Accelero X2 Owners

[OVERKILL]

I've heard that people are having problems with the adhesive and the X2.

Any suggestions on how install this thing smoothly?

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Oh that would be me

Don't use the ram sticky pads -- use the pink ones that come with your card originally. That's all there is to it. It's a little harder since they don't have glue but it's worth it, IMO. the adhesive is super glue. For all my efforts, I could NOT remove the accelero x2 from my x1900xt. I bought another one for my CF card and did what I just suggester and it comes off when I want it to.

 

[Dom1105]

Ummm I allways find best results when i use Artic silver 5. on any new parts i get that require Thermal paste I immediately get the rag and wipe them clean and apply the articl silver 5. this will alomst allways improve the cooling. and you can get a 1 oz tube of artic silver 5 which should last you about 40 CPUs and coolers and it olny costs $5.99

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: Dom1105
Ummm I allways find best results when i use Artic silver 5. on any new parts i get that require Thermal paste I immediately get the rag and wipe them clean and apply the articl silver 5. this will alomst allways improve the cooling. and you can get a 1 oz tube of artic silver 5 which should last you about 40 CPUs and coolers and it olny costs $5.99

Unfortunately, you suggestion does not hold for the Accelero X2. The space between the memory chips and heatsink requires some kind of thermal pad, paste will only work for the gpu itself but not the ram.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: OVERKILL
I've heard that people are having problems with the adhesive and the X2.

Any suggestions on how install this thing smoothly?

Line it up correctly the first time? If you mis-align the cooler with the grey thermal pads, you are in for a world of hurt.

 

[hmorphone]

Do what gersson suggested and reuse the stock memory pads. You may also be able to use the new pads with a thin smear of AS5 on them instead. I went with the first method and it worked well. While I would normally agree to replace the stock stuff with AS5, I didn't do that on mine because I saw that people were getting almost as good results just using what it came with.

 

[Bull Dog]

This has been said before but I'll say it again. DO NOT use AS5 on ram chips. Its unnecessary and you have a very good chance of killing your card (well really the ram chip but.....) doing that.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: Bull Dog
This has been said before but I'll say it again. DO NOT use AS5 on ram chips. Its unnecessary and you have a very good chance of killing your card (well really the ram chip but.....) doing that.

i assume you say killing sue the capacitance od AS5.
well if thats the issue why not try artic ceramiqe. newegg acidently shipped me some when i ordered AS5 sometime back and i absolutly love it. its completly non conductive and has no capacitance

 

[hmorphone]

My bad, artic ceramique would certainly be the safest choice.

 

[Captante]

I've actually stopped using Artic silver completely & only use Ceramique for all applications now... it doesn't perfeorm quite as well as AS5, but in most applications the difference is very small plus its safer to work with.

 

[ronnn]

I just put mine together and don't intend to take it apart. If I have to, I will use the hairdryer trick. Must say the x2 works great and am very happy with it.

edit: just remembered I took it apart after a couple of days to apply as5. Improved a whole degree celcius. Also used the x2 ram pads at that time as the stock ones sort of had it.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: OVERKILL
I've heard that people are having problems with the adhesive and the X2.

Any suggestions on how install this thing smoothly?

Yes here's a suggestion (my buddy did this and I felt like a dumbass afterwards for not figuring it out myself): don't try to take the adhesive RAM pads off the plastic backing and then install them.

Here's how you install them without lots of hassle. The RAM pads come in pairs. Line one of them up with a RAM chip on the card, then bend the plastic the RAM pads are stuck to in half, so that you remove the plastic backing on half of one of the RAM chips and set it sticky side first onto a RAM chip so it sticks to the RAM first. then take off the top part. so the other sticky side is exposed.

If you try to remove the plastic cover from the RAM pads (which are sticky on both sides) then you need to pass it back and forth between your fingers and it gets stuck to everything and is a general pain in the arse to install.

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As usual, clean off the thermal adhesive Arctic Cooling provides (though it does look like some nicer silver stuff) and use arctic silver 5.

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You can also use the stock RAM pads if you think you're going to have to take the cooling off in the future.