Sapphire HD 7850 Cooler

[sberganini]

Hello,

I have just received my new Sapphire HD 7850 (non overclocked). I'd like to remove the cooling fan and plastic shroud (but not the GPU cooler) to expose the circuit board. I want to see if there might be space to install some small heatsinks on the VRM. When I inspect the card I can't see any way to safely remove just the shroud and fan. Anyone have any guidance. Thanks!

 

[danawesome89]

Hello,

I have just received my new Sapphire HD 7850 (non overclocked). I'd like to remove the cooling fan and plastic shroud (but not the GPU cooler) to expose the circuit board. I want to see if there might be space to install some small heatsinks on the VRM. When I inspect the card I can't see any way to safely remove just the shroud and fan. Anyone have any guidance. Thanks!

Sorry, can't help with that myself, I never mess around with things like that.

However, have you tried overclocking without doing any of that?

I have the same card, and I was able to overclock very well with the stock cooler.

 

[sberganini]

Thanks. I do plan to overclock with the stock cooler. But, I've read various posts here and elsewhere about the VRM chips being the most delicate and thermally sensitive components of the card, yet they have no heatsinks or direct cooling (other than as a side effect of the stock cooler). I just thought I'd see if these small heatsinks were easily installed before intalling the new card. But, I have been unable to find any help regrding removing the cooler fan/shroud. I'm beginning to think this may be more trouble than it's worth. I am anxious to get the new card up and running.

 

[danawesome89]

I would just give the card a shot before going through all that trouble.

I do have trouble getting a big overclock on my memory (mine is only stable at 1250, although I have heard other people have gotten it to max out CCC at 1450).

My core clock easily maxes out CCC overdrive at 1050, and is completely stable and runs very cool. I have pushed it a lot farther using Sapphire Trixx, but had to bump up the voltage a little. I think got it fairly stable at 1160 core.

Honestly, I did not see a very significant performance jump with memory overclocks anyway. I ran some benches at 1160 core and 1350 memory and did not really see a difference between that and 1160 core and 1250 memory.

By the way, at 1160 core mine was performing close to a stock GTX 580!

I really didn't need that much of a crazy overclock though, and occasionally I would have stability issues in certain games, so I just use CCC Overdrive at 1050/1250.

It is very fast, runs cool, and is perfectly stable.

 

[sberganini]

I would just give the card a shot before going through all that trouble.

I do have trouble getting a big overclock on my memory (mine is only stable at 1250, although I have heard other people have gotten it to max out CCC at 1450).

My core clock easily maxes out CCC overdrive at 1050, and is completely stable and runs very cool. I have pushed it a lot farther using Sapphire Trixx, but had to bump up the voltage a little. I think got it fairly stable at 1160 core.

Honestly, I did not see a very significant performance jump with memory overclocks anyway. I ran some benches at 1160 core and 1350 memory and did not really see a difference between that and 1160 core and 1250 memory.

By the way, at 1160 core mine was performing close to a stock GTX 580!

I really didn't need that much of a crazy overclock though, and occasionally I would have stability issues in certain games, so I just use CCC Overdrive at 1050/1250.

It is very fast, runs cool, and is perfectly stable.

Thanks for the info on your card's performance. It sounds like you have a great candidate for high overclocking since you're achieving pretty high core clocking without much overvolting. I have read many posts here and elsewhere and it seems the predominant view is that overclocking memory doesn't really have a dramatic effect. Many folks seem to think 5500 is about the best.

 

[danawesome89]

Yeah, from what I have seen a lot of people have had really good success with overclocking the 7850. I think most of the 78/7900 cards are hugely underclocked at stock from what they really can handle.

Again, I agree that I saw no real measurable improvement with memory overclocking on this card. All it really did was decrease my stability without any benefit.

For overclocking it, I would recommend seeing how far you can push the core without touching the memory, and then maybe see if you can push the memory a little once you hit the limit on your core.

Edit: I also should mention that when I wanted to try going beyond CCC Overdrive limits (including overvolting), the only program that would let me do it was Sapphire Trixx. I am not sure if there have been any updates to the drivers or to other programs that have changed this, but this might save you time. For example, I usually would use MSI Afterburner, but for some reason it would not let me go beyond 1050 core and would not let me overvolt on this card.