I replaced the stock heat sink with Cooler masters "cool viva". I had to tweak around to make it fit in my micor atx box. After spending 3 hours I managed to fit it in and now I find that there is no Video output coming out of the card. If I have the card plugged in, then even the M/B's VGA is not working and the machine is not booting !!

Have I just wasted 130$ down the drain ??

How do I figure out what is wrong and how to fix it ?

Help highly appreciated ..

thanks,
Saravanan

You need to carefully remove the heatsink and check that it hasnt shorted any of the components out, look at resistors, capacitors, and ic's for potential contact points. I work in the electronics trade and have seen plenty of similar problems so let me know if u need anymore help.


Hope u find this useful. Rik.

I was under the impression that thermal pastes are supposedly "non-conductor" of electricity. But guess I am wrong. I used the paste that came with the coolmaster cool viva.

I removed the heat sink and cleaned it up and put the stock heat sink back but still the same result.


I have sent it back to MSI. Lets see if they can fix it ! I am having my fingers crossed !

Thermal paste is not an electrical insulator at all, if u wish to put your heatsink on your replacement card (keeping my fingers crossed for ya) then I suggest you use as little thermal paste as possible, if I was fitting it I would put the paste on the graphics processor and NOT the heatsink and put a thin, even spread. If you can figure out the exact area of the heatsink that contacts the processor then it'd be a good idea to cover the rest of the underside of it with electrical insulating tape.

Good luck. Rik.

Thanks ! I will try that and keep you posted.

- saro