Quote Originally Posted by Heinz68 View Post
Tom's Hardware promoting Accelero Xtreme III for R9 290 with installation instructions. Don't know what they're talking about here:


I replaced few heat sink on CPU with no problem, Don't think there should be any difference for GPU heatsink.

Anyway at this point is better to wait for custom build cards from the partners, unless somebody is working on the water cooling solution.

EDIT
Just noticed they talk about the memory heat sinks, didn't know they're so permanently glued.
Thermal paste is different than thermal adhesive. When you put a heatsink on your CPU, it doesn't need to create a permanent bond because the heatsink will be locked or bolted to your board. Thus there is no need of glue to keep the CPU heatsink in place.

It should be obvious to anyone at this point why thermal adhesive is needed for the vrm and memory heatsinks. E.g Both these types of heatsinks are not held in place by anything. If you put thermal paste on, they would simply fall off due to gravity. So as a result, you either need thermal tape or adhesive to keep them on. The latter of which is particularly hard to remove because unlike most glue, thermal adhesive doesn't just come off with heat. It meant to tolerate high heat.

Thus if you use the thermal adhesive that comes with these aftermarket coolers, there is a good chance your voiding your warranty. Which is probably why its better to just wait for aftermarket if you are not satisfied with the stock solution.