Two Thermalright HR-03+'s arrived today for my 2x 8800gts 640mb cards!

[Andrew LB]

I'm just opening the boxes and they look awesome. I'll be installing them in about an hour after I get some dinner.

They're going in a Coolermaster Stacker 830 EVO with 8x 120mm Scythe fans and a bunch of other goodies. (See sig).

http://www.kalionzes.com/computers/hr03.jpg

[BNDMOD]

i want to see both runing :d

[jtf2]

i want to see both runing :d

me too.will the top card have the hs above the card,with card # 2 having the hs below the card.
will you be using 25mm or 38mm thick fans?

[Origin_Unknown]

i'd like to see them running too. I've always wondered what the cooling would be like?

[koc]

Nice :)

however you will Sacrifice all your PCI slots :down:

[LuckyNV]

Nice :)

however you will Sacrifice all your PCI slots :down:

depending on motherboard and case, you might be able to salvage 1 slot :D

[Empty_Quarter]

depending on motherboard and case, you might be able to salvage 1 slot :D

It can get to 2 slots depends on case/installation method :D

[disruptfam]

pic's?

[Seer]

I've never seen two of them in one rig before. Let's see them in action!

[Andrew LB]

Ok guys.... I have good news and bad news.

First the good news:

The coolers were a breeze to install yet i was a little concerned about the thin thermal double sided tape on the memory heatsinks but installed them with their tape anyways. After i got them together, I installed them into my rig with them both having the heatsink orientated so they were behind each card.

I then booted up, and once in windows my idle temp (passive cooling.... well.... no fan directly on the heatsink but 4x 120mm side intakes blowing on them. The idle temp dropped from my normal 63-65'c to a very low 51-54'c.

Then i started up a game of oblivion with everything maxed @ 650core/950mem and after an hour i checked the logs and the highest the temps got were around 64'c. With the stock coolers in my warm southern california house, this game would hit 82-83'c full load.



Now..... the bad news......

IF ANYONE BUYS THIS COOLER, DO NOT USE THE DAMNED THERMAL DOUBLE SIDED TAPE!!!!!

After gaming, i heard something fall inside my case and immediately smelled something hot like burning circuits. Quickly shutting down my PC, I opened the case to find that one of the ram sinks fell off the top 8800gts and landed on the lower one. I removed the sink and tried to reboot.... no video... wont post. But the drives spun up and it sounded like windows was booting.... just ZERO video. I then tried swapping cards, then one at a time trying both slots.... and every time i got the same result.

I was pretty convinced it was not the cards but the mainboard, i went down to Circuit City and bought a cheap 7100GS PCI-E card just to check. And to my surprise.... it worked. In BOTH slots actually.

So basically BOTH of my very expensive cards are FRIED. I called up EVGA and told him what happened and the nice guy agreed to fix or replace the cards even though i told him I put HR-03+ coolers on them and the circumstances.

So i'm currently packing them up for shipment but before I do so, i'll be re-applying all the little ram/mosfet sinks with Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive since the tape Thermalright supplies is GARBAGE.

Anyways.... here are a few pics of the process. I would have had temp screenies but the cards got fried before i got to that point.

http://www.kalionzes.com/computers/hr03fry/IMG_3138.JPG

http://www.kalionzes.com/computers/hr03fry/IMG_3141.JPG

http://www.kalionzes.com/computers/hr03fry/IMG_3144.JPG


me too.will the top card have the hs above the card,with card # 2 having the hs below the card.
will you be using 25mm or 38mm thick fans?


I ended up mounting the HR-03+ on the backside of both cards. This allowed the top card's heatsink to be near the rear exhaust and let me have the option of adding a fan to the lower card since the cooler sticks out a TON if it's mounted facing towards the bottom of the case.

Also, this allowed me to put my X-Fi Platinum sound card in the very bottom PCI slot so it wouldn't be between two video cards which are notorious for emitting all sorts of frequencies which wreck havoc on sound cards and their ability to provide clean, interference free audio.

Nice

however you will Sacrifice all your PCI slots

Only one. I use the bottom one for my X-Fi.

[Origin_Unknown]

Now..... the bad news......

IF ANYONE BUYS THIS COOLER, DO NOT USE THE DAMNED THERMAL DOUBLE SIDED TAPE!!!!!

I really fail to understand why people keep saying that rubbish? i use the tape that was supplied and mine isnt falling off. one of them wasnt as sticky as the rest but after a quick burn in using ati tool the thing is now on and will only come off if i pull it off :rolleyes:


also one ram sink falling off isnt going to kill both your cards, you'll find its something you've done when mounting them

[Ethelred]

I almost want to say that I think that there is more to this as well...it seems very unlikely that such a series of minor things would cause that...particularly the sink landing and crossing something.

In any event I'm sorry, that sucks. Atleast EVGA is cool about it.

[Seer]

Really sorry to hear what happened, good thing EVGA has great customer service.

[justin_c]

probably something else. ive had no ramsinks on gfx ram; usually I just see artifacts. shorting out is a possibility.

[Bail_w]

The reason why your ramsinks falls off because you did not clean the surface of the memory good enough and not because of the thermal tape.


*See the white stuffs on the memory of this photo that i boxed? use alcohol to clean them off before attach the ramsinks.


Edit: i never use the thermal tape that come with the manufacture, thats why i bought my own Sekisui #5760 thermal tape. If you clean the memory very good, it will NEVER falls off.

[justin_c]

one question bail_w; how do you remove the stock thermal tape?

[Bail_w]

one question bail_w; how do you remove the stock thermal tape?

use alcohol, it always works for me.

[Andrew LB]

The reason why your ramsinks falls off because you did not clean the surface of the memory good enough and not because of the thermal tape.


*See the white stuffs on the memory of this photo that i boxed? use alcohol to clean them off before attach the ramsinks.


Edit: i never use the thermal tape that come with the manufacture, thats why i bought my own Sekisui #5760 thermal tape. If you clean the memory very good, it will NEVER falls off.

Just so you know, that white stuff is not from the factory heatsink. It is a little residual Ceramique which I used when putting the ramsinks all back onto the cards with tiny drops of super glue in each corner. That photograph was taken AFTER i gotsick and tired of trying to make the cards work and I ended up removing the ramsinks that were held down with super glue and ceramique.

I almost want to say that I think that there is more to this as well...it seems very unlikely that such a series of minor things would cause that...particularly the sink landing and crossing something.

In any event I'm sorry, that sucks. Atleast EVGA is cool about it.

There isn't. The guy at EVGA, Chris.... told me that when running SLI, if a metal object shorts certain areas of the card, it can damage the card which only lost a ramsink and wasn't shorted. He explained the short could easily cause the non-shorted card to get fried through the SLI bridge connector.

He said this was definitely the case because one card would warm up when you attempt to boot while the other would stay ice cold even though it was getting power through the 6 pin SLI connector and PCI-E socket.

also one ram sink falling off isnt going to kill both your cards, you'll find its something you've done when mounting them

Sorry... but you're incorrect. Read my reply above.

[GAR]

it might be your board, have you checked the cards on a different board??? ive dropped a screw in a psu, i heard a spark, some smoke but PSU was fine, it messed up my board tho hehe.