hey

[PGPpfKkx]

fail

[Detritus]

i applied much thermal paste. have anyone installed this cooler on a 5870? can you tell me results?

Too much thermal paste is not good. It can cause higher temperatures.
You want to use as little paste as possible while still being able to produce a even coating.

[cicada]

Specs I'm seeing for the arctic l2 pro show a cooling capacity of 100W:

http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/detail?sArticle=23.%3F#techdata

Your 5870 has a TDP of about 180W I believe, with much of that being converted into heat.

I fear that cooler may just be a bit underpowered for a card running at 95%+ load for extended periods.

If you think you may have overdone the thermal paste, it's worthwhile to try it again, but you might want to look for something a bit beefier.

[cicada]

The 188W TDP is max, even the most demanding videogames won't sustain that for very long.  Under "normal" use its probably more than adequate.

The gpu alone probably doesn't do too much more than 100W heat output, so redoing the thermal paste might get you where you need to be.

[pbj sammich]

yeah but why the hell do they give out compatibility with 5870 when it cant cool it...my shoes can fit the cooler also

clicking on cicada's link and looking at the specs the 5870 is not listed...

[cicada]

Arctic has a few other options: http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga.html

Oddly the frontpage shows the PRO as 5870 compatible on the front page, but neither the PRO nor PLUS list it in the detailed compatibility lists.

They have a 3-fan 'Arctic EXTREME 5870' which appears to be tailored to your card, with 250W heat dissipation.  Unfortunately the fan-cooler-card sandwich appears to make the card 3 slots thick.

You can probably improve the performance with a a better 92mm fan - the ones included on the PRO/PLUS are only 27CFM.  I'm sure they're quiet, but an eg. 40CFM fan wouldn't be too terribly loud and might increase that heat dissipation by ~30-40W or so.  As far as I can tell the PRO/PLUS appear to be the same damn thing, I can't see where the 20W difference between them lies.