MrBoard

I have made a rather hasty move... but it seems to be working just fine for now. I just want to get some feedback on whether what I did is safe.

I have Leadtek Winfast PX7800 GTX MyVivo Extreme 256 MB video card. In case you haven't guesses... its got an NVIDIA 7800 GTX chip in it.

Anyways... I just recently got the Artic Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler and some Artic Silver 5 thermal compound to use with it.

My CPU temp dropped down from 50-60 idling temp all the way down to 20-25 idling temp. I was extremely impressed with the results. I know that the actual CPU cooler is mostly responsible... but since they are made by the same company... I figure that the Artic 5 is also effective to some degree at least.

So, I started thinking about how old my video card was, and how I've never taken the heatsink off in my life. That's when I decided to take the heatsink and fan off of my video card... clean everything thoroughly and use the artic silver 5 on my GPU.

Since doing this, I have done some minimal testing, and the results haven't been concrete enough to show that the card is either working better now or before.

I know that artic 5 is generally meant for CPUs, but I did a quick google search and found someone talking about using it on a GPU. For some reason I was rushing... I don't think I even bothered to read the results before doing so myself.

My CPU only required a thin line down the middle according to the directions for applying on dual core intel CPUs. Since my GPU only has one core, I followed the instructions for a single core CPU and spread a very thin layer of the compound across the entire surface of the chip.

I have read that it takes some time for the compound to reach its final state... during which temperatures of CPU cores should drop... I'm hoping the same thing will happen with my GPU.

Could anyone please give me some feedback. Let me know if what I did was safe and performed correctly. I haven't run my computer very much since doing this, so if there is a potential risk of damaging something during the phase when temps are supposed to drop... Lemme know... I'll clean the Artic Silver 5 off right away and won't use my computer till I get something which is designed for GPUs.

On the other hand... if everything should be fine with my GPU... I was wondering if it is safe to use Artic Silver 5 on other things???

Would it be beneficial to replace thermal pads on my mobo with artic 5 maybe????

Here are a couple pics of my video card... so you know what I'm dealing with... it takes up 2 slots. 1 slot for the card itself, and the other slot for the heatsink, 4 pipes, a set of fins on each side, and fan in the middle.





I was also curious if anyone knows of any other cooling solution designed specifically for this card that could maybe work even better. I can't afford liquid cooling though.

billbartuska

AS5 on the GPU is fine. Anywhere else is fine too. Just be sure that, if you're replacing thermal pads (which are thicker than an AS5 application) everything is still making good contact.

And there's better stuff than AS5.

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