Can ramsinks touch other other parts of a vid-card?

S

Spankbot-5000

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
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I just received my 4870 and Accelero in the mail today, and I'm curious about placing ramsinks on the VRM's. The current ramsinks I have are from Zalman, and they're quite a bit bigger than an individual VRM. Is it okay to place these large sinks over the VRM's if they might touch other chips/diodes/parts/whatever on the card? Will there be any electrical transference to or from VRM's from any other parts the sinks may touch? If they do touch other parts, with they be able to take the heat transference from the VRM's through the sinks?

If you look at the pic below, you can see how much bigger the sinks are (the green outlines) than the VRM's, and the other parts they might touch. They'll be applied using Akasa thermal tape, which is assume doesn't conduct electricity, but I have no hard data on that.


card01.jpg
 
You could always cover the extra heat sink area on the bottom with electrical tape or some other non-conductive material to prevent a short circuit.
 
I may have solved my own problem here. I modified the finned VRM sink that came with the Accelero unit, made for earlier ATI cards, and it fits the area perfectly. It has a quite a narrow contact surface, so overlap shouldn't be a problem The ends of that heatsink are raised and have two tabs with screws holes for an older mounting system. It would sit too high to make contact with the VRM's on the 4870, even with a thick thermal pad. I sawed those ends off, as in the pic below, and now the bottom of the heatsink is level and can sit where you'd like.

sink2.jpg



The profile of the heatsink is also different on each side, and installed properly perfectly sits on the VRM's and then raises up so it avoids the Pulse VRM's and the V/TEC unit.

sink.jpg
 
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