Grubby Graphics

A little job to keep my hands and mind busy, it is a cleaning job on an ATI HD 5770 Radeon Graphics card that is bunged up with dust, I bought it on eBay and knew it was dirty from the single, blurred, photo that the seller had included in the listing. It was funny, in the description he had put "seller refurbished" but when it arrived it was obvious it had never been cleaned, perhaps in it's lifetime.

A graphics card processor unit (GPU) is similar in some ways to a CPU and is cooled by a heat sink and a fan, the heatsink has thermal compound applied to take up the air gaps between GPU and the heat pipes. The first order of business was to use the compressor to blow out as much dust as possible, but then it was down to disassembly, paint brush and elbow grease. 

The dry old thermal paste and enough DNA to create a new species had to be removed.

Close up of the cleaned GPU.

The cleaned copper block and heat pipes and heatsink, reattached to the plastic cowl. Then fresh thermal paste is applied to the GPU and everything is clamped back together. This is quite a fiddly job for my fat fingers, some tiny screws that can not be lost, which is why I use the bar mat on my bench.

Everything assembled and into the bench PC for testing.

A satisfying job, bringing a grubby graphics card back to almost new condition. This card will be used as a backup, a "known good" card for testing motherboards and perhaps at some point it will be let go and released back into the wilds, back to eBay with an honest seller refurbished description and some decent photos.

If you have a PC that has been running for a few years, it would be wise to unplug it, remove the side cover and use compressed air to blow out all your skin cells. The PC has an intake fan or two that will pull in quite an amazing amount of dust, and over time the cooling fins of heatsinks, and the general surface mounted electronics and power supply, will become gummed up, just like the item above. When that happens the PC will run hotter, less efficiently, and is more prone to fail, so a little bit of cleaning will lengthen the life of the PC.

Ok, what is next I ask myself, what is next...