Too little Arctic Silver 5?

[jordancorkhill]

Hi,

I decided to buy a tube of Arctic Silver 5 for my GPU (Asus 4850 - Single slot cooler) in the attempt to cool down my 95 degree at full load card. After applying it i thought i'd put it to the test running a couple of games such as Bioshock and Dead space. I ran them in Windowed mode so i could monitor the temps through CCC and it was showing temps of over 100 degrees! So i was wondering if you could apply too little AS5?

My tower has two 120mm fans on the side (Pointing above and below the card) and 120mm fan on the back. The GPU fan is at 100%

Any advice/help will be appreciated.
Jordan.

 

[4Ryan6]

Jordon the least amount of AS5 you can possibly apply is absolutely best, however with any application to a stock heatsink you would need to set the heatsink and then remove it again and see the contact patch.

So you know for sure you're getting good contact of the core to the heatsink base, and your memory chips too, most times the memory chips are thermal pad contact because the heatsink doesn't sit snug to them, if you have thermal pads on the memory chips make sure you don't remove those.

Installing and removing the heatsink to inspect its contact with the GPU core is an absolute must, you may even be using too much AS5 and not realize it.

The only purpose of thermal compound is to fill the microscopic voids between the 2 contacting surfaces, if too much thermal compound is used it acts as an insulator, more than a conductor of heat.

Edit: Numerous times I've come across heatsinks that were not making good contact in the first place, because they were a little bent or warped and needed a little tweak here and there to get it to sit flat, after all, these units are mass produced and not much time is allowed to how flat these heatsinks actually are.

Taking some time and inspections on your part will yield better results, because if its not making solid contact in the first place, its not doing the cooling its capable of.

 

[mactronix]

You wont get any better advice anywhere else.

Mactronix

 

[geofelt]

Good advice from 4ryan6.

With a single slot cooler, you may have a case cooling problem.
The key is to get hot air OUT. Side intake fans sometimes compound the problem by disrupting the natural low to high and front to back air flow.

Try an experiment and remove the side cover of your case. Direct a house fan at the innards and see if it helps. If it helps, then address the case cooling issue. You might want to replace the vga cooler with a dual slot cooler to get that hot air out directly.

 

[jordancorkhill]

Thanks for all your replies. While I'm checking the contact between the cooler and the core I'll try to remove dust ect from the case aswell.

Thanks
Jordan.

 

[jordancorkhill]

UPDATE: I opened up the Heatsink on the Graphics card (As part of my inspection, thanks 4Ryan6!) and the fins on the heatsink were clogged, and the back part of the dust were singed. This seems to be the problem as before the idle temps were around 50 degrees on 100% fan speed and now there only 38 degrees. I now have the fanspeed at 50% which keeps it at 45 degrees idle and around 75 under full load!

Thanks for everyones replies!
Jordan.

 

[4Ryan6]

Good for you man 38 degrees is great!