Installation

The installation of this cooler requires no tools, except for a Phillips head screwdriver to remove screws on the stock cooler. You’ll need a fairly steady hand though and a non-conductive surface to perform this modification.

To install the cooler, flip the X1900 card (applies to X1800 series as well). We see the following:

There are eight (8) screws that need to be removed. The smaller four in the center hold together the backplate and the place where the heatsink makes contact with the processor. The four outer larger screws hold the heatsink assembly to the board. We can deduce that the stock cooler is very large and heavy, since it takes that many screws to hold it to the board. Remove the screws and backplate, carefully remove the heatsink assembly from the card and flip the card over, you will see the GPU and its corresponding ram chips. Now you will need to remove the existing thermal compound with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol or acetone. Use either a q-tip or a paper towel, dip it in the alcohol or acetone, and then make sure it is wet, but not soaked. By this I mean that it is wet, yet does not drip. Then carefully wipe away the existing thermal material. Make sure your q-tip or paper towel only comes in contact with the core, and nothing else. Touching something else could result in damage to the card. Apply a rice grain sized drop of either the supplied Zalman thermal compound or comparable to the center. I used Arctic Silver 5. Here’s a size comparison of the two coolers:

ATI’s solution exhausts hot air out of the case, but has a smaller fan and no heatpipes, unlike the Zalman. A portion of ATI’s cooler is also aluminum, while as stated before, the Zalman is all-copper. We’ll see how it performs later in the review. Now let’s get back to the installation.


Here we see how smooth the cooler’s contact surface is. The smoother the surface, the better cooling will be. Zalman’s surface is well polished. ATI’s solution is rougher, and there are some noticeable marks from the milling process.