 This will be a quick heat sink removal guide for the GTX 580. Now there's a reason that I have an empty package for a screwdriver sitting next to it and that's that I actually had to run out and buy a screwdriver in order to get the heat sink off. So I had to get a Torx number six, oh no, a T6, it's not, they don't use number for Torx apparently. So I had to go get a T6 bit precision screwdriver because the majority of the screws on the back of this video card actually do use a Torx which looks like a star if you're not familiar with it. Hopefully I can get the camera to focus on the GPU there so you can see that. So I've gone ahead and loaded the correct bit into my screwdriver already. So I will put that there and then that is how I will remove all the screws from the back. You don't have to remove the screws on the shroud like here. You only have to remove all the little screws on the back including the Phillips head ones here and that is how we will remove it so bear with me no more. So if you just want to replace the stock thermal compound with something else, this is about as far as you go. So you can see here the GF110 GPU is right there and then that's its corresponding cooling plate on the other side. So I actually want to take the cooler apart which means I'm going to have to delve in a little bit further so I'm going to have to start undoing some of these other screws in here because I want to have a look at the vapor chamber cooler that is responsible for keeping the GTX580 so cool at idle as well as under load. Now something to be aware of is if you are replacing your stock thermal compound, I guess we could call this a thermal compound removal guide too. So two birds with one stone. You should use something lint free to wipe all of the thermal compound off of both surfaces. Use some 99% isopropyl or rubbing alcohol to remove everything. Put on your new thermal compound bearing in mind you should apply quite a bit more to a GPU than you would to a CPU because it's a very large area. It's got a big heat spreader on it. You want to make sure it's covered and then you put it back on. Now do not replace the pads on the RAM or any of the VRM because they are not thin. They are not intended so you can... You're not really going to be able to see that are you? You can kind of see they actually have some depth to them. The reason for that is there are manufacturing tolerances when they're affixing all of these components to the PCB so they're not always going to be at exactly the same height. You need a little bit of variance in terms of where they make contact. So that is why they do use a thicker pad for those parts. So completely disassembling the cooler from that point was actually the simplest step. All I had to do was remove... how many are there? Seven screws. So there's one on the corner here, one here, one here, one here, and then there's three more on the bottom. This is the plastic shroud that goes over top. And it's actually hard to tell when you're looking at the plastic shroud over the metal base that they're made of different materials because the finish on them is so close. Nvidia's done a terrific job of making the card aesthetically appealing. But this is actually a metal heat spreader here on the base. And the metal heat spreader is what's responsible for doing the cooling of the RAM as well as the VRM. So you can see it's going to get a fair bit of incidental airflow from the fan itself, which you can clearly see here. Alright. And so yeah, that does all of that. Now the vapor chamber. This is where the magic happens. Now with the GTX 580, I don't know if you'll... You know what, let me go get my 580 and then... So there's my 480 for contrast. You can kind of see inside where it's got a similar fin arrangement. And then it's got these five massive heat pipes that are carrying heat away from where the GPU is located, right there, to the aluminum fin. So the vapor chamber is actually a fairly similar technology to a heat pipe in that you're basically using a gaseous, liquidy substance inside. Sometimes it's water, sometimes it's something else. And you've got it at a very, very low pressure in there, which allows it to basically boil with very little heat input. And then it will evaporate away, and then it'll find a cooler part of the vapor chamber, or in this case, a heat pipe. So it'll go away from the hot GPU, come up to the cooler aluminum fins, which are being cooled by the fan. Then it'll turn back into a liquid, and it'll be wicked away by the inside of the heat pipe back down to the GPU. So the vapor chamber works similarly, except that it's kind of like a big, huge, flat, thin heat pipe. So it takes all the heat from the GPU right here and disperses it very evenly over this big surface area. So then NVIDIA throws some aluminum fins on there, and boom, you've got a very potent cooler. Now, vapor chambers are, at this time, more expensive than implementing heat pipes, but it is, from what we can see, a more elegant solution overall. So there is the vapor chamber design. So I'm going to throw this guy back together, and thank you for checking out my video on the disassembly and, I guess, thermal compound replacement on the GTX 580.