Butchering a Rx 480 for Science

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Last week I got a new Rx 480 on sale. When I went to install it I found it wouldn't fit. I first thought the problem was the backplate; the card was going under one of my Nvidia cards, and it appeared that the extra height of the backplate made the card just slightly too tall. Unfortunately, to remove the backplate I had to take the card completely apart; worse, the real issue turned out to be the screws holding the heat sink to the GPU were too long. :rolleyes: There are six total, luckily I was able to replace the four main screws with screws from my 1080 that I water cooled. There are two other screws that attach to the heat sink near the power delivery part of the PCB ( I think, don't quote me on that :D ). Right now I have taken them out, but would like to replace them with shorter screws if I could figure out what size of screw to get. :p I have underclocked this thing as I'm not really interested in running it full out so it's not likely to be a problem, but I'd like to replace them at some point. I should also mention that at before I figured out the screws were the problem, I thought the fan shroud might be too wide, so I took that off and rigged up a standard 120mm case fan to the heat sink for cooling. :eek: I haven't bothered to fix that yet.

I would not have gone to all that trouble if I had been able to return the card, but for some reason that wasn't an option. :mad: Watch out for that if you like to shop the Newegg ShellShockers like I do. I'm not sure I'll be buying from Newegg anymore after this, but if I do I'll be on the lookout for that. Anyway I'm happy to report the card is doing well on MilkyWay. :cool:
 

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I forgot to take some pictures but I reversed the procedure tonight. Temps dropped by maybe three or four degrees, nothing earth shattering. They might have improved more if I'd bothered to redo the thermal paste, but I didn't feel like it. :D The card performed well throughout this little (mis)adventure, so if you run into a problem with a failing fan or something, you can now rig something up with confidence. :D
 
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