My most complex surgery I ever did

[ET3D]

Yesterday I spent two hours opening a Radeon 5850, cleaning and lubing it. It was noisy as hell and now it's quiet, so time well spent.

 

[Spykezxp]

Did you happen to document your progress? Like take pictures of the before, during and after? How about recording fan speeds and temps for the before and after? What did you use to clean it?
Just thinking if someone comes here looking for information on how to do what you just did, by having such information attached, it may very well help that person make a decision on doing it themselves versus bringing it to a "Computer Repair" shop.

 

[Jad Chaar]

Did you happen to document your progress? Like take pictures of the before, during and after? How about recording fan speeds and temps for the before and after? What did you use to clean it?
Just thinking if someone comes here looking for information on how to do what you just did, by having such information attached, it may very well help that person make a decision on doing it themselves versus bringing it to a "Computer Repair" shop.

Those details would have been pretty cool to have.

 

[ET3D]

I didn't think of taking pictures, and wasn't really in a position to test it, since I don't even have my desktop PC running since I moved (using my wife's laptop at home). It's a card that I stopped using because of the noise and moved back to a 5750, never got around to try cleaning it. I wanted to use it at work, and the fan was really so bad that it was unusable (very loud noise and not spinning well), so I figured I'll try cleaning it. So I don't really have before and after figures.

Anyway, there are guides for this, which I found on Google. Too lazy to search for them again at this moment, but this video shows how to open the fan and lube it.

It was difficult to open. There are 25 screws which need to be removed, on the back, side and internally. They were hard to open (except for the spring loaded heat sink ones) and I ended up using pliers as a lever to turn the screwdriver, which helped for all but one. That one was a fan screw and the head wore out a little when I tried to turn it. I ended up hammering it with the pliers and that loosened it enough to open it.

There was a lot of caked dirt inside the card. I removed most of it with my fingers, then used tissue paper to clean the rest of the dirt and dust as well as the dry thermal paste from the GPU and heat sink (opening the card separates the heat sink from the GPU, so putting new thermal paste is pretty much a must). It's not 100% clean, but it's clean enough.

I hope this helps.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Congrats on your success.