vga card temperatures/AGP card life expectancy ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RJK
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RJK

This morning I removed the stock / passive-fanless heatsink from my PNY
GeForce 6200 256mb AGP card and fitted a Zalman VF700-ALCu (the cheaper half
copper and half aluminium one),

( ...and what a labour of love that was i.e. cleaning off the hard baked-on
thermal paste from the GPU, and avoiding damage to those tiny surface
mounted components is NOT for the feint of heart ! )

....now on the cardboard printed blurb, Zalman claim, "The VF700-ALCu
maintains a 5-8 degrees C lower VGA chipset temperature and a 10-15 degrees
C lower VGA RAM temperature."

Prior to fitting it, I'd often noted that the GPU rarely went above 55
degrees C (....rarely play games),
....now with this new heatsink/fan on it, GPU temperature appears not to go
higher than 35 degrees C.

....and would it have been better to have thrown those pretty little memory
heatsinks into the bin , (I've stuck them on now :-), bearing in mind those
ic's would have been getting airflow from the VF700-ALCu fan - now that
heat has to get through that thermal tape ?

....so, anyone out there with views on whether the effort was "worth-it," and
do you think that it will extend the life of the card by much ?

regards, Richard
 
RJK said:
This morning I removed the stock / passive-fanless heatsink from my PNY
GeForce 6200 256mb AGP card and fitted a Zalman VF700-ALCu (the cheaper half
copper and half aluminium one),

( ...and what a labour of love that was i.e. cleaning off the hard baked-on
thermal paste from the GPU, and avoiding damage to those tiny surface
mounted components is NOT for the feint of heart ! )

...now on the cardboard printed blurb, Zalman claim, "The VF700-ALCu
maintains a 5-8 degrees C lower VGA chipset temperature and a 10-15 degrees
C lower VGA RAM temperature."

Prior to fitting it, I'd often noted that the GPU rarely went above 55
degrees C (....rarely play games),
...now with this new heatsink/fan on it, GPU temperature appears not to go
higher than 35 degrees C.

...and would it have been better to have thrown those pretty little memory
heatsinks into the bin , (I've stuck them on now :-), bearing in mind those
ic's would have been getting airflow from the VF700-ALCu fan - now that
heat has to get through that thermal tape ?

...so, anyone out there with views on whether the effort was "worth-it," and
do you think that it will extend the life of the card by much ?

regards, Richard
Click to expand...

maybe 12 months, give or take a couple years. Actually, the card could
up and fail at any time. Think of it as a hobby.
 
RJK said:
This morning I removed the stock / passive-fanless heatsink from my PNY
GeForce 6200 256mb AGP card and fitted a Zalman VF700-ALCu (the cheaper
half copper and half aluminium one),

( ...and what a labour of love that was i.e. cleaning off the hard
baked-on thermal paste from the GPU, and avoiding damage to those tiny
surface mounted components is NOT for the feint of heart ! )

...now on the cardboard printed blurb, Zalman claim, "The VF700-ALCu
maintains a 5-8 degrees C lower VGA chipset temperature and a 10-15
degrees C lower VGA RAM temperature."

Prior to fitting it, I'd often noted that the GPU rarely went above 55
degrees C (....rarely play games),
...now with this new heatsink/fan on it, GPU temperature appears not to go
higher than 35 degrees C.

...and would it have been better to have thrown those pretty little memory
heatsinks into the bin , (I've stuck them on now :-), bearing in mind
those ic's would have been getting airflow from the VF700-ALCu fan - now
that heat has to get through that thermal tape ?

...so, anyone out there with views on whether the effort was "worth-it,"
and do you think that it will extend the life of the card by much ?
Click to expand...

In general a lower temperature means improved reliability.
 
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