Gadgetory

this will be a quick heatsink removal guide for the GTX 580 now there's a reason that I have an empty package for a screwdriver sitting next to it and that's that I actually had to run out and buy a screwdriver in order to get the heatsink off so I had to get a Torx number sit on OIT six it's not because they don't use a number four Torx apparently so I had to go get a t6 bit precision screwdriver because the majority of the screws on the back of this video card actually do use a torch which looks like a star if you're not familiar with it hopefully I can get the camera to focus on the GPU there so you can see that so I've gone ahead and loaded the correct bit into my screwdriver already so I'll put that there and then that is how I will remove all the screws from the back so the you don't have to remove the screws on the shroud like here you only have to remove all the little screws on the back including the Phillips head ones here and that is how we will remove it so bear with me a moment so if you just want to replace the stock thermal compound with something else this is about as far as you go so you can see here the GF 110 GPU is right there and then that's its corresponding cooling plate on the other side so I actually want to take the cooler apart which means I'm gonna have to delve in a little bit further so I'm gonna have to start undoing some of these other screws in here because I want to have a look at the vapor chamber cooler that is responsible for keeping the GTX 580 so cool now at idle as well as under load now something to be aware of is if you are replacing your stock thermal compound I guess that we could call this like a thermal compound removal guide - so you know two birds with one stone you should use like something lint-free to wipe all of the thermal compound off of both surfaces use some 99% isopropyl or rubbing alcohol to remove everything put on your new thermal compound bearing in mind you should apply quite a bit more to a GPU than you would to a CPU because it's a very large area it's got a big heat spreader on it you want to make sure it's covered and then you'd put it back now do not replace the pads on the RAM or any of the vrm because they are not thin they are not intended so you can know you're not really gonna be able to see that are you you can kind of see they actually have some some depth to them the reason for that is there are manufacturing tolerances when there are fixing all of these components to the PCB so they're not always going to be at exactly the same height you need a little little bit of variance in terms of where they make contact so that is why they do use a thicker pad for those parts so completely disassembling the cooler from that point was actually the simplest step all I had to do was remove how many other seven screws so there's one on the corner here one here one here one here and then there's three more on the bottom of the this is the plastic shroud that goes over top and it's actually hard to tell when you're looking at the plastic shroud over the metal base that they're made of different materials because the the finish on them is so close and videos done a terrific job of making the card aesthetically appealing but this is actually a metal heat spreader here on the base and the metal heat spreader is what's responsible for doing the cooling of the RAM as well as the vrm so you can see it's gonna get a fair bit of incidental airflow from the fan itself which you can clearly see here all right and so yeah that does all of that now the vapor chamber this is where the magic happens now with the GTX 580 I don't know if you'll but you know what let me go get my 580 and then so there's my 484 contrast you can kind of see inside where it's got a similar Finneran and then it's got these five massive heat pipes that are carrying heat away from where the GPU is located right there to the aluminum sins so the vapor chamber is actually a fairly similar technology to a heat pipe in that you're basically using a gaseous liquidy substance inside sometimes it's water sometimes it's something else and you've got it at a very very low pressure in there which allows it to basically boil at with very little heat input and then it will evaporate away and then it'll find a cooler part of the vapor chamber or in this case a heat pipe so it'll go away from the hot GPU come up to the cooler aluminum fins which are being fooled by the fan then it'll turn back into a liquid and it'll be whipped away by the inside of the heat pipe back down to the GPU so the vapor chamber works similarly except that it's kind of like a big huge flat fin heat pipe so it takes all the heat from the GPU right here and disperses it very evenly over this big surface area so then Nvidia throws some aluminum fins on there and boom you've got a very potent cooler now vapor chambers are at this time more expensive than implementing heat pipes but it is from what we can see a more elegant solution overall so there is the vapor chamber design so I'm gonna throw this guy back together and thank you for checking out my video on the disassembly and I guess a thermal compound replacement on the GTX 580