how do you remove the shroud on a sapphire 7970 to replace the fans?

[stag3]

so one of the fans on my sapphire 7970 OC are making a grinding noise, i took it out of the system to spray some air thru it and remove the dust buildup, when spinning the fan closest to the power connectors, it spins freely. the other makes a grinding noise and kinda stops like it freezes. i'll need to order a replacement 85mm fan. looks like i'll need to buy the pair from browsing ebay.

how do i remove the plastic shroud so i can swap the fans out? tried googling but didn't find anything. does it just pull straight off? the only thing i see underneath are maybe 2 tiny metal screws that may hold it in but not sure.

i'm guessing there's no diff between the 20 dollar replacement fans and 40 dollar replacement fans on ebay?

 

[MentalIlness]

What about this video....if the card is the same as yours. It is about 10 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7wxnmzSH4g

Unless you mean the plastic needs removed from the heatsink.

 

[stag3]

ah looks like i have to remove the entire thing, then remove the shroud
was hoping to just remove the plastic shroud so i could swap the fans out easily ugh

 

[BIGTom-]

Hey stag3,

I have the Sapphire 7970 Vapor-X and to replace the fans, the entire heatsink assembly will need to be detached from the PCB which will allow access to the fan shroud mounting screws.

Please be sure to have proper items to remove old thermal grease and reapply new thermal grease to the core prior to reassembling. There is one thermal pad with adhesive for each of the memory chips that will probably remain attached to the bottom of the heatsink assembly.


Hope this helps,

BIGTom-

 

[stag3]

got it, thanks, i ordered these replacement fans for 20

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271763362619

looks like there's firstD and powerlogic as far as fan replacements

i also picked up some GC-extreme thermal compound

 

[stag3]

ok so i took it apart today, swapped the fans out, and put on the gc-extreme compound.
everything is good so far, super quiet now, idles @ 33c, before this it was idling @ 37c.
probably due to 1 fan being shit + crappy stock compound.

the way they put the compound on from sapphire, holy crap there was so much, oozed well over the side of the gpu and was all over the place.