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Installation is pretty straight forward. This cooler uses the push pins to hold it down. Now on most cards this is nice, just slap on some thermal compound and pop the pins in and your done. But another one of ATI's mess ups if you ask me, was their failure to include holes to utilize these pushpins. Instead the stock cooling is stuck on with an adhesive. Which isn't a bad thing but removing it could pose a tiny problem!
So now given what I have to deal with I was kind of leary on whether or not I should remove the stock cooler or just leave it. I didn't want to take a chance at damaging my card but then my abusive tendancy's got the best of me and I said what the heck! I ran 2 loops of 3DMark2K1SE to allow the card to heat up. I shutdown and quick removed the card. I then placed a credit card right under the edge of the cooler to protect the PCB then took a straight blade screw driver and slowly twisted it. You can feel the cooler start to move and about that time if popped off. After inspecting it real fast I found out that it looks A-OK so far. Something I wasn't to happy with after I got it off was the fact that only about two thirds of the core on the GPU was covered with adhesive. What was ATI thinking! No wonder why my cards overclocking abilities aren't too great.
To clean the GPU up I used a razor blade to gently remove any of the left over adhesive. Once that was done some alcohol was used to clean the GPU up as well as the bottom of the SPC1. Since I can't use the pushpins I'll be using some Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive to attach the SPC1 to the GPU. The pushpins must be removed before you can proceed to install it in this fashion as they stick out and actually hold the cooler up off of the core. After getting the proper amounts of the 2 parts of adhesive compound all mixed up I applied a thin layer to the core on the GPU then proceded to lay the SPC1 on top of it. Now you may want to use a clamp to apply some pressure to flatten the adhesive out some but to also hold the cooler in place so that it don't move. Please take precaution when using a clamp. Use some kind of padding as there are components on the back side of the PCB that could be damaged and also you don't want to damage the cooler. I used a sping loaded clamp that had rubber feet on it to hold mine. The next step is to just sit and wait a couple hours for the adhesive to cure before reinstalling your card.
Now doesn't the 8500 look so much better! One problem I did run into however was the fan connector. If you look at the picture to the left below, you'll see the stock cooler connector on the left and the SPC1 connector on the right. The SPC1 connector won't fit into the socket on the 8500 so I had to carefully remove it and then I was able to hook up the fan. It slid on there and fit pretty snug so I doubt that it will slide off of there. Now with it all glued on and fan hooked up its time to put it back in and do some testing!
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