Vellaura and her PC Adventures - Configuring her new PC :D

Offhand, it looks like the single dot of thermal compound in your first pic was plenty.

Temps out near the perimeter of the IHS are going to be lower by design and thus you don't need to agonize over some bare portions in that area.

To each his own, but I've always used maybe a little less than I thought necessary.....my thinking being that the paste can always be re-applied after some test runs to evaluate temps.......and you avoid the anxiety of overflow onto sensitive areas after CPU heat and pressure from the cooler force the paste outward.

But I can certainly understand your anxiety on a first attempt.

Not sure what paste you used, but Arctic Silver used to have recommendations on its website for apply method (cross, dot, etc) depending on what CPU you have. But I suspect that level of detail is largely for the obsessive and well within the margin of error. Most likely within 3 or 4 degrees of each other and over-ridden by more mundane issues such as ambient temp or fan speed.

Good job.

Ghot said:

@Vellaura

Here are some delidded (IHS removed), Intel CPUs. The Ryzen CPUs have between 1 and 4 of those teeny "actual CPUs"


Attachment 326042




Here's a Ryzen 9 5950X, delidded.


Attachment 326043



And a Ryzen 3600...


Attachment 326046

Honestly that's reassuring more then anything, in that I don't have to lose sleep over coverage when in reality not much to cover anyways :)

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ignatzatsonic said:

Offhand, it looks like the single dot of thermal compound in your first pic was plenty.

Temps out near the perimeter of the IHS are going to be lower by design and thus you don't need to agonize over some bare portions in that area.

To each his own, but I've always used maybe a little less than I thought necessary.....my thinking being that the paste can always be re-applied after some test runs to evaluate temps.......and you avoid the anxiety of overflow onto sensitive areas after CPU heat and pressure from the cooler force the paste outward.

But I can certainly understand your anxiety on a first attempt.

Not sure what paste you used, but Arctic Silver used to have recommendations on its website for apply method (cross, dot, etc) depending on what CPU you have. But I suspect that level of detail is largely for the obsessive and well within the margin of error. Most likely within 3 or 4 degrees of each other and over-ridden by more mundane issues such as ambient temp or fan speed.

Good job.

I used the cooler master paste that came with the cooler :). Yeah it's something you just need to get a feel for yourself, this little experiment gave me more peace of mind, which for someone like me is a lot more valuable then you would think.

Thank you!

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On a non build related topic, would anyone have any idea as to why my desktop will go black except the install window of a program during installation? It comes back and the desktop reloads with the icons coming back as well eventually, but it's still scary.

Thanks :)

New Chapter: Removing GPU Shroud

Hey all!

Vellaura here again, but this time I want to try and disassemble the GPU without having to unscrew the heatsink.

The reason for this is because there are some dust bunnies I cannot for the life of me get rid of that are stuck in between the fan and heatsink which is somewhat blocking the airflow. I tried everything from compressed air, leaf blower, getting a long thin leaf to try and pull it out, a knife through the heatsink fins, everything and it simply wont come out, the temperatures are fine, not having any heating issues but you guys know me, just can't leave it alone. Its bothering me! (clean freak)

At the same time it's something I want to embark on and accomplish, just like how I was reluctant to build a pc from scratch. Very scary handling the gpu just as it is.

First things first, before this post I did a tone of research, mostly watching youtube videos of others disassembling their gpu's and for the most part it appears as though you can remove the shroud whilst still keeping the heatsink intact, long as you don't remove the 4 screws in the centre with the springs.

I even managed to find a video of my exact same model of GPU but something was different and I just want to get some clarity and advice before I go ahead and unscrew.

Here are the links to the videos.

[TUTO] : CLEANING MY OLD GRAPHIC CARD NVIDIA GTX 970 - YouTube (it's in french but at least you can see how the card I have specifically comes apart)

GPU fan dust cleaning ( graphics card ) how to tutorial - YouTube (another video showing how easy it is to take the cover off without the heatsink)

Now looking at those two video's it looks very straight forward, the only thing i'm not too sure on is the difference of the back on the fan side, my one is just straight up pcb whereas the one in the video is something else, almost like a seperate section/part entirely.



I think instead of making the fan a seperate part its just underneath the pcb, I'm not sure.

Any information is appreciated, should I just go ahead and remove the circled screws and the shroud should come off?

Thank you :)

It looks pretty straightforward to me, that is I don't see thermal pads stuck to everything, lol. I would just carefully take it apart and clean it. It might be worth removing the heatsink and fan, clean off the old thermal paste and apply new. Maybe go with some non conductive compound, better safe than sorry!

You have gone this far, why not do the whole job to make your graphics card like new again?

exploder said:

It looks pretty straightforward to me, that is I don't see thermal pads stuck to everything, lol. I would just carefully take it apart and clean it. It might be worth removing the heatsink and fan, clean off the old thermal paste and apply new. Maybe go with some non conductive compound, better safe than sorry!

You have gone this far, why not do the whole job to make your graphics card like new again?

Hello! Thanks for the reply :)

Honestly I'm super keen but a friend was telling me its super fragile, something as small as overtightening could damage the card etc, which is why im super reluctant to go all out and do a full spring cleaning on the card. If I can just take of the plastic cover and be able to access the heatsink, it will be super.

I'm just not sure if mine comes apart like in the video where the shroud is seperate to the heatsink or if the plastic cover and heatsink are bound and can only come off together. What I want to determine.

Super fragile? Not so much, based on my own limited experience. I think that your friend was just trying to discourage you.

It's hard to predict how a third-party GTX 970 is put together. My main worry would be having the right thermal pads (for the card's VRAM, and possibly for other chips as well) on hand if the heatsink came off, and the original pads are damaged. The thermal paste could be of any common type (preferably the nonconductive sorts, to be safe).

However, blowing the dust out of the card should be good enough, even if you can't get it all. I have compulsive tendencies myself, but I try to suppress them.

bobkn said:

Super fragile? Not so much, based on my own limited experience. I think that your friend was just trying to discourage you.

It's hard to predict how a third-party GTX 970 is put together. My main worry would be having the right thermal pads (for the card's VRAM, and possibly for other chips as well) on hand if the heatsink came off, and the original pads are damaged. The thermal paste could be of any common type (preferably the nonconductive sorts, to be safe).

However, blowing the dust out of the card should be good enough, even if you can't get it all. I have compulsive tendencies myself, but I try to suppress them.

Aha, ughhh, its so frustrating cos I want to but I also don't want to, what's incredibly annoying is that my card seems to be the only one on the planet where the PCB goes all the way behind the fan area, all the other ones online the pcb stops before it gets to the fan area, if I could just find some info that has a similar setup, would make it much easier to decide.

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Ghot said:

If you don't have a spare vid card, the same or better, I would just blow the dust out.

Yeah your right, but if it ended up being a simple 4 screws and the shroud comes off, that would be great, i guess i'll go back to researching.

Ghot said:

Considering how hard it is to GET vid cards right now...

lmao, yeah I know, but god added a dash of insanity and audacity when putting me together.