wrote:

is it possible to repair the broken voodoo card?

PCB looks fine, so absolutely, but how can you be sure that the card was working in the first place? Maybe seller intended to hide bent pins with those heatsinks? You will also have to remove heatsink from a bad card as well, so that you could start properly diagnosing fault(s).

Reply 4 of 5, by deleted_Rc

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rule of thumb:

Most chips are able to reach 80 degrees np and are not damaged by it either, and most pple are unable to touch surfaces hotter then 70-80 degrees.

get a soldering iron and set it on 200 degrees (Celsius), put it on the heatsink and also put a finger about 5 cm from the solder iron. As soon as you cannot touch the heatsink anymore stop heating the heatsink and gently try getting the heatsink off through twisting motions.

Reply 5 of 5, by Retromangia

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awesome guys,

Thank you all for great info. I think I'll try the hair dryer method to start out with. Get them semi-hot and try to gently wiggle the fan's off. If that doesn't work, I will perhaps attempt the soldering iron method.

I will report back when I get them removed! 😉

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