while massively loading the system (2 instances of Prime95 and RTHDRIBL), the video card temperatures went up to 83C, and BSODed every time it got that hot. time for a face lift.

this is the stock nVidia design cooler.

tons of fins, heatpipe, turbine fan.

back plate acts as a heatspreader for the memory chips.

XFX uses these weird thermal transfer pads... they are fairly thick, white paste with some interlaced threads... nothing like i have ever seen before.

same goes for the heatsink - except for the GPU - that had a regular white thermal paste.

the paste on the GPU is applied fairly even, but i guess that was not enough.

GF-7800-GTX-A2 GPU, all nicely cleaned up.

this is all the thermal tape material i collected - nastiness! you can see the texture of the threads showing.

there was also a smaller heatsink on the video card - i had to pull that off too, of course - Arctic Silver 5 is still the best.

Arctic Cooling NV cooler installed - it blows the hot air from the GPU directly out of the case. the back plate of the cooler is all copper.

the fan throud clears the capacitors and the small heatsink just fine. there is very good contact with all video memory chips.

the back heatspreader came with thermal tape, which sucked of course, so i had to use some of 3M thermal tape i had laying around - it holds it in place perfectly.