[Official Guide] Modifying/Removing NVidia GPU Heat Spreader/IHS - Page 17

Yes, its completely safe but you need to be careful of a few things that I need to add to the guide. First, if you put too much pressure or apply too much pressure on 1 side of the cooler before you secure it, you could run the risk of cracking/crushing the die. It's REALLY important that you apply very very even pressure when applying the cooler. The chance of shorting out card is very unlikely, the die is raised from the transistors and if you want some extra protection, you could use like epoxy or liquid electrical tape, its just gonna be a hot area for tape.

I'm comfortable with taking off the IHS on my 580, its just going to take a little bit of working cutting the PCB plate to get it to fit. That's my other concern for doin this mod with a PCB plate.

The long awaited results of FINALLY removing the IHS on my GTX580. What a beast of a GPU die...
The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was foul up my card so I was super careful in removing the IHS. It seemed the top of the IHS on one side was lifted a bit and I could easily wedge the carpet blade into the gap with a few taps. I wedge it about to the depth of where the cut is on the blade. Then I put another blade on the side of it and tapped so it basically just pried up the rest of it. And man, just like my 560, the IHS literally POPS off the chip. When your tapping you'll hear a crack and the IHS will pop off the die.
Notice there's 3 air bubbles very easily seen in the thermal paste and you can see the thicker areas of the paste in the IHS too. I figured it'd be worth removing the IHS since the 620 doesn't fully cover the heatspreader, so once I get the PCB plate cut for the 620 to fit, the contact on the die should be absolutely flawless. Now if I only had better thermal paste than this ceramique crap...

Notice the screw holes filled with thermal paste on the 620...it doesn't fully cover it....(don't worry, I've got a 40G tube of the thermal paste, its cheap)

Notice how bad those air bubbles are. And man, this better work after this mod again..lol

I went ahead real quick and sanded down the edges of the IHS to give you guys that want to keep the heatspreader on some idea of what it should look like and what your really actually sanding. Notice before there was black epoxy, notice its gone and the IHS is sanded down and there's copper showing...

Alright, off to bed, I haven't been up this late since I started my new job....I'll mod the PCB plate tomorrow and then I should have everything put back together and some benchmarks for you guys sometime tomorrow afternoon!


First result:

-Full loop of heaven3.0
When I first booted the rig my GPU fan ramped up and when I ran heaven it ramped up to 90C in a few seconds...!!!!!!!! I took her back out and realized that there's these spokes from the PCB plate that keep the outer shell in alignment and that one of the metal spikes was hitting up against the antec 620's mounting bracket, preventing 1 side of it from actually putting pressure on the 620 onto the die. I also put too much thermal paste on the first time. My Afterburner SS is of the 2nd mount with a little blob size of thermal paste on the die and also cutting that spike that was preventing the bracket from working properly. I haven't put it all back together but I now know I've got the temps I'm looking for. Ready to fold this puppy to death or game at max voltage.
I also when ahead and used some thermal pad I had leftover from my laptop and replaced some thermal pads on the VRM's so I should get better heat transfer to the PCB plate. Overall the mod, once again, was a great success!
Edited by Cakewalk_S - 8/4/12 at 9:44am

You do realize that sanding the actual die will likely lead to sanding off like a couple hundred transistors once you sand off the protective layer on top right? I believe the top layer has some type of epoxy coating to prevent the chance of sorting out, plus I've seen how the silicon waifers are made and they seem to pour solutions on the top of it when its spinning. The core should be perfectly flat anyway, or at least on my 580 it is... but whatever you do DONT sand that! You'll destroy your card for sure and it's also perfectly smooth, glass basically.

It'd take too long to sand off the edges completely. Just sand them enough so that the bare copper is showing and there's no more of the black epoxy on it. Should give you plenty of cooling. You should do the antec 620 mod. My 580 @ 1.163v maxes at 52C...it's awesome!

Glad you had a successful mod!

First, you probably should watch your language on the forum, I'm not a mod but I'm just warning you that its not a good idea to flame on any forum, especially this one. Second, you probably killed your chip. You take a chunk out of the PCB and its probably toast. I'm not sure what is all in the PCB material around the die but my guess is it has copper leads everywhere on it. Try just booting from 1 card, take both out and try the bad one. Did you check the die for scorch marks? I would imagine it would smoke if it actually overheated and killed itsself but I don't think it would. You probably did some sort of physical damage to the area around the chip. Its super easy to kill something from the edges of the PCB, that's why its imperative to have the razerblade on the flat side of the IHS...