How to Silence a Radeon HD 4870 or 4890

installing the new heatsink

Install the base part recovered from the original heatsink, then re-assemble the 10 "green" screws in the back of the card.

As you can see it, in order to improve the cooling of components not covered by this plate, we have installed small copper-based heatsink. You can also use those made from Alu and provided with the kit. Then put the Accelero TT on the working area, install slowly the card over while paying attention to align holes that will be used to fix the GPU against the heatsink.

You can then install in cross 4 screws (slowly, in cross and in diagonal/bended) as we mentioned it earlier. You are almost done.

One will need to find a solution to power the heatsink. You can connect it to the graphic card, but the latest does not seem to provide enough energy, as it does not spin fast enough to be fully efficient in cooling down the GPU. You can also modify the rotation speed of the fan directly into the card BIOS with a Windows-only tools, but it is rather complex.

The easiest way is to use the adaptor provided with the kit. Plug it to  the Molex output behind the SuperDrive with a wire extension, then plug the heatsink of the 7 V connector. This is according to our test the best compromise between cooling and silence, for both the HD 4870 and the HD 4890 working at their default clock speed.