Is it worth the effort to remove factory heatsinks & apply new thermal grease? I was contemplating whether or not take apart a GTX 275 & remove a NB heatsink to apply some aftermarket thermal grease. Will it make a noticable difference?
I'd do it for the NB heatsink if its been heating up a lot lately. The nForce chipsets are notorious for running hot, so if you don't have any spare TIM laying around, you could just strap a small fan to it that would help cool it down better. I need to do it with mine personally, its running way too hot for my liking. For the video card, it depends on if you feel like the TIM is getting old or the temps are too hot from what they were when you first got the card. Btw, overclocking voids the warranty just the same as removing the stock heatsink. Some companies don't mind if you overclock, but the majority do and the warranty is void the instant you overclock. Just fyi.
Unless its running exceptionally hotter than other similar gpus with the same stock heatsink i wouldnt bother.. Theres been some cases with nvidia NBs that needed to be reseated with proper grease to bring temps down from 70C+ to the normal 40c range.. But was mostly due to bad mounting.. I'd say.. unless your bothering to go for an aftermarket cooler it propably wont be needed.. but i can recommand taking off the plastic cover on most gpu coolers today to remove dust from the cooler itself.. usually stores a nice bit of dust inside that shell..
i did it to mine and its a piece of pi$$ to do on a gtx 275. my gtx 260 was a nightmere with that fully shrowed heatsink. because of how easy it is i would say its worth doing, altho the tim used on my card did look half decent but they had used to much (prolly a friday afternoon job lol). i also trimed the thermal pads on the ram so there was no excess.
