No problem, best of luck. The 80A looks the best, most practical and easiest
to fit of all the VGA coolers. I only picked up the 50 because I wandered
into Maplins and it was half price. If I had payed full I would have gone
for the 80A.

You won't regret it.


J.


"Andrew Lee" wrote in message
...
I've ordered the 80A from Overclockers.co.uk, and I'm certain it will work
with my configuration (Abit KX7-333R mobo). I've got a tube of thermal
grease left over from the Zalman Flower Cooler, so I'll add that on when
I'm
applying the stuff.

Thanks again, your posts have been a great help :-)

Andy.

"John Smith" wrote in message
...
First of all, make sure you get the rigth Zalman VGA cooler for your
board?
I have the '50' and it just barely fits due to the position of my
Northbridge - even then I had to fix it without the risers. They have
the
80
and the 80A for your card dependent upon the transistors on the VGA card
and
also things like the location of the Northbridge, Memory slots on your
mobo.

I think the 80A is the better model - it fits 'upwards' rather than
'downwards' - but you should double check Zalman's site.

For cleaning the chip you can buy special cleaner from the link below.
Alot
of people use nail varnish remover.

If your card is a typical Geforce it will be a black rubbery material
which
will mostly just pull off. I simply scraped the gunk off with my
finger-nails and then used the tip of a fine screw-driver to finish
scraping
the stuff off until it looked nice and clean. After that I simply
applied
a
nice dollop of thermal grease to my VGA chip and leveled it off using a
thin
piece of plastic.

There are 'nutters' who will use special fluid to clean off the chip,
then
they apply thermal grease and then they clean it off again, repeat that
2
or
3 times because they somehow think this does wonders for connectivity
between the chip and the heatsink. They claim doing so makes sure
microscopic indentations on the top of the chip and heatsink are filled
by
the thermal paste - of course, if they are microscopic how can they
tell.
They never provide any engineering proof to back up their arguments
anyhow.
Personally, I think they need locking up.

Get yourself some decent thermal grease - the two TINY packets that come
with the Zalman will not be enough. The gurus recommend Artic Silver. I
use
Antec's thermal grease which also contains silver because silver is
better
for heat conductivity. Make sure you get the grease as the grease does
not
set solid.

You can order Artic Silver from http://www.overclockers.co.uk or you can
pop
into Maplins to buy the Antec stuff - it is £8.99 in Maplins and the
Artic
Silver comes in a variety of prices on OCers. PC World set a copper
thermal
grease for about a fiver.

J.


"Andrew Lee" wrote in message
...
Cheers for that John, I've just gone and ordered the Zalman cooler.
Just
one
other question - how do I clean up the chip when I've removed the
heatsink?
Is there anything in particular I should use?

Andy.

"John Smith" wrote in message
...
I had the same thing on my Geforce 4460MX. If you look at the bottom
of
the
black clip it has a little - tiny in fact - end which can be
squeezed
together.

If you squeeze these together - your fingers will do it but pilers
can
be
safer and easier - and then push gently upwards they will suddenly
fly
out
with some force.

Be careful, when I say they fly out they fly out at speed and the
first
time
I did this I was very glad that the clips were facing away from my
face
as
I
think they could cause a nasty injury to eyes and bits and pieces so
be
warned. They are spring loaded.

Once you have them out it is very easy to see how they work, to pop
them
back in and out but that first time it looks as if they are
permanently
attached to the board.

Once the pins/clips are removed you need to carefully wriggle your
fan.
I
had to twist mine and ended up using quite some force to pull the
fan
off
the chip as it was stuck on strongly. Clean up the chip, apply some
thermal
grease and attach the Zalman cooler. Putting a Zalman VGA and Zalman
7000
CPU cooler in my PC were the best investments I have ever made.


J.

"Andrew Lee" wrote in
message
...
Hi everybody,

I've just bought and fitted a Zalman Flower Cooler and 300W Silent
PSU

for
my Athlon XP system. They've cut down on a fair bit of system
noise,
but
now, all I can hear is the whoosh of my Creative Geforce4 Ti4400
card,
and
it's already driving me nuts.

I haven't got the money for a new card (the Creative's only a year
old
anyway), so what I'd like to do is get a Zalman ZM80A-HP silent
heat
pipe
cooler for the card. The thing is, I can't work out how to remove
the
existing Creative heatsink from the card - it's fastened onto the
card
with
these two black 'pins' (for want of a better word) with not a
screw
in
sight. How do I remove the heatsink, assuming it is possible in
the
first
place?

And once the heatsink has been removed, is the ZM80A actually
compatible
with the Creative card? I'd be grateful if anyone with experience
of
combining the two could give me a few pointers in the right
direction.
Cheers.

Andy.