Evercool Nighthawk VC-F117 - Out With the Old and In With the New

After removing the old aluminum unit and the old memory heatsinks, the GPU was cleaned off from the old thermal paste so the new one could be applied. For the purity of the experiment, I did not use the thermal paste that came with the VC-F117, which may not have been as good as the paste I used for the other heatsink. Good old Arctic Silver never failed me before.

Here is the "naked" card.

The GPU core has been lapped so that the heatsink could fit snug to the GPU core.

Figuring out what clip to use to secure the card was pretty easy. Actually, if you follow the manual for this particular card, it suggests the wrong clip (go figure). There are only two, so the choices of picking the wrong one are slim.

Pay attention to the little plastic patch on top of the clip. Don’t take it off, since the clip will be touching the back of your card and needs to be isolated.

The standoffs were a perfect fit: not too short, not too long, exactly right for the heatsink to touch the core and be flush with the card’s bottom.

The whole installation literally took seconds, and it was as painless as it could be. Well, for the exception of the wrong clip suggested. The holes matched up perfect and over-tightening was not a problem since the screws ran out of thread at the right point. It felt as solid as it could be.

The memory heatsinks fit perfectly replacing the old ones and ending up directly under the main unit, thus having a neat appearance. I even had a left over heatsink that I put on one of the other ICs on the card- for good measures, plus it looked cool.

Time to plug it in and give it a go.

Next: Testing: P4 478 vs VC F117 >>
 

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