I had a Gainward Dragon 3000 delivered through the post (roughly) today to find that one of the heatsinks has fallen off on of the chipsets! 

It's still a little sticky (Gainward can't have used glue then to stick the heatsinks on) but I don't know if it will always hold!

Therefore I was wondering if I should apply some glue to it? But what glue can I use? Standard glue? Super glue? or some special glue for heatsinks? Anyone have any suggestions? ???

Thanks for the tip.

But just out of curiosity, if I was to use standard domestic super glue (not that I will, of course), what side affects would I get?

well dont take this as a thing for you to do but i use the super glue, my reason is you have to apply a bonder to the artic silver which makes it about half bonder and half artic silver and you also have to apply it much thicker for it to work, now i have not done any testing on this at all as far as which way will transfer better heat but i can tell you both ways have worked for me i just perfer the super glue, super glue makes a much closer contact with the chip to heatsink and the artic silver/bonder has better heat transfer for the same  thickness, thing is the super glue goes on at a fraction of the thickness of the artic/bonder, so thats my feelings on it, like i said ive done no real test either way, right now my v5500 goes 200 o/c with 2 gforce ti4600 copper heatsinks super glue on it.

Hi,

When I watercooled my Voodoo 2 graphics cards, I glued the copper heatsinks onto the chips with a very fine smear of ordinary 5 minute epoxy (Araldite).

Personally, I don't see the value of those expensive heat conductive epoxies, ordinary epoxy conducts heat very well, plus the heat has to get through the plastic case of the chip anyway.

Superglue is okay, I guess. However I never 100% trust it, as it has a tendency to go brittle. Epoxy remains flexible (within reason) so always remains tenaciously grippy!


Andy

haha, well its been close to a year at least 5 to 6 hours a day o/c and n/p with the super glue, i guess it doesnt know to fall off with all that heat lol, like i said works for me but heh

Hm, I've seen other people using Super-/Instant Glue before.

What they did is normally :

- carefully clean the entire Chip and Cooler surfaces
- create 4 or 5 small Points on Chip with Glue
- fill remaining area with a bit of thermal compound
(just don't have the glue and the compound mix if possible, in order not to compromise the glue's effectiveness)

I think there are thermal specifications for the several existing types of Super-/Instant glue normally found written on their packaging.
If it's rated for high enough temperature, it should work

Quote:



Epoxy is actually a pretty good thermal conductor, and I only use a tiny smear.

IMHO the money spent on expensive thermal pastes is better directed at bigger and better heatsinks, which will do a far better job of disposing of unwanted heat.

Andy

this is not the article i read, it was some scintific page somewhere i happened into, but this is what i use on my copper heatsink for my cpu and what they have down here translates to what i read pretty good-------------->





Price for online order only.

GeIL High Performance COPPER Thermal Compound, in 1 gram tube (enough for up to 6 P4's or 15 Athlon's).

Technical Detail
As heat generated from the CPU is transferd across thermal compound than to a metal heat sink, this creats a "thermal current" flowing from the CPU to the heat sink and gets dissipated by the cooling fan. This thermal current indicates how fast the heat sink is receiving the thermal energy and is limited to the slowest thermal conductive material. When this thermal current is ultimately limited by the copper heat sink, using a copper thermal compound will optimize the heat flow.

Theoritically, the best result should be produced by the best conductive compound. But when heat has to transfer between different materials, this change of material creates "thermal resistence" during heat transfer that hinders the heat flow (or slows down thermal current). This is the reason why a copper "coated" or "insert" on a alluminum heat sink's base doesn't work as well as an all-copper heat sink. (Alluminum dissipates heat better than copper. In theory, a copper coated alluminum heat sink should be able to aborb heat just as fast as an all-copper heat sink and at the same time, dissipates faster. Thus creating a faster thermal current. But in real life, after many tries by different well-known manufactures, the all-copper material proves to be the best cooling solution.) By using this patented copper thermal compund, thermal conductivity is optimized between the CPU and copper heat sink.

For those who are looking to replace their heat sinks with a copper coated or inserted heat sink, this compound will simply produce the same effect, making a difference of up to 5 degrees when used on traditional heat sinks.

Specification
7.5W/m-k Thermal conductivity
0.06 C-in2/W Thermal Resistance