Accelero's insulation tape & shorts warning — how serious is the problem?

NewbieOne · October 25, 2020

I am referring to step 4 in the Preparation section of Accelero Xtreme 3 manual:

https://support.arctic.ac/index.php?p=ax3-rev2

Before reading this, I glued the heatsinks on all three colums. However, there was no difference visually — all three columns looked the same. There was also tape residue from my stock cooler on the third column.

I likewise applied heatsinks on pretty much anything that stood out from the card's board — stuff the illustrations from the manual show left uncovered.

Am I about to fry the card as soon as I plug it in? Or do I just risk the card not working and me not knowing why? Or nothing really?

NewbieOne · October 25, 2020

Thanks! I used the included glue. I put it, along with some variety/size of heatsink or other, on practically everything that protruded from the card's board. Those were mostly rubber-coated, but in some cases there was naked metal, I think. I didn't even know (after so many years of Sunday tinktering) that a heatsink could cause a short at all.

Any serious risk I could permanently kill the card like this?

NewbieOne · October 25, 2020

Well, I didn't burn the card. I was actually surprised when it started without issues the first time (shows what kind of pessimist I am ;)). The mount clearly isn't ideal, mostly because I put heatsinks on capacitors, which collides with the main heatsink, but it works, even though you can see the metal bracket on the CPU is quite heavily bent. But it survived Furmark without exceeding 58 Celsius. Probably would have got a better result with a more proper mount and without putting the heatsink on and off several times with the preapplied paste. But if Furmark can't make it break 60 degrees Celsius, with the fans never exceeding 26%, I guess I won't see 90-ish temperatures in games after OC-ing. The goal was silence, in any case, and I love the way Furmark didn't make me hear the card. What's left for me to do is the overkill CPU cooler (TC14PE + 2x TY-141 for a puny 9600KF) and five P14s on the case, and I think I'll have a completelysilent gaming rig.