Can I do with no VRM cooling on a VGA?

[Kokain]

I can't seem to find any benchmark results that give me the answer. I want to get away with not using those tiny useless heatsinks that stick to your chips with thermal pads. Only reason is because they seem to small to actually cause any heat dispersion compared to something much bigger, but then again what good is it when the heat pipes are blocking access. My cooling would be as good as the smallest heat sink on the VGA memory, correct? You know, those low profiled once....
Best I could find on this issue is people buying these tiny heat sinks and grinding them down to fit which is totally contradicting on the effect they should provide. Kinda like those RAM heat spreaders that are more for looks than anything. I plan on just pointing a 120mm fan at the VGA, I believe that should provide an actual cooling compared to tiny heat sinks which are pain in the ass to remove because of those thermal pads. So can I get away with it?

 

[sirmonkey1985]

actually those shitty little heatsinks work great, but they only work as good as the amount of airflow that passes over them. depending on what card you are talking about i'd still say if you have the room available under what ever gpu heatsink you are using, put them on. you don't have to get the fancy all copper ones, even the cheapo 3 dollar 20 pack aluminum ones work.

they aren't that hard to remove either, just turn the system on play a game for a bit or just run a stress test for 10-15 minutes, turn it off and twist the heatsinks off, done.

 

[hiodie]

I had a 6950 that only had cooling on 4 of the 8 memory chips, and when I stressed the card one of my temps hit 120°C. I placed a 1/4" aluminum bar that I notched with a hack saw (probably much less efficient that anything purchased) on the open 4 and the temps don't break 90°C anymore. So they definitely serve a purpose, and this was with dual fans from the heatsink both times.

 

[dnottis]

if you have airflow you dont need ram sinks / vrm sinks.

But you need to have a fan or fans blowing over it to keep it cool.

 

[CaptNumbNutz]

Even the shittiest of the heatsinks is better than none at all. The whole purpose of a heatsink is to provide extra surface area for air to pass over to dissipate the heat. If its a low end card, the vrms probably dont get hot enough. If its a mid range card or greater, you definitely will want something on there, even if it is a cut down cheapy heatsink.