Ok, a quick and dirty ‘how to’, to replace the stock heat sink / fan on a standard Connect 3D ATI Radeon X800 with Zalman’s premier GPU cooler, the CF900-Cu (see the review here). This Zalman VGA cooler has got to be the overclockers cooler of choice for your GPU and must be considered the next best thing to water cooling. Dropping the temperature significantly over the stock coolers and the majority of its competitors products, its also seriously quiet and comes complete with a basic fan control.
Though this relates to the X800 the process is pretty similar for most of the other cards in the ATI range and its simply the placement of the ‘nipples’ that mount to the card that changes for most NVidia cards.
You are gonna need some decent thermal paste, though the product comes with a generic tube it is worth investing in some Artic Silver thermal paste which is generally considered to be the best. Also a Philips screwdriver and ideally some sort of acetone or alcohol to clean the surfaces of the ram and GPU. I used a thermal printer cleaner pen, though there are other generic solutions available.
Disclaimer: The following guide is meant to be informative and I accept no blame for any damage caused to your graphics card if you decide to follow this How To. Don’t forget the usual anti static crap and take due care and attention when removing / replacing the card from your system etc.
Removing the stock heatsink and fan
Unscrew the four small screws (1.) on the front of the card that hold the metal cover over the fan / heatsink. The cover should then detach easily (2). Flip the card over and remove the two screws holding the heatsink in place (3).
Adding the VGA RAM heatsinks
With the X800 half the RAM is located on either side of the card (4), clean with alcohol and attach the sticky heatsinks (5) to the surface of the RAM.
Add the thermal grease to the GPU
Take great care to remove the existing thermal paste from the GPU and then clean the surface with alcohol to remove any remnants. Add the Arctic Silver or other thermal paste quite liberally to the top of the GPU ensuring the chip is evenly covered.
Attach the nipples to the bottom of the replacement VGA cooler (6).
In the case of the X800 this required adding two ‘nipples’ (included) to the bottom of the bracket in the single holes.
Attach the cooler to the card.
Attach the enclosed small springs to the fixing nuts and leave them in easy reach. Add the rubber rings (also
included) to the nipples and place the card, GPU upwards, in one hand taking care to get a good grip. Drop the cooler onto the card, lining the nipples up with the existing holes from the original heatsink / fan and ensuring the cooler is placed squarely on the GPU. Close your one hand around the card and new cooler and flip the card over taking care not to let the cooler slide around on the paste. Grab the first fixing nut and hand tighten it a couple of turns. Then take the second one and do the same ensuring you tighten up the nuts evenly and the cooler is perpendicular to the card.
Drop the card back in the box
Not forgetting to make sure you connect the Zalman power cable to your motherboard or fan controller.
For those that are interested, the temperature of my overclocked X800 (running at 452 / 427.25 MHz core / memory (standard 390 / 350)) was around 70 degrees while gaming with the standard setup. Now with the Zalman its cruising, never topping 45 degrees and below 30 when browsing the web or using Photoshop.
