ramsink thermal pad disaster

[Luca25]

so i got a bunch of ramsinks with pre-attached thermalstickers
these promptly fell off after application, usually between 10-15 minutes afterthey were put on...
at one point i even duct taped them to the board of my video card and let them sit for 3 days hoping they would "set"
that was wishful thinking.

so now i have dirty ramsinks with useless adhesive pads.

1) how do i remove the pads?
2) what is an alternative, thermally viable reattachment method?

 

[DeFex]

arctic silver makes some thermal epoxy. i would use that.

as for removing the goop, i would try some wd40 and then clean that of with some rubbing alcohol

 

[DermicSavage]

I know it's a bit overkill, but I used lacquer remover to get the adhesive pads off my OCZ ramsinks.
They pretty much turned to slime and rinsed right off.

EDIT: and yea also artic silver epoxy works great.(although smells real bad when it is first applied)

 

[diredesire]

Most thermal pads can just be peeled off. You can use new TIM tapes, or you can use a superglue in the corner/TIM in the center method....

the epoxy is too permanent if you want to sell, and always run the risk of popping BGA mem off...

Even if you mix it 1:1 with normal TIM, it's still a problem, but it's much better.

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Goo Gone does wonders, finish up with some alcohol and you'll be good to go. Or, Artic Silver makes that new ArtiClean stuff that is supposed to do exactly this.
As for attaching them, I've had great sucess with a 1:1 ratio of AS Epoxy to AS Silver 5.

 

[Shadow27]

I bought some Arctic Clean a couple days ago. It works like a champ for cleaning thermal compound off heatsinks and it also apparently dissolves thermal pads if i remember correctly.

Shadow27

 

[Luca25]

thanks for all the suggestions,

is the superglue corner/AS5 center method viable?

im broker than the space shuttle (as reported by /. today) and i have that laying around...
yes, im too broke to spend 10 bucks on thermal epoxy HA!

 

[zer0signal667]

Anything with Xylene in it (like goo-gone).

The superglue should work... how well is debatable. I am not a believer in ramsinks to begin with. Unless the heatsink is much bigger in dimensions than the area of the chip and the chip is dissipating a good deal of heat, they don't really do much. Aim a fan at the ram, you'll be fine.

 

[Luca25]

just aiming a fan at them will work...wow
that's really goo, because that was my plan originally, but i didnt think the chips had the surface area to dissipate the head, as the original heatsing had a copper plate on the back thermally interfaced to the chips, to dissipate heat i suppose.

That saves time...just for the record, this will be fine on a 9800XT?

ive got one of those slim zalman 80mm fans...im guessing that it will provide adequate airflow...i was kind of planning to install it blowing on the video card anyway simply to cool the PCB, caps, and the hard drive which sits sort of behind in (shuttle SN95G5)

 

[zer0signal667]

just aiming a fan at them will work...wow
that's really goo, because that was my plan originally, but i didnt think the chips had the surface area to dissipate the head, as the original heatsing had a copper plate on the back thermally interfaced to the chips, to dissipate heat i suppose.

That saves time...just for the record, this will be fine on a 9800XT?

ive got one of those slim zalman 80mm fans...im guessing that it will provide adequate airflow...i was kind of planning to install it blowing on the video card anyway simply to cool the PCB, caps, and the hard drive which sits sort of behind in (shuttle SN95G5)

I can't make any promises, you should wait for some input from someone with the same card who has tried it. I was thinking of DDR sticks, the case may be different (i can't imagine how though...) for 9800XT RAM.