Installation
For our testing purposes, my trusty old ATI Radeon X850XT volunteered itself for a transplant. I would have liked to use an 8800 series nVidia card, but we didn’t have a spare one in the lab at the time of writing. Regardless, the X850 was ATI’s last 130nm GPU and runs very hot. It also features a copper heatsink and dual slot ‘leaf blower’ fan that is very loud.
The interesting thing about ATI’s X850 cooler is that it is forced to less than 10% rotational speed until the GPU temperature exceeds 90°C. The fan ramps up to save it from cooking itself after that point—but thats about it. At full speed, it is unbearably loud and sounds a lot like a formula one car at full throttle, stuck in a pop can. It exhausts a great deal of air at that speed, though. At its default fan speed, it is much more tolerable, but still not quiet.
The first step is to dismantle the OEM cooler. The X850 heatsink was not difficult to remove. There is a memory cooling plate at the rear of the heatsink that has to be removed first, followed by the GPU backplate and finally one screw. The heatsink popped off with very little pressure.
A big hunk of copper and a leaf blower fan are all that remain. The OEM thermal paste is very brittle and came off without much effort. I used isopropyl alcohol to clean the GPU core and all of the memory ICs. I couldn’t believe how thick the thermal pads were on the memory ICs—I can’t help but think that they’d be better off without anything on them at all.
First, I had to identify the threaded holes used by the X850. Aligning the base over the X850 core quickly revealed the two standard ATI mounting locations on the GFXChilla. ATI’s X800 and older 9×00 series cards all use the two alternating holes on the right and left of the GPU. Using two of the four supplied mounting posts, I secured them to the correct threaded holes. Rubber washers are included to protect the card.
TIP: Be sure to tighten the posts well. They are difficult to grip by hand. I used a pair of needle nose pliers for this. If you need to remove the GFXChilla and did not tighten the posts sufficiently, you’ll run into trouble. When I tried to remove it, the posts came right out of the base instead of the screws out of the posts.
Next comes the preparation of the card itself. This step can vary quite a bit from card to card depending on the components. Coolink’s installation manual does a pretty good job at helping the buyer identify VR components. With dozens of compatible cards, its impossible to have installation instructions for all models.
The X850 retail heatsink does not cover any of the VR components and some of them are in odd positions—I didn’t bother to cover them. You can see the two short ramsinks that are designed to squeeze below the heatpipes. Noctua includes a warning page in the box that cautions buyers to verify that their heatpipes do not contact the short ram sinks. In some configurations, this can occur. Noctua recommends leaving the troubled ICs bare in this situation.
I had some challenges with the ramsinks, unfortunately. They appear to use some form of very thin, two-sided adhesive. The adhesive cover needs to be removed very slowly and very carefully to prevent it from bunching up. Once this happens, they do not stick well to the memory ICs, regardless of how much pressure is put on them. I also found the adhesive too weak. I had to apply a great deal of pressure to ensure the sinks were secured properly. They won’t be falling off on their own, but it wouldn’t take much pressure to pop them right off, either.
Once I had the ramsinks in place, I did a quick test fit to ensure good core contact. As can be seen, the core contact is excellent. I opted to use Noctua’s new NT-H1 thermal compound on the X850 GPU. It was spread out thinly across the core—something I still prefer to do on exposed cores.
The GFXChilla is secured using spring loaded screws. Again, be sure not to overtighten them, or you’ll find the mounting posts coming out of the GFXChilla upon removal, as I mentioned earlier.
The final mount is nice and secure and looks great. The GFXChilla fits well, even on the relatively small X850.
I did a quick inspection under the heatpipes to ensure that there was no contact with the ramsinks. Although its close, they are not touching.
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