Complete Tear down and ReTIM IC7

[Realityshift]

Well yesterday my tube of IC7 showed up and this morning i dedicated a few hours to tearing down my gaming rig, putting the new tim on everything I can and then putting it back together again.

Sorry for the picture quality, I didnt feel like resizing with photoshop so I just ran it through a batch resizer.



Heres the case and TIM just waiting to take up my morning....




Case open, both video cards just waiting to get opened up for the first time. This was the best cable management I could muster so far

First up is the video cards..



Top side of the 2 9800GTX+s (I didnt notice that they accidentally miss shipped me a 9800GTX+ apparently because one of these is supose to be a regular GTX. Not to sure whats up with it as the sticker on the heatsink says its a + version but the box says its a 9800GTX... who knows...)




Pretty decent size difference in the newer card, its also gone from 2 pcie 6 pins to 1 though im not sure that had any effect on power consumption.



Handy Spring loaded screws make removing and replacing 90% of the screws on these cards very easy.



A little over kill on the TIM on this card...



Its a good thing they use non conductive tim on these cards, it spilled over a bit onto the surounding components.



Almost ready for TIM!



After applying a decent amount of TIM onto the GPU I put the heatsink back on and screwed it down with the 4 screws that surround the GPU area. I then pulled it back appart to check the spread pattern, I was pretty happy with it but I had to use a x pattern to get propper dispursion. The BB sized application didnt get nearly close enough to the corners.

Next GPU up is the actual 9800GTX+, the thermal pads on this GPU where horible but if I removed them It would take far to much TIM to fill the gap. Also noticed that Evga added WAY to much TIM to this card, im glad to see they went with a better process with the newer cards.



17 screws removed including 15 of the spring screws, this time in a nice black.



YUCK! that is just sloppy, like I noted above I hope this is non conductive



Alot of coverage around the GPU area this time...



Naked 9800GTX+ SC+ edition, pretty much the same layout as the newer card but 2 inches longer.

Next up remove the motherboard and take out the ram and CPU/HSF and then take the motherboard SPP/MCP cooler off.


Heres the motherboard ready for the HSF removal.



Heres a shot of how close the HSF is to the SPP cooling fan and hardware... its pretty tight.



Again a little to much TIM used on the SPP



Aswell as the MCP...



The MCP's buffer pad was a little wonky so I fixed that before replacing the heatsinks onto the motherboard. Again a small x worked best for applying the TIM here as it ensured a good even coverage.

[Realityshift]

I know I should have taken alot more pictures of the tim once it was applied and I especially should have grabbed a picture of the "wetting" job I did on the HDT base but by then my hands where covered in tim and I didnt want to grab my camera till I got it all back together




Heres the 2 TIMs used in the test as well as my E7400 Cleaned and ready to be TIMMED.



Old TIM used, Antec Forumla 5 silver based thermal paste... I really dont remember where i got this but from everything ive found on it its the exact same thing as AC5.



Brand new tube of IC7



Motherboard back in, everything hooked up and ready for video cards

Oh heres another picture of the xiggy and how close it got to the SPP cooler...



As well as a picture of the crossbow backing plate, I had to mod this with some 3M Padded double sided take. The small capacitors on the back of the CPU area are known to get crushed or shorted by back plates, I wanted a bit more buffer there.







Video cards in... This is where I started up my PC, let it run for 3 hours then stress tested it for the results..

E7400 @ 3.725mhz 1.4v

Previous TIM
IDLE: 39/33
LOAD: 54/54
AMBIENT: 20c

New TIM
IDLE: 39/30 (dunno why the first core demands to stay at 39 when idle)
LOAD: 51/51
AMBIENT: 20c

Not bad, also brought my MCP temps down from 64c idle and 80+c load to 57c idle and 64c load, this was really nice to see as the MCP temps where starting to scare me. GPU temps dropped a couple degrees each idle and around 5-7 degrees at load.

I also decided to add a little modded cooling to my top GPU and MCP... Apparently these stock intel heat sinks arent useless after all!



Stock intel heat sinks fan hanging off the GPU, didnt even need to tie strap it.



This added a little more front to bad air circulation as well as fed some much needed air to my top GPU as it gets a little warmer then the bottom one. Worked like a charm and droped a few more degrees off both the MCP and the GPU.

[Realityshift]

According to the picture on the box for the new 9800GTX its suppose to look Very different, basically its supose to look like the 9800GTX+ but with a different sticker, instead it looks like a GTS 250 with a 9800GTX+ sticker..

WTF is all I can say.

[Jake_HT]

I'll take pics of my cards when i have them out... my GTX+ looks the same as yours, but my GTX is the same shape with different graphics..

Crazy how similar our GPU setup is lol

BTW, from the looks of the pic, you have the plastic wrap on it still? Not sure, just looks like it..

[Realityshift]

Nope I took the plastic off both of them, their just really shiny stickers. The older GTX+ has a horible sticker that doesnt like to stay down in the curves, im forever pushing it back into place. Yeah I noticed how similar our graphics setups are now I just wish the rest of the rig was closer to yours =P Soon enough, soon enough.

EDIT: Im not to sure how reliable GPU-Z is but its listing the GTX default clocks at higher then the GTX+, but it also lists it as 65nm which is what the GTX is. I wish they would just put the right stickers on things.... Really it doesnt make a huge difference, I have both cards running at 770/1944/2420 right now and they destroy almost everything I throw at them. Id just like to know for sure what it is thats inside my PC.

WTF...

Thats the card thats in my pc from the stickers.

Google Image Result for http://www.computershop.pk/catalog/images/eVGA-9800GTX+.jpg

I cant find any pictures of a regular GTX that looks like this, their all the longer type like my GTX+. Im at a loss.

EVGA | Products

Apparently EVGA wanted to save money on stickers so they just marked all the GTXs as + models

[encorp]

There are two versions of the 9800GTX+, The original that every vendor had and then EVGA redesigned theirs to look like that shorter card. Then a whole whack of months later the GTS 250 came out and was based off the second version entirely.

[Realityshift]

Yeah, thats the GTX+ but I bought a 9800GTX, I was unaware of evga going with a slimmer 9800GTX. Seems to me that the 9800GTX is a little old to be making revisions to.