VOGONS


First post, by Wes1262

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Hello everyone. I need to glue an heatsink back on a GPU but I don't want it to be forever glued on the card. Same goes for the rams. Rams are probably even more fragile. So probably something alcohol soluble? Any suggestions? Thanks!

Reply 1 of 6, by Wes1262

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Forgot to ask, can you recommend good adhesive thermal pads, if any, that can hold a big copper heatsink upside down?

Reply 2 of 6, by BitWrangler

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Arctic Silver used to recommend blending in regular thermal compound, AS3 was current at the time, with their Arctic Silver Epoxy to make it removeable... however, I think that was in context of attaching light aluminum chipset or RAM sinks, not dangling a pound of copper or so.

Then there's the "corner splodge" method, where you use an adhesive as small dots on the corners with a normal application of thermal compound, a long term stable, low mounting pressure required one would be best, in the middle. Then you can rock a razor blade around the corners to free it up, or use dental floss to saw through it.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 3 of 6, by konc

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3M has good thermally conductive and adhesive tape that can be easily removed, but it's not meant to hold heavy heatsinks upside down. It should suffice for the memory though. Remember that it's tape, not glue.

Reply 4 of 6, by Spark

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The thing about tape is that it can get less sticky the hotter it gets. So the heatsink could be on rock solid, but fall off when the GPU is put to use. Different tapes can be specified by how sticky they stay at higher temps. If you can add a picture of the gpu and heatsink, you may get some better suggestions. You might get away with just blowing some air over it.

Reply 5 of 6, by Wes1262

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-06-19, 04:29:

Arctic Silver used to recommend blending in regular thermal compound, AS3 was current at the time, with their Arctic Silver Epoxy to make it removeable... however, I think that was in context of attaching light aluminum chipset or RAM sinks, not dangling a pound of copper or so.

Then there's the "corner splodge" method, where you use an adhesive as small dots on the corners with a normal application of thermal compound, a long term stable, low mounting pressure required one would be best, in the middle. Then you can rock a razor blade around the corners to free it up, or use dental floss to saw through it.

Not a bad idea the small dot in the middle. Probably very easy to remove by rotating the heatsink, but would still hold firmly if left alone. Whereas dots in the corner would be a lot harder to twist. What kind of glue should I use though? Arctic Silver doesn't exist anymore. I can try with dead GPUs before I attempt it on the actual GPU so feel free to suggest products that might work. Thanks!

Reply 6 of 6, by Wes1262

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Spark wrote on 2024-06-19, 19:16:

The thing about tape is that it can get less sticky the hotter it gets. So the heatsink could be on rock solid, but fall off when the GPU is put to use. Different tapes can be specified by how sticky they stay at higher temps. If you can add a picture of the gpu and heatsink, you may get some better suggestions. You might get away with just blowing some air over it.

Ati 8500. Doesn't need a lot of metal or air TBH. It doesn't have mounting holes so the heatsink needs to be glued like the stock one. I chose the copper for aesthetic reasons mainly. I can still get a different lighter heatsink but the one I have despite being copper is not particularly heavy. It's a zalman or a zalman clone.