Installing The SI-97 (Continued)

After installing the SI-97, I was curious to see how good the contact was between the SI-97's base and the R350 core. It never hurts to double-check. So, I removed the SI-97 heatsink and peeked at the GPU surface.

The contact between the base and R350 die

As you can see from the thin, smudged thermal paste, the R350 die seems to be in good contact with the SI-97 base. The mod appears to be very successful.

Then, I reinstalled the modded cooler and inserted the graphics card into the system to check.

As you can see in the picture above, the SI-97 takes up at least two to three PCI slots. And that's if you install the fan between the radiator fins and the heatsink base.

You can mount the fan either between the radiator fins and the base...

If you choose to mount your fan on top of the SI-97's radiator fins, then the cooler will block at least three to four PCI slots. Of course, this depends on the thickness of your fan.

Or on top of the radiator fins

Mounting the fan on top of the radiator fins will improve the cooler's performance since the fan will have better access to cooler air. In addition, it will be free from interference by the aluminium plate. When the fan is placed between the radiator fins and the heatsink base, the aluminum plate will block about one third of the fan's air intake area.

Of course, mounting the fan on top of the radiator fins will reduce the number of PCI slots you can use! But this is not a problem for me since I only need one PCI slot - for my sound card.

Please note that this is merely one example of modding the Thermalright SI-97 to fit a Radeon 9800 Pro. For other graphics cards, you will need to use slightly different ways of modding and installing it.