I went ahead and disassembled the 5970 again and took note of how deep the hotspots penetrated the 1mm thermal pads that I put on before. I also decided to be a hypocrite and used a tiny dot of Shin-Etsu x23-7783D thermal paste on each hotspot to ensure good contact.
RED left a medium impression, but it also has a lot of surface area and was probably the main source of bending of the heatsinks/PCB. I chose to use 0.5 mm pads and dots of Shin-Etsu. The same applied to the backside.
ORANGE, YELLOW, and DARK GREEN all left VERY deep impressions. I chose 0.5mm and dots of Shin-Etsu.
LIGHT GREEN and PINK barely left an impression. I chose 1mm and dots of Shin-Etsu.
LIGHT BLUE left a mild impression, less than RED. I chose 1mm and a dot of Shin-Etsu.
I have re-assembled it all and let it mine for about 20 minutes to get a good "average" temperature. For comparison's sake, the 5970 below it was running 58.5C and 62C, and the 5970 I needed to fix the thermal pads on was running 62.5C and 64.5C. Since I have fixed it, the 5970 below it is running 58C and 61.5C, and the 5970 I fixed is now running 55C and 58C, which is an improvement of 7C and 6C respectively. The VRM's are also running MUCH cooler compared to my other cards. They all run 1v. The "normal" 5970 is running 56C and 72C. The "fixed" 5970 is running 45C and 59C. Very cool! But then again, I also have to partially blame my highly thermally conductive pads that I chose.
Topic: [0.2BTC bounty] Need thermal pad thickness of 5970 hotspots (Read 2728 times)
I use .5mm on the red sections
.5mm on the blue
1mm on the orange, yellow, pink and green.
This has worked well for me.
phobya hegrease on the processors.
thermal adhesive on the ram to hold the 1mm pads on when you re-assemble.
Hope this helps and you can donate the .2 BTC to ckolivas if this helps you.
.5mm on the blue
1mm on the orange, yellow, pink and green.
This has worked well for me.
phobya hegrease on the processors.
thermal adhesive on the ram to hold the 1mm pads on when you re-assemble.
Hope this helps and you can donate the .2 BTC to ckolivas if this helps you.
I was really hoping not to mix up thermal paste and thermal pads on the same hotspots. Whenever I did that in the past, it just got ugly.
I've already repaired two 5970s (disassemble, clean cooler fins, change fan, put new grease on cores and new pads on VRMs, reassemble) by using 0.5 mm pads and very thin layer of Coollaboratory liquid ultra.
It's quite tricky, because none of the original pads seems to be exactly 1.0mm or 0.5mm, but I've put with 0.5 on VRMs and VRAMs and it works. The pink and light green components (you have swapped light green and dark green colors in description) are also cooled, but that doesnt seems to be critical, as they have same function as components on the left to orange VRMs which aren't cooled at all...
As I've experienced (the hard way - one core on one of the cards is malfunctioning), the thickness isn't the biggest issue, but precision during reassembly is.
It's quite tricky, because none of the original pads seems to be exactly 1.0mm or 0.5mm, but I've put with 0.5 on VRMs and VRAMs and it works. The pink and light green components (you have swapped light green and dark green colors in description) are also cooled, but that doesnt seems to be critical, as they have same function as components on the left to orange VRMs which aren't cooled at all...
As I've experienced (the hard way - one core on one of the cards is malfunctioning), the thickness isn't the biggest issue, but precision during reassembly is.
One of my 5970's was running a bit hotter than my other 3 5970's and thought maybe I should repaste and re-apply fresh thermal pads. Well unfortunately, thermal pads arent "1 size fits all" as I had hoped; I was hoping the pressure would squish them to the appropriate thickness.
Anyways, my VRM's are about 10-12C hotter now and my GPU cores are about 5C hotter now. When I look at the card and the backplate and heatsink itself, it bends unnaturally, but still mines fine. I would still feel more comfortable if I got proper thickness pads in there, so I picked up some 1mm and 0.5mm thickness pads from frozencpu with the best thermal properties I could find LINK. I also have some older, less thermally conductive thermal pads LINK but dont have much of it left.
So the question is, what thickness pad do I need in each of the zones circled below?
The VRAM in RED
The VRM's on the far right in ORANGE
The VRM's in the middle in YELLOW
The small VRM on top a little to the right in DARK GREEN
The big chip next to the small vrm in LIGHT GREEN
The big chip above the VRM's in the middle in PINK
And the PCI-E bridge chip in LIGHT BLUE
I'm pretty sure the VRAM on the backside uses 0.5mm pads.
Also, PLEASE be ABSOLUTELY sure about the thicknesses. Don't just guess. These thermal pads weren't cheap, and I don't want to lose money because you guessed and wanted some quick cash.
Anyways, my VRM's are about 10-12C hotter now and my GPU cores are about 5C hotter now. When I look at the card and the backplate and heatsink itself, it bends unnaturally, but still mines fine. I would still feel more comfortable if I got proper thickness pads in there, so I picked up some 1mm and 0.5mm thickness pads from frozencpu with the best thermal properties I could find LINK. I also have some older, less thermally conductive thermal pads LINK but dont have much of it left.
So the question is, what thickness pad do I need in each of the zones circled below?
The VRAM in RED
The VRM's on the far right in ORANGE
The VRM's in the middle in YELLOW
The small VRM on top a little to the right in DARK GREEN
The big chip next to the small vrm in LIGHT GREEN
The big chip above the VRM's in the middle in PINK
And the PCI-E bridge chip in LIGHT BLUE
I'm pretty sure the VRAM on the backside uses 0.5mm pads.
Also, PLEASE be ABSOLUTELY sure about the thicknesses. Don't just guess. These thermal pads weren't cheap, and I don't want to lose money because you guessed and wanted some quick cash.
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