Sapp. 9800pro + VGA silencer -- question

Erukian · Feb 20, 2004, 03:53 AM

I get my VGA silencer this saturday. I hear that when I pop off my stock cooler and wipe off the pad from the GPU/VPU that I cant just smear on new paste and tighten the VGA silencer to the GPU/VPU without removing the shim guard. I've heard horror stories about people who said they carefully removed their shim's so I really would rather avoid that route.

Would I have to dremel or use a metal saw to cut the base of the Silencer heatsink so it'll fit inside the GPU/VPU socket and I can avoid the shims?
Do I want to avoid the shims?
Should I leave the Silencer as is and just put down extra goop to make sure there's contact?

I want to keep my warranty so if the card up-ends I want to be able to slap back on a thermal pad and the original fan and pretend that nothing happened

Zebra · Feb 20, 2004, 10:02 AM

You should be able to make the unit work without removing the shims. Without the shims, there is a good chance of crushing the GPU. To use a dremel, you would have to remove a very small amount of metal, equal to what you see on the card's original heatsink. Better yet, send an email to the makers of the VGA silencer. I've already heard from them that there is a version 3 of the silencer coming out in March. You are right to be concerned with your warranty if you remove the shim from the card and the card goes bad later. The Zalman cooler would have the same problem, but seems to work just fine.

micron · Feb 21, 2004, 12:22 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zebra
The Zalman cooler would have the same problem, but seems to work just fine.

Wrong, the Zalman cooler was made to fit inside the shim on ATi cards. The quality is much better also.

mkk · Feb 21, 2004, 04:04 AM

The Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer mounting clip slightly warps the card as you tighten the screws, effectively raising the core maybe a millimeter or so. Look at how the plastic center of the clip pushes at the back of the card right where the chip is. It seems to be enough as people in general are not having a problem with this cooler. But I haven't tried it myself since I had already removed the shim from my card before installing the VGA Silencer. Since it takes a good amount of twisting to get the clip as to the mounting instructions I admit to being a little nervous about not having the shim there, but making sure to tighten the screws evenly should make it safe in all cases.

Zebra · Feb 22, 2004, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by micron
[b]Wrong, the Zalman cooler was made to fit inside the shim on ATi cards. The quality is much better also.

I just installed the Zalman on my son's Sapphire 9800SE last week, and do not remember it looking like that one in your picture. Just a flat surface that overlaps the outer shim. But it does work properly. It fixed the problem we used to have when softmodding the card into the 8 pipelines.

Zebra · Feb 26, 2004, 02:28 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by mkk
The Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer mounting clip slightly warps the card as you tighten the screws, effectively raising the core maybe a millimeter or so. Look at how the plastic center of the clip pushes at the back of the card right where the chip is. It seems to be enough as people in general are not having a problem with this cooler. But I haven't tried it myself since I had already removed the shim from my card before installing the VGA Silencer. Since it takes a good amount of twisting to get the clip as to the mounting instructions I admit to being a little nervous about not having the shim there, but making sure to tighten the screws evenly should make it safe in all cases.

The VGA Silencer instructions do not mention removing the shims, but the pics in the instructions clearly show that the outer shim around the gpu has been removed. The plastic center of the clip should not be bending the board in any way. Anyone else here using this cooler that can tell us how you installed it on your ATI card?