Inno3d 980 TI X3 Ultra thermal pads missing

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by nzweers, Nov 15, 2015.

  1. nzweers

    nzweers Master Guru

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    GPU:
    Inno3D 980Ti iChill Ultra
  2. Singleton99

    Singleton99 Maha Guru

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    I very nearly bought 2 off these the other week, as they were on offer and quite a bit cheaper than my msi ones .
    Hope you can fix the heat pads without to much hassle , but won't you void your warranty.

    Can you not RMA it or at least email iChill and explain about the missing pads
     
  3. nzweers

    nzweers Master Guru

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    GPU:
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    In your case I probably would not have chosen the Inno3D neither, as the card takes up 2,5-3 slots. It would be a very tight fit for SLI. It will probably affect the cooling efficiency without a full card space between the cards.

    I´m not sure if its a fault as that reviewer with the thermal cam had the same issue. I'm not even sure if it is an issue as the card is completely stable and overclocks great.

    There is no 'warranty void' sticker on one of the screws, so removing it should be okay. There are inno3d cards that do have the pads, so adding pads should be okay. Let's just hope that these superhot power-phase things don't heat up the memory chips now :)

    I just found and ordered 1.5mm and 0.5mm pads to stack to 2mm. The actual gap between the chips and the cooler is about 1.5mm. Total cost including shipping was 9 euro.

    I do like the card for the 1000rpm low noise fans and the factory 1150mhz overclock. I really dislike a strong blowing sound in my pc.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2015
  4. haz_mat

    haz_mat Guest

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    From what I can tell with those pics, the raised area where you say the strips are missing is where the chokes would contact the heatsink. Its not totally necessary to sink these, but not a bad idea I suppose as most cards with a full-cover do tend to sink the chokes.

    I'd say as long as the actual VRMs are making contact you should be fine. (The VRMs are the little black chips to the right of the larger square gray chokes). But if you're going to go through the trouble of taking it apart then you might as well get a sheet of fujipoly and re-do the whole thing. Good thermal tape can knock off over 10c depending on the situation - (my 290x saw a huge improvement in VRM temps using the fujipoly tape).
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2015

  5. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Still looks like it's not only missing at the chokes but not really abundantly present on the VRMs...
     
  6. nzweers

    nzweers Master Guru

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    Thanks for thinking along. I might actually HAVE to replace all the thermal pad gap fillers, I'm not sure if they are reusable. They are soft and been compressed for at least many weeks. Not sure if they will make proper contact again.

    Anyway, I was thinking of not removing the heatsink at all and squeezing the 1.5mm thermal pad gap filler from the side into the gap between the chips and the cooler. I will have to leave the plastic sticker protection on that way. Which I hope won't melt :) And will probably act as an isolator. But hey, it should still provide better cooling than without it. I hope. Right now, there's nothing on them and there isn't even an air flow.
     
  7. nzweers

    nzweers Master Guru

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    Found two more pics, this time of X4 instead of the X3 which also has pads on the grey chips:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  8. haz_mat

    haz_mat Guest

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    Yeah it looks like the line of rectangular black chips between the chokes and the first few memory chips is not covered at all. But I do not think these are the primary VRM chips, those look like they are to the right of the chokes and appear to be properly cooled.

    These other chips may just be a set of capacitors for each phase or something that isn't necessary to heatsink. With the way the heatsink above that area bends upwards to accommodate the chokes, I think it might be difficult to cool these. Airflow through that area will be practically non-existent, so the only way I can think to get cooling on those would be to use a metal shim with thermal tape on either side - or maybe stack up several mm worth of thermal tape, but I don't know how well that would work.

    My 10+ years of experience building my own computers tells me this is a bad idea. Either leave it be or do it right is my opinion on this kind of stuff.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2015

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