Is blue tac conductive???

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5 Jun 2006
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Hi folks,

Weird title I know but here is why. My graphics SLI setup is overheating IMO due to a TV card sitting between the 2 gfx cards interfering a lot with air flow (double height cards are a pain!). I am thinking of slapping a 120mm (low profile) fan on the other side (pcb side) of the card. As the card is horizontally mounted I just thought I could just slap on the fan on top of the pcb to provide some extra cooling with some "Blue Tac". This will work fine IMO as long as BLUE TAC IS non conductive. So I am wondering if any of you lot with multimeters can do me a favour and measure the resistance of Blue Tac.

Will I get much of a cooling effect by mounting a fan on the reverse side of the gfx card??? or is it a waste of time?

I do have an alternative probably better plan of using rubber anti-vibration mounts to provide a snug/isolated buffer between PCB and fan and using elastic bands to keep it fairly secure in place. Not ideal in some ways as elastic bands will go brittle with time and heat though it is a small hassle and inexpensive to replace I suppose.

Also I am ditching the VGA cooling vent from my P180 case and instead will mount 3x40mm fans on the grill vent on the reverse of the case where the vga vent duct was. This IMO will remove the isolating effect that the massive VGA cooling duct had (bad design IMO). The VGA duct sits far too close to the cards and isolates them heat wise. The 80mm fan to me it located towards the back end of 1 card only so as I say bad design.

Also I will try and place another 80mm/120mm fan somewhere else so that I can blow air through the 2 gfx cards.

Any tips or any stories from P180 owners let me know. Can I buy a replacement side panel for the P180 (Black) so that I can shove in a big fan to directly cool the gfx cards??? I have seen a 175mm fan so I assume this is possible. I don't fancy getting a Dremmel kit out and making the fan hole in the side panel myself!!! My metalwork experience is zero and I suspect I would make a mess of it!!!!

Jules
 
Soldato
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Stanley Hotel, Colorado
Go with the rubber bands, they'll degrade but do not harm anything unless you let them snap and get caught in a fan. I use them on lots on my fans and hard drives to reduce vibration noise.

Do not use blue tac on the inside of your machine if you can help it, Ive also done that in the past and it was an absolute pain to fix and required complete disassembly of the machine to clear all the fragments out
 
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5 Jun 2006
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By the sounds of it blue tac dries out with heat so I may go for the rubber band method and rubber fan mounts. Rubber feet resting on a pcb sounds better to me than blue tac.. Just guess I will wait and collect a few rubber bands from the postman!!!!

Thanks jokester for the testing. I may still use the blue tac as an emergency measure in future.

I could use some wire(insulated of course!!) instead of the rubber bands and twist the ends tight to secure the fans. That would get around the degradation issue ... pity I don't have any suitable wire lying around.
 
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