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best way to remove ram sinks..

L

lithium726

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
8,195
they look dumb, offer no enhanced cooling at all, and i wanna take them off. is there any way i should go about doing this? i know theyre epoxied on, but i want them off... would a knife work, or is there some special way of doing this?
 
all i have to say is...good luck...those ram sinks are on there pretty good since they are epoxied on there...pretty much cemented for life...and whats the point of taking them off..unless they are getting in the way...if its not broken, dont fix it
 
actually its not epoxy, sorry for my use of the word. its the thermal tape that comes on them... does that change anything?
 
I use a cold chisel and ball ping hammer.

J/k

I read that some people put their cards in the freezer then break the epoxy free with a sharp rap. Sounds dangerous as hell to me, but I really think they were serious.
If it's just thermal tape, then it should come off without too much trouble...if you use knife...all I can say is...watch out for the small ceramic bits on the board. they break very easy.
I'm inclined to say leave them- but hey, if they're keeping you up at night with their uglyness, then do what you got to do.
 
If it thermal tape it should be easy, just put a hair dryer up to it for like 15-20 seconds, that should warm up the tape so you can just twist the ramsink off
 
They should just pry off. What I do is put a credit card under the sink to protect the pcb while prying it off with a screwdriver but on the other hand if these chips are bga then there's probably no room.
 
yevaud said:
I read that some people put their cards in the freezer then break the epoxy free with a sharp rap.
Click to expand...

would gangsta rap work also?
 
well i was starting with a knife and thing just moved with alittle bit of force so i just kinda twisted it off.. lol, well that was easy!
 
lithium726 said:
well i was starting with a knife and thing just moved with alittle bit of force so i just kinda twisted it off.. lol, well that was easy!
Click to expand...

Way to worry over nothing. :D
 
I've also heard you want to use 95% isopropyl alcohol to take the residue off...don't use acetone or some other harsh chemical- can cause problems with the pcb. Even with isopropyl, you don't want to dunk the card in it.. use q-tip (fresh one) and be patient.
 
eyedol said:
Way to worry over nothing. :D
Click to expand...

weeeeeeelllll i didnt wanna fuck anything up lol, its still a good card, im just taking everything back down to stock since i got a new card and there is no reason for me to overclocking this one anymore, and the ram sinks were buggin me! better safe than sorry!
 
once i acctually took off an epoxyed on heatsink off a gf4MX with some nail polish remover, i got frustrated and just about poured it all over the card, finnally got it of with a creditcard+butterknife, and i even scrapped the pcb a tad, i didnt even care about the card too much, since it was a horrible MX420, i just wanted to see if i could get some leet cooling to see how far it would OC. even after all that punishment the card worked flawlessly and even o/ced nicely.... still seemed slower than a gf2 tho :|
just proves how durable pc stuff can be, but im not saying dont be careful, normally with my comp parts, i treat them as if i was handling a nuclear device
 
Do not attmept to just PRY THEM OFF. You will succeed in prying off the ram as well. it really depends on what is holding them on. i put some OCZ BGA on my 9800 pro and they came off pretty easily by TWISTING them off. always twist, never pull or pry.

I myself just used the freezer trick the other night to get a heatsink/fan off of a BFG Ti4600. leave it in the freezer for about an hour (wrap it in plastic at least) then use fishing line to try and get them off, or twist them off with ure hand.
 
BEware...!!!!!


I tried to remove ramsinks on 2 diffrent BFG 5900nus, both of them i pulled at least 2 memory chips off the PCB..... so much for that RMA.....well the first one i bit the bullet... the secound i got RMAed (dont ask how) damm i love superglue...
And i did do all the tatics for removing, including freezing it overnight...
 
step 1: grab hold of card
step 2: attach vicegrips to ramsink...
step 3: PULL!!!!!!!! :D

btw i am not responsible for any damage of your card using this method ;)
 
This reminds me of the time someone on the forum was trying to remove the heatsink from their GeForce 2 GTS and ripped the GPU off of the card.
 
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