How can I delid or disassemble my v7800 video card to clean its fan?

2

The fan of my V7800 ATI FirePro videocard has recently gotten insanely noisy, and I suspect it's the dust in the fan. I took it out and tried to open it by loosening all screws, which took off the metal backplate, but the big shim or lid covering the other side and the fan are still there and I see no way to get it loose.

I found several posts on replacing the fan or even about cleaning up and one mentioned using a knife, but none was explicit. Though on this post on overclock.net the picture clearly shows it is possible and the user there managed to get the heat down after cleaning.

Any ideas on how to get the fan from from the shim/cover of the card?

Abel

Posted 2014-06-20T15:41:42.540

Reputation: 1 280

1Its very possible its being held by glue. Without an image of the card without the backplate on its hard to tell. – Ramhound – 2014-06-20T15:43:49.370

@Ramhound: This is how the card looks and how it is currently laying on my table: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/firepro-professional-graphics-gpu-radeon,10296.html (first image is the V7800). And if it is indeed glue, then I assume there is not much that I can do... But how do others (as in the mentioned thread) do such disassembling?

– Abel – 2014-06-20T15:54:49.350

You removed larger and smaller screws, correct? But I do believe I see glue/tape strips. – Ramhound – 2014-06-20T15:57:46.250

@Ramhound: correct, I removed all screws I could find. A while ago, when the Dell support was here (it's a T7500 Workstatin) to replace faulty memory he said that the fan could not be replaced (or cleaned), but on the internet, on many forums they say "just replace the fan". So if others can do it... But maybe they use force, or really use a knife, or both, I don't know. – Abel – 2014-06-20T16:10:37.713

I asked you a specific question. Do you have a pile of small screws and a pile of large screws? If you don't then you didn't remove all the screws. – Ramhound – 2014-06-20T16:50:07.587

@Ramhound: maybe I misunderstood. I had 4 small screws and 10 or so larger ones. I know there are more screws, but I cannot access them, they are behind the shim that I first need to get rid of. – Abel – 2014-06-20T21:08:27.670

Answers

2

I managed to get the fan out of my V7800 Firepro. The heat sink was indeed stuck to the board with double sided sticky tape!

Solution: Plug the card in and power on the system until the card heats up (I waited until the safety circuits switched the card off) then turn the system off and quickly unplug it, remove the screws and gently pull the heat sync off of the board with a slow steady pressure.

Note: you will need to remove all of the screws that you can see first, including the 4 screws holding a spring loaded bracket to the board (the GPU is on the other side of the board where the bracket is, and the bracket holds the heat sink in good contact with the GPU).

Another Note: You will also need to have some thermal grease on hand before reattaching the heat sink to the GPU after you replace the fan.

user2121874

Posted 2014-06-20T15:41:42.540

Reputation: 171

Seems like a very sensible and creative way of doing it. While I meanwhile bought a new card, I'll probably still try this, so that I can sell the card for some $$$ that it's still worth ;). – Abel – 2014-09-28T22:22:43.590

Hopefully it will be useful to someone else as well. I found your question first before experimenting trying to remove the heat-sink. – user2121874 – 2014-09-30T04:20:35.107

Asked: 2014-06-20T15:41:42.540

Viewed: 1 062 times

Active: 2014-09-28T20:56:06.870