Quote:

Originally Posted by Indiegreg

Would i be able to take use a paste like arctic silver and use the thermal paste for better temps? Has it been done?

For example, With an HD 7870 Ghz Edition from Gigabyte?

Yes it has been done, in some cases you will see a couple degrees Celsius better. when i took my heatsink off the thermal paste was everywhere very bad application so i cleaned it up and put an X in thermal paste and got a couple degrees better.

 

Yes its quite a common practice, I used Gelid GC extreme on my water blocks, but prior to water cooling I had used other pastes with custom heatsinks to great effect.

 

Will i have no problems putting the GPU heatsink back on the chip? Will it just screw right back on?

 

you should be fine

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Indiegreg

Will i have no problems putting the GPU heatsink back on the chip? Will it just screw right back on?

No. Unless you strip the screws it should be as easy as removing the heatsink. Its a very easy and common task i have probably reseated my GPU coolers over 20+ times till i found the best temps

 

Can you reuse the thermal pads?

 

You can reuse them depending on how long they have been on and what your usage is like. If its been less than 90 days and you are set at stock I would say you'd be fine, bur if you oc at all I would say that you should clean and then reapply. A couple times I went the route of reusing and was fine die to running at slightly higher than stock and never had any problems on a 965 and a 1090t, but different CPUs behave differently

 

I didn't really think thermal pads could be reused

 

Not worth it for a couple degrees difference depending on the chip and paste if at all.

 

I usually build my systems on a tray and run them for a day (benches, gaming, etc...) then pull the heat sinks on mobo, gpu, cpu, and replace the TIM before putting anything in a case. Never had a issue with thermal pads tearing after just a day of use, and this way you don't risk having a bad board that you never bothered to test and risk rma issues or just plain old wasting your time.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by lurker2501

Not worth it for a couple degrees difference depending on the chip and paste if at all.

OCN IS the pursuit of Performance. If i can pick up some good TIM, where could i get it? And what brand? Arctic silver 5?

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Indiegreg

Quote:

Originally Posted by lurker2501

Not worth it for a couple degrees difference depending on the chip and paste if at all.

OCN IS the pursuit of Performance. If i can pick up some good TIM, where could i get it? And what brand? Arctic silver 5?

IC Diamond
Gelid GC Extreme
Phobya HE-Grease

Those are the best, Try Amazon or Newegg

 

Thanks everyone. If i find the courage to do this soon, i will love to post some pictures of my chip and the process.

 

Go check out some of the TIM roundups... (there are a few linked from this site if you search)

I'm personally partial to the prolimatek pk3 (and pk1) AS5 is old as heck and not very good by today's standards... just stay away from the liquid metals or any thermal cements as they *may* destroy your chip if you try to take the cooler off at a later date.