The fan atop the heatsink of my ATI Radeon 9000 Pro is beginning to conk out, so I had to swap it out for my old, and I mean old, Nvidia Vanta AGP card with only 16mb of ram! It's a trooper though. Anyhow, I'm considering purchasing an ATI 9800 Pro. They're relatively cheap now, and I suspect it's because you can barbeque with them, especially the Sapphire models, which is what I'm currently looking at. The solution? I'm looking at the Thermaltake Crystal Orb...

 

Question1: Any 9800 Pro owners out there? What have been your experiences with the card?

 

Question2: Anyone ever swapped out the stock heatsink of a video card? (Especially if the stock heatsink was originally attached with an adhesive...)

 

I use Nvidia FX-5900 presently

 

 

and to number 2 yes. Most problems with video cards start with a GPU fan failure so replacing the fan can extend the use of the card.

 

daybreak,

 

Go to newegg.com and read the reviews for the Radeon 9800 Pro. Then click

on the manufacturers site and read their forums. You'll find there are A LOT of

complaints about the cooler and overheating! Since you will be replacing the

cooler ($35 - $40) you might as well get a comparably priced card. I bought

the GeForce 6600 256 Mb from Asus. It has the Nvidea chipset which NOLF &

F.E.A.R. recommend. Also I read in a post by Seymour at TGF that the Radeon

9000 series will not be manufactured after the year end holidays. Thus the

discounted prices. I'd rather have a card whose support will be around for a

while, besides if you remove their cooler you void the warrenty. Check the

threads under PC Tech Talk at TGF! Good luck!

I'm fully aware of the problems the 9800 pros have with heat and I'm a huge fan of New Egg! We're definitely on the same page. Actually, I'm attempting to figure out when I'm going to build a new computer. If I were to do so today, I'd definitely buy a 6600Gt, but in the meantime, the 9800 pro is AGP, which is what I currently have, and it's only 127 bucks OEM. No matter what, I will replace the stock heatsink on the 9800 Pro, that's not even debatable. I just wanted to get some feedback from people who have done so already, or people who own the card to get a sense of the failure rates. The Thermaltake Crystal Orb is only $8.99 most places, so buying one of those along with the card is no big deal.

 

http://www.2cooltek.com/ati9800.html I'm wondering why he used Arctic Silver Epoxy instead of the regular Arctic Silver 5 for the heatsink since it already has pins...otherwise, it looks relatively easy to replace the heatsink with this particular Thermaltake model. I'm not going to overclock either.

 

Thanks everyone!