Help w/ removing 4850 heatsink

Hey everyone, I just recently built a new computer with the help of these forums around july or august of last year. My graphics card of choice was an Asus 4850 with 512mb of memory on a Asus Rampage mobo coupled with 4 sticks of corsair 1gb ram and a Wolfdale E8400. She's been running extremely smooth (much smoother than any computer i've owned on a Microsoft platform in the past) on Vista Ultimate 64 bit since then. I've just recently had the problem of my 4850 running INSANELY hot, around 85c-90c IDLE and getting around 105c-115c under full load, and im assuming it's been shutting off recently when it got much higher than that. So I purchased an aftermarket heatsink, the Accelero S1 Rev.2, along with the turbo fans. Sorry fr that long introduction but I think it's good to list the components of a computer before you ask for a fix. anyway.

here's my problem, on EVERY guide i've found on google (and i've been searching for about 2 hours now atleast), it says unscrew the bottom screws and just lift the heatsink off. For some reason my stock heatsink seems literally STUCK onto the card, i obviously don't want to pull too hard because i don't want to damage the card. So, i've noticed what seems to be like some spongey white things connecting the card and the heatsink, and im assuming these are some sort of thermal tape. Im not sure though. Anyways, has anyone ran into this problem that can shed some light on this? I want to get my love dumplin' (my computer) running the way she should. I'm (pretty) positive i've unscrewed all the screws, i believe there were 8 'large' ones and 4 smaller ones that held the bracket onto the card. So yeah, the heatsink is stuck and all the screws are unscrewed and i have no idea how to get that thing off...

So that's the problem, I'm completely stumped and my card is sitting on my table just waiting for that gargantuan afterkmarket heatsink. Thanks for reading the post guys, and thanks for the help in advance, Tom's Hardware has always been so informative to me even when i'm just cruising around looking at posts. So thanks for that too!

-Daniel

Howdy and thanks for replying so quickly. That sounds kind of dangerous to the computer and the card. Heating it up real quickly and being able to take it out of the computer and unscrew the screws swiftly enough to hope that the paste and sticky pads are "melted" just seems sort of sketchy, no offense. Do you think there are any other ways? The cards back in the box, and its still running around 85c idle.

If you turn the card on and let it run for a few mins just on the desktop to warm it up...shut down the pc and remove the card then LIGHTLY twist and pull the heatsink will come right off...

If you still think that is sketchy i believe a blowtorch is a great idea...

Yeah sorry about bashin your idea earlier, i ran the game for about ten minutes and then shut my computer down immediatley and the heatsink came off. I did have to tug at it a little bit, and i was suprised to see the thermal past crusty at such a high temperature as it was so hot to the touch( was ~105c when i shut it down). This worked perfectly, now i just have to re-assemble the card and the new heatsink. Mmmmm beer.
- d