best and safest way to do this is put the card in the fridge for about half an hour, then it should be near 0 degrees celcius, take it out, get a creditcard or any other bakcard, place the edge under the heatsink against the pcb, place a flathead screwdriver between the cc and the cooler and twist, it should pop off quite easily.

as for remnants of the adhesive, by far most of it should stick to the cooler, but the rest can be removed with nailpolish remover if I'm not mistaken

that will make the adhesive very brittle and easy to remove. only cards this is needed with is cards like 3DFX that use that crappy adhesive stuff that can't be normally removed.

I used the freezer, once frozen the adhesive becomes brittle, i then just used my hands and twisted the sinks off..

goriath wrote on 29.08.13 at 21:24:29:


You do realise what you just said, right?

If sometimes it doesn't work how can you say that "it's safe anyway"? If the card still works but you take a part of the chip out I wouldn't say it's safe at all...

If you don't care how the chip will look because you'll just stick another cooler it might be ok for you, but I still wouldn't try this on a valuable or rare card.

Yeah, most definetely if ya ask me.

Only time I saw a chip come off was with a 2 component heat transferring glue I used for actively cooling 2 voodoo2's with the heatsinks glued on.

I tested it's strength by glueing a heatsink to the northbridge of a defect mobo, when I pried it loose with a screwdriver, I ripped the chip clean off the mobo, I couldn't get the chip off the heatsink. lol

what's funny is they did the holes for coolers held with pins, but they didn't used those in the end...it would have been so much easier with regular thermal paste to replace the coolers.

if i had someone nearby who would do a clean job for me, i would go see him. But i guess i'm on my own. I doubt someone on this forum is living in Montreal, lol!

1) Find a ziplock bag (re-sealable bag)
2) Place V5 card inside bag
3) Get out as much air as possible and seal bag
4) Leave in the Freezer overnight
5) Remove from freezer in the morning and QUICKLY get the card out of the bag
6) Put an old credit card / phone card under one corner of the heatsink and CAREFULLY lever off the heatsink using a screwdriver as a lever...
7) Heatsink should pop off of the chip letting you clean off the remaining thermal glue
8) Apply new paste / heatsinks and modify card
(make sure you leave the card for an hour to let moisture evaporate first)
9) Test modified card...