First post, by leonardo
- Rank
- Oldbie
momaka wrote on 2025-07-12, 13:07:...for Radeon 9700/9800 cards, the overall cooling of the card is just dismal, no matter which way you look at it. Anyone that runs these with the stock cooler is essentially asking for their card to die. On that note, if you put a massive heatsink on the GPUs, you'll notice that the RAM now also runs much cooler. So not only do you extend the life of the GPU, but also that of the RAM... though for better completeness, one should also install RAM heatsinks and actively cool them as well. Doing so should greatly extend the life of these cards. I have 2 that were reflown over 10 years ago that still work with my improvised oversized coolers. So I take that as good enough proof that these a last with good cooling. FWIW, reflowing of GPUs should not be considered a fix, but only a temporary revival. The fact that I can extend their service life as much goes to show that temperature is the enemy of these.
This is an off-shoot thread somewhat related to 'Saving defective chips with improvised cooling?'
My lucky find of a discarded Radeon 9700 Pro off a flea-market brought with it much joy, but I've begun to worry that the card like its many brethren is going to meet an untimely demise due to the lackluster cooling. After both the card, and a Zalman VNF100 I also scored a while back spent over a year sitting on the shelf, I finally mustered the courage to attempt the replacement.
Why did it take so long? Because the heatsink seemed absolutely fixed despite me removing the push-pin locks and I didn't know what to do since the heatsink would absolutely not budge. Looking around for instructions, even the best illustrated (such as the one here) only showed the before- and after pictures, typically with little to no mention on what to do if the heatsink remained attached after the pushpins had been dealt with.
I bit my lip and placed a plastic spudger between the card and the heatsink in a place where it would not rest against capacitors or other components (a tough spot to find), bent the spudger pushing the heatsink away from the card, and to my shock and relief the heatsink came off with a loud pop:
I now understand why there are no pictures or video of anyone actually doing this part.
Anyway, my most recent conundrum has to do with the clean-up: I have fairly good success on top of the chip itself with alcohol, but there is a thick outer layer of the hardened yellow adhesive/compound which I'm not sure what to do with:
I guess I could leave the residue on the sides, as long as the top of the chip is clean so that new thermal paste can be applied? Or I could just whittle away at it slowly, applying small amounts of alcohol (I have reservations about just pouring a lot of alcohol on this)? What would you do, and if you'd remove it - how would you go about it?
[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.
