WeltallZero wrote:Oh man! I think I just messed up then, I WAS touching the chip directly . Rubbing it, as a matter of fact. Damn, I hope I haven't messed up the card!
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I executed the PhysX demo, and within less than one minute the temperature rose to 98ºc and the computed pretty much crashed :S. The Accelero itself felt warm, even hot, to the touch, so at the very least it seems that it's conducting heat properly. However, I read reviews of people who use pure passive Acceleros with high-end GPUs and get 50-60º under load. I just can't understand why there's such a big difference.
What are your idle temperatures for the card?WR304 wrote:If you've touched the GPU core with your fingers it leaves an oily residue behind that will affect the cooling performance of the heatsink.
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Remember that to be properly clean it means getting rid of any residue from handling the card also.
It sounds like you need to clean your GPU core fully and then apply some new thermal paste. Getting a good thermal interface is very important if you want to get reasonable temperatures from an aftermarket heatsink.
You'll need to buy some more thermal paste: Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Cooling MX-2 are good brands.
Taking it apart will also let you look at the base of the heatsink to make sure that it had a good contact. If it had a good contact there should be an even square patch left behind in the thermal paste when you remove the cooler.
@Tzupy: Sorry, I should have been a bit more precise with my terminology (MOSFETS v VRMs).
The Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev 2 only comes with eight ramsinks. You need to buy some more to cool anything besides the RAM.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h ... Q1OSwzLCw=
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev2 package contents
The MOSFETS on that Gigabyte card look like they'll be quite difficult to cool with heatsinks. I'm sure it's do-able but you'd have to glue the heatsinks on to have any chance of them staying in place.
Gigabyte 9800GTX 1gb closeup
Having the fan located towards the back of the card would blow air directly onto the MOSFETS. That could be enough to keep it working.
8800GTS 512mb with Accelero S1 and HR-11 fitted showing suspended fan