I just put some MX-3 on mine, first thing I did after opening the box but I broke one of the tabs. Just one of the small ones at the corner, I didn't use much force or anything only a little push with a screwdriver. Ah well, hope they don't notice if I have to RMA.

yup it is really quick and easy. ill prob get some higher quality tim and do it again

mwparrish

Tech_Noob

Hey, mwparrish, I like the guide, but I was reading up on some other posts, and saw that you are RMAing your 480s or something along the lines of that? What happened? Just wondering.

Well, long story short... I bought 2x 480s. Once ran roughly 12*C hotter than the other and wouldn't OC worth a darn. The other was epic. I replaced the TIM on both and temperatures normalized. However, performance of one of the cards was still mediocre at best -- when I'd try to run OC Scanner on that card it would crash about 50% of the time while the other card would great.

So I thought maybe it was VRM temps, etc. I got the temp gun and the heat wasn't bad at all from the VRMs, memory, chokes, MOSFETs, etc.

Then I noticed when SLI is off the card having stability issues default to 1.038v while the great card defaults to 1.075v. Now, I assume default voltages are set/controlled by the BIOS. However, they have the exact same BIOS. So something appears to be up with this card. I don't know what it is that causes it to crash 50/50 in OC Scanner -- but I suspect it may have something to do with supplying power between the power plugs on the card and the chips themselves.

I'm sure EVGA will sort it out. The problem card vs the great card is like night and day. I realize vanilla cards are vanilla but there shouldn't be this huge stability/performance gap between them coupled with the evidences I'm seeing that this one probably passed QA -- but by the skin of it's teeth and once it was in real world use it started acting up once the bake-in time is over.

It's all gravy.

Did you try overvolting the mediocre card? The other one has a higher voltage and that is possibly why it OC's better. The GPU's default voltage is hard wired somehow, not in the BIOS. It is basically like a CPU VID. One of my 470's seems to be .912 and the other 1.012 a HUGE difference although I need to double and triple check that.

Is anyone getting results from doing this? Or only the OP?

I did this on my card...the temps dropped about 5 to 10 degrees C...

Thanks, MW.. ;)

kelemvor

So... replacing the compound doesn't void the warranty?  Anyone from EVGA care to comment?

No it does not void the warranty as long as you do not damage the card. In fact, EVGA customer service instructed me to replace the thermal paste as a  troubleshooting step.

Since you're a skeptic, here's the pertinent warranty clause:

This limited lifetime warranty is valid for the life of the retail product, so long as the original purchaser owns the product, based upon the following conditions: ...

• There is no physical damage to the PCB, GPU/chipset, or components that are caused by: Damage due to improper installation, damage during modification of any kind, damage during any type of aftermarket cooling installation, and water damage of any kind.
• The product is returned to EVGA in the original factory configuration and condition. All aftermarket modification must be reversed before sending in the product for replacement.

The warranty, in it's entirety, can be found here: http://www.evga.com/support/warranty/

Tech_Noob

Thanks for answering back mwparrish! I just wanted to know what the dealio was! I hope things work out for you! I think I'm gonna Replace the TIM on mine. I wanted to use Shin-Etsu MicroSi G751, would that be sufficient?

I would think so. Most folks use the X23 stuff I believe but this should be fine as well. Just a smidge more resistance than the X23 stuff.

mlee49

Woot, nice guide Senior Parrish!  Thanks for the step by step.


Does the 470 use the exact same screws for the heatsink?  I've got four on the front with the fan and four on the back.

Oh and anyone else give credit to Evga for making it sooooo much simpler to remove the casing?    MAJOR PROPS EVGA!!!!!  Tabs FTW, 4 screws FTW!!!  My 275 has 10 screws and is a pain to clean the heatsink.

EVGA did not design and manufacture the cards Nvidia did, so give props to Nvidia ^^ (all EVGA did was put their logo on it just like all the other card vendors selling the GTX 470/480's they get from Nvidia).

Alucard666
I have a stripped screw on my 470 which prevents me from obtaining access to the tim :-(

Ruh, roh...

They have tools for that.

khatru311

I used the 3 rice grain method of applying my TIM and everything seems to be working fine.

Think I will see better results by going back and trying the spread method?

I mean, you can check coverage and see -- but essentially, with these GPUs, you ideally want to cover 100% of the heatspreader and fill in the cracks and gaps between the heatpipes under the heatsink to ensure thermal conductivity through the entire heatspreader surface and heatsink surface.

But, if it you're happy and temps are tested and fine at full utilization over a significant time sample -- go for it. No one has ever really found consensus on the "best" method of TIM application for CPUs, let alone delineating that to GPUs.


I would imagine your void percentage (gas trapped between the heatspreader and heatsink preventing TIM from creating a complete bond between the two surfaces) is a little lower than the spread method but how/whether that is noticeably impacting conductivity is unknown. With those heat pipes not being smooth and the surface not being polished/lapped any void variance is likely vastly overshadowed by the surface imperfections and the grooves between the pipes.

I bought and cancelled my GTX 480 waterblocks yesterday. Looks like we might be outsourced to India at my job.

I have the whole water cooling setup saved in a cart on Frozen CPU. If you want to do everything with good quality parts it will cost around 700-800 dollars to cool 2xGPU and CPU. That is a lot of cash.

I had to stop myself. As it stands right now my system is very stable at 3.8 and SLI on air. I don't want to constantly worrying about water leaks etc. 

I love this stuff and I eventually will go watercooling but maybe on my next build.

I wonder, if the stock baseplate would cool the ram/vregs sufficiently on its own if you replace the GPU cooler with a waterblock. Anyone sees a problem with that?

w0ng3r

Do you guys ever bother with the rams/power regulators? or does AS5/MX2/MX3 short it out?

The gap/space between the heatsink and memory IC's is usually too wide for thermal paste to be used, thermal pads need to be used to fill the gap between the heatsink and memory IC's (atleast with stock cooling on some third party coolers they reduce this gap so thermal paste an be used but usually thermal pads are needed).  The good news with the 400 series is you dont have to disturb the thermal pads when changing the Thermal paste for the GPu due to the design of the cooler, this means no risk of damaging/destroying necessary thermal pads when trying to change the GPU TIM, it makes things alot easier all around.

w0ng3r

Moltenlava


The gap/space between the heatsink and memory IC's is usually too wide for thermal paste to be used, thermal pads need to be used to fill the gap between the heatsink and memory IC's (atleast with stock cooling on some third party coolers they reduce this gap so thermal paste an be used but usually thermal pads are needed).  The good news with the 400 series is you dont have to disturb the thermal pads when changing the Thermal paste for the GPu due to the design of the cooler, this means no risk of damaging/destroying necessary thermal pads when trying to change the GPU TIM, it makes things alot easier all around.

I see, I ordered a koolance water block, would I still need thermal pads? And does something like AS5/MX2 on the rams and power regulators help the clocking?

Your waterblock will come with instruction aswell as any thermal pads/paste you might need, if they ahve reduced the gap on the Memory IC's they will instruct you to use Thermal paste, you can use the thermal paste they provide or use a 3rd party paste like AS5, MX2.

If your going to use AS5 you need to be very careful as its capacitive (i think thats the right word, people usually say its conductive but i read something stating thats the wrong word), which means it has the potential to cause a short.  Using something like MX2 or the newer MX3 or something like OCZ freeze or another thermal paste is possible if the cooling manufacturer instructs you to use paste for the IC's etc.

w0ng3r
 
Last Question!! How does mounting a 3rd party waterblock affect your warranty if you card breaks?    

The card will have to be returned in its original condition. As long as you haven't damaged anything during the process you'll be fine.