Replacing XFX 6600GT Stock Cooler(Idle temps to Hi)

Hello,Im thinking of replacing the stock cooleron my XFX6600GT.The card seems to be running at a hi temp when idle.Im thinkin about replacing it with a Zalman VF700-ALCU Quiet Copper/Aluminium VGA Cooler (HS-012-ZA).What I want to know is there is a square foam ring around the card processor,do i remove this when replacing the fan.I dont think the cooler is making good contact with the Cards CPU.Cheers.

 

I don't think that is nececary. If when you attach the heatsink it is obstructing the contact area over the chip, then you may need to find a new one. Essentially the purpose for this is to prevent the heatsink from crushing the GPU, so it is nececary unless you use thermal epoxy and GLUE they heatasink to the chip (I... wouldn't do that).

 

Ok cheers Goldfish.I just removed the fan and spread the paste out a bit more evenly and(touch wood)it seems to have dropped the Idle by about 5C.Im gettin new past in a couple of days so I will try that and see if it saves me on a new cooler.

 

You may want to try cleaning off the heatsink surface and the GPU with isopropanol alcohol, and then re-applying some thermal paste (for example, Arctic Silver 5 ). That can help somtimes.

 

by the way... what are your temps anyway?

 

My idle temp now is 50C it was at around 55C,under load its around 58C(after about an hour of games) it did go up to about 65C.

 

Just installed the Zalman VF700 AICu cooler to my card.
Temps are now-Idle=40C
-Under load=around 50C

 

My 6800gt runs 58 load stable as a rock.Sounds like a hair dryer though LOL!