I would do it. After all these years,the paste is mostly all the time dried up or no longer there 😀

I have a original 2010 Gigabyte HD5870 price was=500€ for everyday use and it has no issues. ( Still waiting for modern graphic card prices to go down because of bitminers.)
GTX 280 is 2008-09.

They tended to use the ceramic pastes, removing the cooler will likely rip the chip off the board. Don't use metal based pastes on video cards either, that's a horrible idea.

Why not run a quick test? See what temps are like, how much fan speed ramps up and what it sounds like.
Would give you a fair idea if the cooling needs addressing.

It's possible to clean with IPA to get a well used card back to near new condition.
The smell of a sealed card can't be recreated and well used fans will always be noticeable.

Once I've removed a cooler it's always tempting to remove the heat spreader with a pry tool on a card of that era and upgrade the compound in direct contact with the silicon. Risky for your first one to be a pristine card though, need to find the exact spot to pry.

Definitely would redo the paste, give it a thorough clean as well... heatsink, fan, etc.

When in doubt, go for a thorough cleaning and repaste.

I always keep my hardware very clean. I have two GTX 480s that I disassembled a few years ago. The thermal paste was dry. I even went so far as to de-lid the GPUs carefully.

I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (incredibly good TIM but expensive) right on the GPU die and then sealed the heat spreader back down with some high-temperature liquid gasket (from an auto parts store) that dries into a rubbery glue. The IHS doesn't move at all once it is dry. Then I used Arctic Silver 5 to mate the big-ass heatsink to the IHS and reassembled both cards.

The results?

While under load BEFORE I did all of this, temperatures would easily rise into the 80°C range and the fan wound ramp up to around 100%.

AFTER the procedure, I never saw temps go over 60°C and the fan never went above 80% output.

And that's not all. While doing this, I also changed out the thermal pads for more expensive ones with higher thermal transfer properties in order to keep the VRMs and the memory chips cool. I ALSO picked up on eBay a pair of EK 480 water blocks, a matching pair in order to build a custom water-cooling loop out of that old gaming rig. I can't wait until I have everything else I need to complete the loop and assemble it. I want to overclock the 480s AND the i7-860. I'm sure I can squeeze another 1.0 GHz out of the CPU once it's under water.

….Um... I think I went a bit off-topic again...

I recommend to mod the card BIOS and significantly lower the 3D voltage. Also GeForce GTX 280 is a pain in arse to disassemble and most likely will also require to change thermal pads on memory and VRM, due to damage.

I have a original 2010 Gigabyte HD5870 price was=500€ for everyday use and it has no issues.

5870 does not have IHS, also it's less power hungry and thus produce less heat.

It idles around 65c, but the plastic on the back of the card gets so hot that I can barely touch it. That, for me, is enough to change it out, but the condition scares me a little, because I don't want to damage it when it looks so nice.

My old PNY XLR8 9800GTX OC did the same sort of thing before I changed out the thermal paste (and pads!) so that it would cool a little better. I pray that the GTX 280 won't have thermal pads, because it would take me longer than thrice the age of that card to find the ones I have. (That's 33 years, by the way- hard to believe 2008 was a little over a decade ago)

I will be purchasing another GTX 280.

I am NEVER, EVER, taking apart one of these abysmal "innovations," of human technology EVER again. In my 17 years of existence, I have never seen one computer hardware component have worse internal design. This infuriating card is built as if it was designed by advanced extraterrestrial life, and not of human design.

I am buying a new one over one little thermal pad that fell off while I was putting the heatsink back on (on a chip I had missed before, too, so I've already taken it apart again and put it back together once), because I absolutely refuse to try to take it apart again and try and find some scraps for that stupid little chip (I'm now out of thermal pads, completely).

No. Nonono. I wish I had never taken this card specifically designed to torture the minds of mortal man apart. This is absolutely what I would call "cooling Hell."

Absolutely not.

athlon-power wrote:

I will be purchasing another GTX 280. […]
Show full quote

I will be purchasing another GTX 280.

I am NEVER, EVER, taking apart one of these abysmal "innovations," of human technology EVER again. In my 17 years of existence, I have never seen one computer hardware component have worse internal design. This infuriating card is built as if it was designed by advanced extraterrestrial life, and not of human design.

I am buying a new one over one little thermal pad that fell off while I was putting the heatsink back on (on a chip I had missed before, too, so I've already taken it apart again and put it back together once), because I absolutely refuse to try to take it apart again and try and find some scraps for that stupid little chip (I'm now out of thermal pads, completely).

No. Nonono. I wish I had never taken this card specifically designed to torture the minds of mortal man apart. This is absolutely what I would call "cooling Hell."

Absolutely not.

This seems to have more to do with your sloppy teardown method than the way the card is assembled if you ask me but feel free to do as you wish, obviously 😀

That is not even a complicated tear down. Last thing I tore down, upgraded and put back together was a thinkpad 770x, the issue isn't with the card.

appiah4 wrote:

This seems to have more to do with your sloppy teardown method than the way the card is assembled if you ask me but feel free to do as you wish, obviously 😀

I would say that you're correct, but I would also add a lack of proper equipment as well. I'm likely going to purchase new thermal pads and replace what I put on there in the first place, rather than buying another entire unit. One problem I'm having right now is that the backplate seems to have something in the way of allowing it to be flush with the card itself, even though it's aligned in the proper position.

I do, however, believe that I should have never taken it apart in the first place. I got cocky because I had taken apart and renewed the 9800GTX's thermal paste and thermal pads successfully before, and underestimated what the disassembly of the GTX 280 would require. As much as I do enjoy believing that I know that much about computers, I need to recognize what my limits are with this. Eventually, I will reach my highest possible skill level, at which point I will plateau. It is impossible for me to continue advancing for an extended period of time, not because there isn't an adequate amount of information, but because my skill level will no longer be able to keep up with the information in question. I likely have not reached that yet, though my non-stop obsession of advancing my knowledge of computers over the past 4 years has likely accelerated me closer to that plateau than if I had emphasized less on that single specific skill set, and more on a multitude of other skill sets.

TL;DR: I need to become less arrogant when dealing with computer related subjects. I rushed the disassembly of the card and didn't take enough care while disassembling it because I believed I could do it without a significant effort to methodically go about the task.

9800GTX is easy to disassemble - less points of contact with the board, no backplate, less screws and GPU does not have IHS. Compared to that, GTX280 (especially after 10 years of service) is practically glued to its cooler and requires a lot of force to tear it down.

That said, GeForce GTX 295 (first revision) and GeForce 9800GX2 are much worse.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

9800GTX is easy to disassemble - less points of contact with the board, no backplate, less screws and GPU does not have IHS. Compared to that, GTX280 (especially after 10 years of service) is practically glued to its cooler and requires a lot of force to tear it down.

That said, GeForce GTX 295 (first revision) and GeForce 9800GX2 are much worse.

I figured from the dual chips that it would be a terrible experience to open the 9800 GX2.

I'm glad I didn't purchase one of those. I was tempted to get a GX2, but the 280 eventually won me over enough to get it instead.