Passive Cooling, Graphics card

I wanted to improve the passive cooling on an older graphics card. The onboard memory modules became wuite hot, which could cause problems i a soon-to-be mod. I decided to change the cooping profile on the GPU and to ad cooling profiles to the memory modules.

A before-image. First the existing cooling profile must be removed. It is glued to the GPU, which calls for radical measures. After 1 hour in a freezer the glue becomes slightly brittle and the coolig profile can be removed.

The remaining glue on the GPU were removed with a knife.

Just a picture of the new and old profile to show the differene in height. The new profile were original used to dissipate the heate from a Pentium 133MHz CPU passively.

The new cooling profile must be cut into appropriate sizes. It is not the best tools I have; a blade to a hack saw. With some tape to form a handle it is usable.

To ensure proper mounting I chose a thermal adhesive. I had some Arctic Silver Premium Thermal Adhesive which is perfect for the job.

All that is left is to mount the new cooling profiles. A user's manual comes with the adhesive. Such manuals are also available online: User's manual for Arctic Silver Premium Thermal Adhesive.

The mod this graphics card will be used in, requires the hardware to be perfectly sealed. The epoxy is not required to keep the aluminium profiles in place.

After the cooling had been improved I saw that a small component was missing on the back of the PCB. Fortunately the graphics card still works. A few years back I painted the back of the graphics card, which explains the blue color.