Vapor Chamber Heatsink & Thermal Compound Replacement Guide for GeForce GTX 580 Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,082 words · ~5 min read
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this will be a quick heatsink removal guide for the gtx 580 now there's a
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reason that i have an empty package for a screwdriver sitting next to it and
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that's that i actually had to run out and buy a screwdriver in order to get
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the heat sink off so i had to get a torx
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number six oh no a t6 it's not yesterday i don't use number for torques
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apparently so i had to go get a t6 bit
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precision screwdriver because the majority
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of the screws on the back of this video card actually do use a torx which looks
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like a star if you're not familiar with it hopefully i can get the camera to
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focus on the GPU there so you can see that
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so i've gone ahead and loaded the correct bit into my screwdriver already
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so i will put that there and then that is how i will remove all the screws from
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the back so you don't have to remove the screws on the shroud like here you only
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have to remove all the little screws on the back including the phillips head
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ones here and that is how we will remove it so
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bear with me in a moment so if you just want to replace the stock
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thermal compound with something else this is about as far as you go so you
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can see here the gf-110 GPU is right there and then
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that's its corresponding cooling plate on the other side so i actually want to
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take the cooler apart which means i'm going to have to delve in a little bit
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further so i'm going to have to start undoing some of these other screws in
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here because i want to have a look at the vapor chamber cooler that is
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responsible for keeping the gtx 580 so cool
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at idle as well as under load now something to be aware of is if you are
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replacing your stock thermal compound i guess that we could call this like a thermal compound removal guide too so
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you know two birds with one stone you should use like um
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something lint free to wipe all of the thermal compound off of both surfaces
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use some 99 isopropyl or rubbing alcohol
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to remove everything put on your new thermal compound bearing in mind you
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should apply quite a bit more to a GPU than you would to a CPU because it's a
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very large area it's got a big heat spreader on it you want to make sure
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it's covered and then you put it back on now do not
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replace the pads on the RAM or any of
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the vrm because they are not thin they are not intended
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so you can no you're not really going to be able to see that are you
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you can kind of see they actually have some some depth to them the reason for
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that is there are manufacturing tolerances when they're affixing all of
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these components to the pcb so they're not always going to be at exactly the
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same height you need a little little bit of variance in terms of where they make
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contact so that is why they do use a thicker pad for those parts
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so completely disassembling the cooler from that point was actually the
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simplest step all i had to do was remove
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uh how many are there seven screws so there's one on the corner here one here
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one here one here and then there's three more on the bottom of the this is the
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plastic shroud that goes over top and it's actually hard to tell when you're
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looking at the plastic shroud over the metal base that they're made of
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different materials because the the finish on them is so close NVIDIA's done
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a terrific job of making the card aesthetically appealing but this is
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actually a metal heat spreader here on the base and the metal heat spreader is what's
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responsible for doing the cooling of the RAM as well as the vrm so you can see
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it's going to get a fair bit of incidental airflow from the fan itself
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which you can clearly see here all right
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and uh so yeah that does all of that now the vapor chamber this
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is where the magic happens um now with the gtx 580 i don't know if
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you'll you know what let me go get my 580 and then
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so there's my 480 for contrast you can kind of see inside where it's got a
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similar fin arrangement and then it's got these five massive heat pipes that
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are carrying heat away from where the GPU is located right there
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to the aluminum fins so the vapor chamber is actually a fairly similar
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technology to a heat pipe in that you're
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basically using a gaseous liquidy
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substance inside sometimes it's water sometimes it's something else and you've
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got it at a very very low pressure in there which allows it to
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basically boil at a with very little heat input and
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then it will evaporate away and then it'll find a cooler part of the
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vapor chamber or in this case a heat pipe so it'll go away from the hot GPU
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come up to the cooler aluminum fins which are being cooled by the fan then
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it'll turn back into a liquid and it'll be wicked away by the inside of the heat
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pipe back down to the GPU so the vapor chamber works similarly except that it's
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kind of like a big huge flat
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thin heat pipe so it takes all the heat from the GPU right here
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and disperses it very evenly over this big surface area so then NVIDIA throws
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some aluminum fins on there and boom you've got a very
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potent cooler now vapor chambers are at this time more expensive than
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implementing heat pipes but it is
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from what we can see a more elegant solution overall so there is the vapor
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chamber design so i'm going to throw this guy back together and thank you for
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checking out my video on the disassembly and i guess thermal compound replacement
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on the gtx 580.