5850m Thermal Pad Placement

Does anyone have a diagram for the thermal pad placement on the 5850m? My 680m unexpectedly flamed out so I'm back to the old card.

(Confirmed that it runs with the 5850m but I'm not entirely confident I've padded the right modules).

 

Pads should go over the VRAM chips, and the VRM section which includes the inductors and the mosfets . I think the stock setup only covered the VRAM and inductors (or maybe just the VRAM) and did not have pads placed on the mosfets. The VRAM and most inductors should use the same height pads (~1mm) while the mosfets will need much taller pads (around ~5mm) . If you still want to pad the mosfets, you can always stack a bunch of pads on top of each other until the desired height is reached if you can't get taller pads.

 

inductors / chokes don't need cooling

 

@kosti and @Mobius 1 -- perhaps you can help me correct this image? This was my best guess from looking at a 7870 pad layout (prior to seeing Kosti's image, which appears to have vanished).
I'll re-post with corrections for archival purposes.

 

am sorry to say but I have no idea about the thermal pad thickness :|

the yellow you highlighted don't need any cooling btw

 

No worries on the heights; I'm comfortable eyeballing the pads for contact. I'm more just concerned about cooling what needs to be cooled.

The yellows are the inductors?

 

yellows are inductor, those are just copper coil enclosed in a metal block, they'll be fine uncooled

 

It's weird that my image disappeared from my post. You can see it however in Mobius's reply by clicking "view attachment 141958"

As far as the cooling for the inductors in the VRM section. I have been trying to find some more info on this online but, except for opinions, I can't seem to find much about whether they need to be cooled or not. I have always thought that they do require cooling. The CPU uses a pad for the 3 inductors next to it and most of the thermal pad placement diagrams I have seen for graphics cards show padding for them. Also, considering the shape of the M15X graphics heatsink, it seems they designed it to cover the VRM section as well, but I don't recall ever seeing pads placed in the VRM section on stock setups. Maybe it depends on how powerful the video card is, in regards to power draw? I would assume that the mosfet chips get hot in many high power cards which is why you often see them cooled on those. Just not sure about the inductors.

 

I think I missed one inductor (the slightly rounded box) and one vrm (top right). I'll mark those when I'm back at my desk with an *optional on the yellows. Looks like higher end cards always get their inductors covered where the 5850 mobility only did if applied after market.

 

Image updated. Green is critical. Blue is important. Yellow is optional.