Topic: Thermal Pads for 5970 (Read 1720 times)

I followed this guide myself and it was brilliant. The previous owner of my 5970 had removed the heatsink to replace the fan, and didn't re-pad. It was a total mess. Shredded/missing pads. Bad job on the thermal compound on the GPUs.... nasty. The card was hot and unstable which led me down this path to begin with.

I used the 1 and 0.5 mm Fujipoly pads from frozencpu on all the various points and just ic diamond on the gpus. Been running the card at a tiny little OC  735/1100 with temps at 70ºC for weeks now.

Grease is by far the better choice for the actual GPU itself. I would NEVER put a thermal pad between the GPU core and a heatsink. However, you can't use grease everywhere on the chip, so thermal pads are used for the RAM chips and VRMs, along with a few other smaller chips (sometimes).

People choose to go with thermal pads? I thought grease was usually the preferred solution for better heat conductivity... No?

[/sarcasm]

Thank you, excellent information that helps.

Considering thats MY thread and I personally checked it for myself and own 12 5970's, I know enough to know what I'm talking about.

Ya, but what do you know about 5970 thermal pads?

1mm pads on the square silver chip between the two gpu cores (some sort of pci-e splitter?) and the long "CPLA-3-50" chip and small boxy chip up on top of the card. The VRM's and RAM use 0.5 mm thermal pads.

also i recommend the fujipoly pads too.

I'd recommend the Fujipoly ones from FrozenCPU.com. They're really nice, and work great. Everyone who's used them has loved them.

There's 3 things to look for when buying them, listed here in order of importance:

1) Thickness:
Most common are 0.5mm and 1.0mm. I used 1.0mm on the RAM chips, and 0.5mm on the VRMs, but it will depend on your specific GPU/HSF, and whatever it used originally. You can get some thicker stuff like 1.5mm, but I don't think that's used much in GPUs (idk tho, maybe for RAM chips). The thicker the pads, the harder it is for the heat to move through them into the heatsink, so you want to buy as thin as you can get away with, while still maintaining good solid contact (aka the pads are being squished a moderate amount).

2) Thermal Conductivity:
Those Fujipoly ones come in 3 grades: 6.0W/mK, 11.0W/mK, and 17W/mK. From a technical standpoint, the higher the number, the more heat it can move through the pad, and into the heatsink. Those 17W/mK are about the best you can buy, esp as a consumer, but it's not exactly cost effective. I use the 11W/mK ones, and have had no issues. If you're underclocking your RAM while BTC mining, you could even use the 6W/mK ones, but it really depends on your application.

3) Pad size:
Most of the pads come in sheets, and you can cut them into the sizes and shapes you need. Make sure to have an extremely sharp razor, and don't drag it over the pad, as it can grab and rip. I think I picked up the 150x100 sheets, but you can get bigger or smaller sizes depending on the amount of hardware you plan on using them on, and your budget.

Hope this helps.

What thermal Pads do you guys recommend for a 5970?

RAM, VRM, ect...