Coulple of 8800GT questions

[krazymonkey500]

Alright, I got my EVGA 8800GT (512-P3-N802-A3) yesterday and immediately ripped off the cooler. I cleaned out all the gunk for the GPU and took the white pads off the arc of chips going around the gpu (I left the ones covering the stuff towards the end of the card, didn't think they were too important). I applied AS5 to all, put everything back together, throw it all in my computer, and then got the clock up to SSC speeds (700/2000). The card sits at 46 idle/59 max load (about 30 minutes of gaming) with the fan at 70%.

 

First question, was removing the pads a bad idea? I hear that it might leave a gap between the cooler and the ram, but my temps seem to be fine. Is there a way to check the ram temps? I was looking in everest and it reports 46 for GPU and 38 for GPU Ambient.

 

Second, is AS5 bad for the graphics card? Some other people are telling me it will fry it. I put very minimum amounts of it on each of the chips. I hear ASmx-1 is the stuff to get because it's non conducive, but I don't want to buy more stuff while I have 1/4 of this left.

 

Third, is unlinking the shader good or bad for overclocking the card (using rivatuner)? Right now I have it linked at the speeds I have now.

 

Thanks for any help.

[kingdingeling]

You should clean out the core, yes, but the cooling pads on the RAM are there for a reason, usually being that the cooler does not make contact to them otherwise (like you said). Do you still have the pads? If you take a very close look at the cooler, what does the AS5 appliance look like on the memory?

[Verran]

The temps your software is measuring are CORE temps, not memory. Just because the core temp is fine doesn't mean the memory is fine. Like king said, the pads are usually there because the cooler doesn't make direct contact with the memory.

[krazymonkey500]

I saved the pads just in case I would ever need them again and they're all in tact. So is there a way to check the ram temps, I knew the gpu temp was only coming from the core.

 

I'll check and see if the chips are making contact with the cooler.

[cchalogamer]

To be honest with you the ram is likely cooler with NO thermal paste/pads and NO cooler contact if you have airflow getting to the chips themselves. Most modern GPU coolers RAISE RAM temp by connectign them to the same heatsink as the core. My old 7900GT wouldnt budge ram clocks until removing the stock cooler and going with water cooling. It OCed rather nicely then and only saw very minimum gains from adding ram sinks. My current 7950GT had the same thing going on, nearly maxed out memory while contacting the cooler, a nice bit of headroom afterwards.

[krazymonkey500]

I figured airflow would be sufficient but I went ahead and put the little pads back on. I'll probably pick up an aftermarket sink for it once I look around some more.