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#11
OK, here are the pics I promised. I apologize for the lack of clarity - but this camera I was using is much more powerful, and in retrospect I should have been using the telephoto lens as opposed to bringing the camera in close proximity to the subject. Still, I was tired, and I did this Late Thursday night (3 AM my time).
Just to give you an idea, I took everything apart and cleaned thoroughly - something that hasn't been done in a year or so. CPU cooler came off, I checked all cable runs, and then had a flash of inspiration - the GPUs run hotter than my CPU so they need unbridled access to air - even with the air that gets blown in from the door fan, I felt that the active 120 mm fans on the HD (which I had positioned right in front of the cards) was blowing too much hot air onto the cards. The CPU cooler, OTOH, easily dissipates heat - (actually disassembled the entire thing, remove the fan out of the unit, and washed it in a sink - the dust accumulation was about 5 times worse than in the fan and radiator pic in the link - I am surprised I was not plagued by CPU heat issues). However, a funny thing happened - after a day of drying it wasn't fully dry (still water droplets left in between radiator fins) - so I took a hair dryer to it, aiming the hair dryer in the same direction as the normal airflow when the fan is in the cooler, and holding it upside down by the top of the copper base. Bad idea. Within 10 seconds the hot air from the hair dryer had transferred to the heat pipes, which sent it to the copper base - burning my fingers. So, yeah, the Tuniq does a whiz bang job of dissipating heat.
Also, for the first time since owning the GTX260s, I completely disassembled them (that is the primary focus of the pics) and cleaned and then re-assembled. I used Arctic Cleaning (a pair of solutions to break down existing thermal paste and then 'purify' the surface, priming for application of new thermal paste) and Arctic Silver 5 - I know, a lot of people say go with Ceramique or similar, but I have a large tube of AS5 and I am certainly not going to waste it....
I have everything assembled again, and I am happy to note that I even removed the chipset cooler and cleaned and re-applied thermal compound there as well - all told, about a day and a half down, but my GPU temps are 3-5 degrees cooler at idle than before, my CPU temps are from 33 to 37 degrees and since I moved a few things around, I am getting better airflow. I also replaced the stock ThermalTake 120mm fans (.30 Amps) with Antec Tri-Cools, both set to High, allowing for more air movement, lined the HDs up with CPU so there is direct air flow both into in front of and out behind the CPU cooler, and replaced the 92mm fan at the top of the case blowing upward with one of the old ThermalTake 120mm fans, still blowing upward.
Link with the pics (and pics have captions):
Picasa Web Albums - johnlgalt - The Great Cle...
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