Battleangel

Finally got around to remove the old fan and heatsink from my Radeon 9700. Cleaned all the contact surfaces with some acetone based solvent I had at hand and got to work on the Zalman ZM80D-HP. I never imagined it would be easy but still it was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Lots of parts that have a front and a back to them, i.e. inviting disaster. And with a lot of itty-bitty bolts and washers that I guess one has to be Korean (Zalman is made in Korea) to appreciate fully. Also, for some reason the thermal grease always feels like it wont be enough. But obviously it always is.

I had assumed the ram heatsinks were all the same and happened to mount the back ram heatsinks on the front ram chips. Ooops. Also got a slightly bent pipe. No idea of how that happened. But I managed to bend it back into shape in the end.

I’m not so sure how well this is going to work, but given that I have a fairly plain card and I’m not overclocking I don’t think it matters if I screwed up with the installation a bit. At least it’s quiet and the GPU hopefully wont burn up. That’s enough for me.