Should i put Arctic Silver 5 on my 8800gts??

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dk again

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Mar 16, 2006
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The card runs hot to me, its idling right now at 60 I would like to overclock this monster but I'm concerned it may get a little warm. Would removing the stock thermal paste and applying some arctic silver 5 be worth the trouble? :)
 
not really. If u really want to help cool your vid card, u not only need good thermal paste u need a BIGGER heatsink, (bigger heat-transfer area) and a way of moving the air around it, (a bigger fan). So i´d recommend to u that if u are really worried about the temps, u should get yourself an aftermarket cooling solution for your vid card
 
Not worth it. Don't believe those BS newegg reviews on how AS5 lowered their temps by 10c. You *might* get 1-2c drop but it's not worth the trouble. Get an aftermarket cooler (if there are any) or just leave it alone. It'll be fine.
 
the cards are designed to run at high temps, but if you really want to kill some temps then get some extra case fans for better air flow and raise the fan speed on the card
 
pour some liquid nitrogen on it !!! ;)
 
romeozor said:
the cards are designed to run at high temps, but if you really want to kill some temps then get some extra case fans for better air flow and raise the fan speed on the card
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I was curious and went looking for design temps. do you have a link to any official specs fot temps?

Mine run in the 53-80c range.
 
mket, 80*C sounds a bit high. My GTS runs at 49*C idle and 64*C load overclocked to 635/1100, at least according to nTune. This is with the GPU fan on 100%.
 
Good thermal paste (like AS5 or MX-1) is basically the icing on the cake when putting on an aftermarket heatsink/cooler, it will maybe lower the temps by one or two degrees, if applied properly. Not worth the effort or time to do unless you are really anal about temps, or are in the process of changing fans etc and already have the heatsink off.
 
The thermal throttling kicks in at 110c, I have decent case temps, and mine idles around 50c with fan set to automatic. If you want, run the fan around 85%, for me I still don't hear it and it keeps it a little cooler.
 
my fan is at 80% and idels at 55C. I think anything under 90C is good for the card.
 
just don't forget to properly clean the 2 surfaces if you do it. you'll end up RAISING your temps if you don't.
 
Try upping the fan speed using Rivatuner or the like - I bumped mine up to 80% (still inaudible) and my temps top out around 70. Extra case ventilation helps, and some method of getting the hot air that leaks out of the slots in the heatsink cover (back near the bracket) out of the case helps even more. Check for a thread called 8800 temps here for some ideas.
 
The people in this thread have all gave very good information. Even the one involving the BS stories about how AS5 lower their temps by 10 C.

I just want to add something and correct me if I am wrong. In the past on the videocards I worked with when removing the stock HSF I would notice a couple of things.

1. It is a bitch to remove. Most of the time I have to use a hair dryer or remove the HSF when the card is hot. This is most likely due to the proxy that is used on cards to prevent the HSF from not making contact with the card.

2. Thermal compounds are not used on the memory chips. Due to the center of most HSF being elevated the memory is usually cooled by pads that fill in the spacing gaps. This only applies to the HSF that extend outwards to cool the memory. These pads have to be replaced.

3. Stock pads etc are much harder to clean if the cards have been used for a period of time. Alcohol gets it off, but expect a fight. Artic Silver makes a cleaner that works better than alcohol.

Again let me know if I am wrong. Point is not worth the hassle. Get an aftermarket cooler
 
Other than water cooling there's no reason to bother with the cooling, unless you do the mod where you take off the shroud and mount a fan on top of the card.
 
You might see some gains by getting rid of the amazingly thick coating of thermal goop from the gpu. You probably would be better off getting rid of the tape off the memory too and do a nice thin coat of AS5 on all the IC's on your card. Seems that the thickness of the tape is the same thickness of the thermal goop, so thin AS5 over everything might just work. At any rate it has to be better than what you get from the factory...

build434-1.jpg
 
The factory applies WAY too much thermal compound. You may only see a 1 to 3 *C drop in temps by reapplying your own AS5, however. On air cooling, you're pretty limited. Watercooling is the way to go in my opinion.
 
SentToSchool said:
Not worth it. Don't believe those BS newegg reviews on how AS5 lowered their temps by 10c. You *might* get 1-2c drop but it's not worth the trouble. Get an aftermarket cooler (if there are any) or just leave it alone. It'll be fine.
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I agree with this!
 
AndyM said:
You might see some gains by getting rid of the amazingly thick coating of thermal goop from the gpu. You probably would be better off getting rid of the tape off the memory too and do a nice thin coat of AS5 on all the IC's on your card. Seems that the thickness of the tape is the same thickness of the thermal goop, so thin AS5 over everything might just work. At any rate it has to be better than what you get from the factory...
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BE CAREFUL IF YOU DO THIS!! If you are going to replace the thermal pads with goop, it is imperative to make sure the goop doesnt spill over onto the card (seen it happen)...as5 is conductive, and you dont want to make any accidental connections!

ALSO! If gooping your memory, make sure there is a good connection between the heatsink and the memory modules, often the pads are used because the gap is too big to be filled by goop properly (you really dont want to pile goop on, should only be a thin layer, otherwise it makes things worse). :)
 
JackAshley said:
BE CAREFUL IF YOU DO THIS!! If you are going to replace the thermal pads with goop, it is imperative to make sure the goop doesnt spill over onto the card (seen it happen)...as5 is conductive, and you dont want to make any accidental connections!
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Might want to use something other than AS5 for that reason - AS Ceramique is non-conductive, and so might be a better choice.
 
AeriaGloris said:
I would have thought just removing the cooler in the first place would void your warranty anyway.
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Depends on the company - I believe EVGA allows aftermarket cooling within their warranty parameters. Excellent point though.
 
I put AS5 on my 7800GS and IMO wasnt worth the effort i lost maybe 1C under load. better case cooling = better than any thermal grease if you really want to lower temps. Thermal grease is more of a benefit if you already have top notch cooling in your case.
 
Forceman said:
Might want to use something other than AS5 for that reason - AS Ceramique is non-conductive, and so might be a better choice.
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Arctic Cooling makes MX-1 Thermal Compound goop...comes on all their aftermarket coolers now, I bought a tube of it...way harder to use than AS5 (thicker, stickier and harder to spread), but it works better ( ie 1 degree) and is non-conductive, for us safety oriented freaks :)
 
i have seen substantial drops from PROPER application of thermal compounds. Simply smearing the crap on a chip and expecting it to do tricks is quite silly. Most of the time to apply it properly means to lap the chip and heatsink, or use a compound like ceramique which actually requires 2 applications. One a prep to fill in microscopic pores and another to form the heat bond with the chip and heatsink.

I have seen time and time again where people just glob the stuff on with fingers or a Qtip and they actually end up making it worse than they were with the oem junk.
 
Raidium said:
i have seen substantial drops from PROPER application of thermal compounds. Simply smearing the crap on a chip and expecting it to do tricks is quite silly. Most of the time to apply it properly means to lap the chip and heatsink, or use a compound like ceramique which actually requires 2 applications. One a prep to fill in microscopic pores and another to form the heat bond with the chip and heatsink.

I have seen time and time again where people just glob the stuff on with fingers or a Qtip and they actually end up making it worse than they were with the oem junk.
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Its pretty rare to get a difference even worth mentioning even done properly. IMHO 1-2C difference is definitely not worth voiding a warranty or even the work involved when it comes to video cards unless your putting on an aftermarket cooler. CPU's is a whole different story.
 
Arctic Silver compound is severely overrated. It doesn't do any better of a job than whatever paste comes with whatever cooler you buy for your video card. I've slapped Zalman coolers on every video card and CPU I've ever purchased and there isn't any difference between using AS5 versus the tiny little cheapo tube you get in the box.

I actually get better temps using the Zalman paste on my CNPS9500 than I did using AS5. Not sure if I did a better job applying one paste over the other, but in the end it's just a matter of buying quality cooling equipment and/or applying the paste properly. Yeah, I have a boner for Zalman fans, but a lot of NVIDIA cards are notorious for having obnoxiously loud stock fans. If you want to cool that puppy down, you might as well replace the entire cooling unit.
 
don't try it.

like some of the above posters said, you will be lucky to even notice a -2C difference, the pre-applied grease and stock cooler are already good enough, not to mention the risk to damage the components and void your warranty (I once destroyed a 7950GT by installing a third party cooler, still haven't figured out where I went wrong but I wouldn't dare to do it on my 8800GTS again).

If you really into this, remove the plastic enclosure confining the heat sink, point a 80mm fan toward the fins and make sure you the hot air generated from this method is exhausted out of the case fully.
 
JackAshley said:
BE CAREFUL IF YOU DO THIS!! If you are going to replace the thermal pads with goop, it is imperative to make sure the goop doesnt spill over onto the card (seen it happen)...as5 is Capacitive , and you dont want to make any accidental connections!

ALSO! If gooping your memory, make sure there is a good connection between the heatsink and the memory modules, often the pads are used because the gap is too big to be filled by goop properly (you really dont want to pile goop on, should only be a thin layer, otherwise it makes things worse). :)
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Corrected..

On an additional note. The only reason imo to take off the stock cooler is if you are going to be watercooling.

EVGA will not void your warranty for changing the cooling. All other manufactures will.
 
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