GTX 580: Updated Methodology For Removing the Cooler & Replacing Thermal Compound Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
601 words · ~3 min read
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so NVIDIA brought it to my attention that there is actually a way easier way
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to replace the thermal compound on the GTX 580 and uh if I had sort of well
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thought about it or been a little bit cleverer I probably would have figured
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this out but all you have to do is take out the
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screws okay that hold in the plastic shroud here and take those oh there you
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go you can actually access the card that
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easily and then if you want to replace the thermal
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compound okay please note that these are all Philips head screws that I have
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removed so far and more Phillips head screws on the back so you do not need a
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Torx screwdriver which I ran out and bought specifically so that I could
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completely take the card apart you do not need a Torx screwdriver in order to
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disassemble this card and replace the thermal compound I mean if you wanted to
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take off the uh the unisync that covers the vrm and the RAM then I mean there's
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nothing preventing you from doing that if you have a torque screwdriver but
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NVIDIA also brought to my attention that there are a number of concerns that I
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should be warning you guys about if you do remove those components so hold on
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let me just get this last screw out first and then we'll go ahead and flip
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the card back over there you look at that so it's that easy to remove it and
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now you see you have total access to the GPU but we've left the metal unisync on
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so the reason for leaving the metal unisync on is remember the ther thermal
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pads that I pointed out on all of the RAM as well as on the vrms well the
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thermal pads when the card is originally assembled at the factory get compressed
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so what that means is that they start out thick and they end up as thin as
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they get when you put on the unisync and you put in all the screws from the back
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now when you remove that and put it back
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again sometimes you can run into a situation where it's not making proper
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contact or even any contact at all especially on the voltage regulation
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module so that even though you might not notice
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the problem right away can seriously diminish the life time of the
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product so uh that was the reason that NVIDIA had asked me to show you guys
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this alternate guide which is by the way much easier much faster and if you don't
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own a own a torque screwdriver much easier uh for replacing the thermal
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compound that that was it uh this would also be pretty good if
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you wanted to water cool your card and you just wanted to use a GPU only block
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because uh you can actually see here that with a little bit of modification
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to the hold down plate you could probably get like an
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MCW uh I think 80 is the current model an MCW 80 or a similar GPU only block on
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there and then you'd probably have some incidental air flow from the fan which
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should be enough to keep things sort of cool enough in the other parts of the
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card and yeah you could actually water cool your card fairly in expensively
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without buying a full cover block because NVIDIA has this integrated heat
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spreader built onto the entire C so thanks for that NVIDIA