Need help with temps on my 7970 on water.

Hey guys I just upgrade from a Crossfire6870 set-up to a single 7970 Blck Edition. First I wanna say woow what a dramatic difference! I new there'd be a difference but din't think it would be big because of having 2 cards tobegin with. My score on 3DMark 11 went from 7712 to 9170. And I yet to have tried a strong push. Well to my question before I get sidetracked anymore. I had my original set-up on my water loop with 2 XSPC Raystorm universal water blocks. Now I know a full block is better but there weren't many options for the 6870's and also 1 was a reference the other wasn't. Now that I have this card I will be ordering a full water block hopefiully tues or wed of this week. So in the meantime I figure just you one of my universals on it with all the heatsinks I could. My case has awesome airflow especially over the gpu's seeing that I have a 120mm rad in thefront intake spot with 2 Scythe Ultra Kaze 3000 rpm 133 cfm fans in push-pull blowing the air directly over the gpu. Now I took apart my 7970 thoroughly cleaned off the old tim add fresh tim. I used the stuff that came with the XSPC block called K2 I could've swore I heard somewhere that it wasn't half bad and I ran out of the other stuff I usually use (Atric Silver 5 I know it's old tech but it never gave me any issues) Anyways I applied a generous amount and one thing I can say is the stuff did seem kinda watery don't know if it is supposed to be like that but I tried it anyways. Then I installed the block and even tightened don the 4 mounting screws. Then I made sure all the ram chips had heat sinks on them and I used the rest of the cips on the VRMs. I started it up and after filling,bleeding out air and leak testing everything was fine and ready to roll. Now I noticed right off the bat that this card was idling higher than either of my 6870'S did which at first I thought was because it just needed to brak in the card and fresh tim. But then when I ran my first benchmark to get a baseline score on it to see what differences there were from my old set-up is when I noticed something not right. I noticed right away that my temps like I said idled at 35 degrees when my old cards idles at 28-32. And at it maxed out at about 72 ish degrees which scares me cause my old ones never went over 55-60 tops after being put under water. It seems like I'm getting the same temps I would if I were to have it on air. I know I can't expect big gains from a universal block but they have to be better than air temp. Could anyone maybe help me out here ? Someone who might have gone through something like this with their own card. I have a XFX 7970 Black Edition card it's a reference card and is stock clocked at 1000 core and 1425 memory. I did try to oc it just to see what it's capable of and it went right to CCC's max at 1125 core and 1525 memory no problem and the wierd thing is the temps were the same at stock clocks as at oc'ed clocks. But just in case until I get this figured out I put it all back to default settings. Please if someone can help me out it will be greatly apreciated. I wanna get this thing running right so I can start abusing it as much as possible!!!

Yeah thanks guys I figured it out. The 7970's need a copper shim to get the water block to make full contact with the chip. It seems that AMD made the frame around the chip that makes the pcb alil more rigid higher than thechip itself. That is why the Swiftech blocks come with the raised square in the center of thjeir blocks so you don't need a shim. I'll just find a copper shim I can use until I order the full block for it. I just don't wanna leave it like it is cause the temps wer way to high for my taste and I haven't even really oc'ed it much yet. I'm definitely going to have to get a good full block maybe a XSPC Razor to match my Raystorm CPU block.

Yeah Thank you very much and Rep+ for you. The 7970's need a copper shim that has to be 0.50mm thick to fit in properly. Being impatient as I am I didn't want to have to wait to order one and for it to ship so I tried some copper things I had at home like a heatsink I had I cut down and smoothed out,A piece of copper pipe split down the side and flatened out. But they were to thick I geuss. What I ended up doing was going to my local hardware store and buying a 1 foot long piece of copper strapping that is used for shimming. It was a tiny bit thicker like 0.61 or something to that effect. The only other one that was somewhat close was 0.32 which would've neded up still to thin. Anyways I went with the 0.6 pice of copper strapping measured the chip and cut it down to the right length. Then I sanded down the edges and rounded the out and slowly wet sanded the two sides with a 2000 grit sandpaper then a 4000 grit to smooth it out as much as possible. It ended up nice and smooth and higfhly polished. Then I just used some tim I had that came with the Raystorm blocks call XSPC K2. I spread some on the chip then layed down the shim and spread another layer on the shim (basically sandwitching it with tim) The mounted the water block and at first run last night my temps went down to 32 idle and 52-4 load. This morning after being shut off all night it is now idling at 29-30 and on load with 3DMark11 the highest it got was 50. While runing a lil session of Resident Evil Racoon City it wouldn't go over 40. So I guess this little ship half the thickness of a penny did the job. I still can't wait to get a full water block for this card. If I'm getting these temps with a uni I can imaging what they'll be with a full block!!!

Many thanks to all and you'll all be getting Rep+'s for your help.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm not using as5 on the gpu. I'm using XSPC's K2 for now.