As the summer now appears to have arrived in the UK (although it may be for a short while), I was saddened to see that my 8800 gt start to post temps ranging into the mid 90's when under load. The temp out side is only about 25 degrees C so this didnt bode well for the coming months.

I decided to get hold of an  Accelero S1 in an attemp to resolve the problem and was hoping for a quick install when I took the old heatsink off and found this mess...... 

No wonder these things get so hot! Not only is the fan heatsink combo a dud the TIM application is a complete mess. The was a 200 quid (400 dollar) graphics card.

Basically I just wondered if people would be prepared to pay more to know that they are getting the optimum finish for a product. Would you pay that bit more to get a perfectly mirror finished processor at the point or purchase or should we expect to get that level of servive with the prices we pay anyway?

The more people get into overclocking, the more cooling becomes an issue. I would jump at the chance to get perfectly lapped products with the best possible TIM pre applied and therefore the best possible temps further down the line. I think we pay enough already..... Maybe we should be expecting a little bit more in return. 

I had a similar experience. I have a 8800GTX superclocked, and picked up a Zalman VF1000 and RHS88 kit to use as a 3rd party cooling solution (brought load temps down from 75C to 60C)... when I took the stock cooler off, I was amazed to see the cheap thermal tape on the memory chips and the gpu only having HALF of its surface area covered with thermal paste... If I would have cleaned up the original heatsink and applied it correctly, my temps would have most likely gone down 5-10C.

I definately don't think we should pay extra for the manufacturer to apply the thermal grease correctly... when you're spending $200-$500 U.S. on a video card, you would expect the inner workings to be fit and tidy, and not have to worry about the tim being used or if it was applied correctly.... It wouldn't cost the manufacturer much more money, and would only make the consumer happier.

 I have seen people that have taken off the thermal tape from the gtx's and replaced it with artic silver5 and it droped the temps by 6-9deg so thats not to bad. Willardcw4 if you thought that was bad look at the gunk on the NB and SB or your mobo... same type of stuff thats on the gtx, it will drop the temps by 3-6 deg if you replace it.

 Cheers Dave, The card is an XFX pre overclocked job. The S1 with a modded 120mm fan attachment (a very easy job with a quiet Antec Tri cool fan set to low), dropped the load temp by  a cool 45 degrees (from 92 to 47 degrees c) so Im quite chuffed I bothered to do the work!!!!!!

people who overclock do so at their own expense. when you buy a part its supposed to operate at the specs posted so if it does so with a bad thermal job it doesnt matter because thats what it supposed to do. companies dont really want to encourage overclocking too much because then the companies loose money. people who buy a 8800 gtx and know they can easily overclock it are alot less likely to buy an ultra, however if you know that to overclock your gtx you have to buy another cooler, and install it suddendly that extra 50-100 for the ultra doesnt seem so bad.
i do think it will be nice to see better thermal jobs but i dont expect it unless its a product made specifically for the niche of overclockers (dfi is great btw! ) overclockers represent just a small fraction of the computer community and companies just dont want to spend the extra money to please a few people that end up hurting their sales of their higher end cards. if no one was able to overclock more people would buy the ultra high end instead of the medium high end and overclocking it.
 

That paste application is so bad that it covers like half of the fan.

I have a MSI 8800GT with the aftermarket cooler pre-installed. Not sure what the TIM job looks like under the heatsink, but my temps don't go any higher than 55C in Crysis (Ambient room temp around 24C).

The motherboard chipset was mentioned by another poster. I got the 680i when that board was released and which people where complaining about heat issues. I did clean that up though.

We definitely shouldn't pay more for "better" products. If all else, companies should be doing a better job anyways. Save some chump change by using less thermal paste per graphics card and/or motherboard.  

 That is really appauling, I won't pay more. I would do it myself. 

Wow, that is so stupid. Why did they add so much of the thermal paste? Hmm. I have an XFX Geforce 8800GTS, and when I removed the stock heatsink from the card it just had right enough, and not so much. It is kind of wierd. Good thing you have checked, or else who knows what could have happened.

Yea, that is really odd. My XFX 7800gt looked like a beaut compared to yours. Did you buy that retail or open box or anything. I find it hard to believe there would be that much of a difference from cards from the same manufacturer. I half expected you to say it was from some cheap no name manufacturer not XFX. If I saw that on my card I would be calling them up screaming.

This is quite odd, I did not expect this from XFX. I only buy XFX video cards and my past two video cards have been XFX, although I never had this problem before. You might want to ask them just for curiosity to see how they apply the thermal paste.

 Pretty muchevery card I've seen or used over the years came with crappy thermal paste applied. The first thing I do with any card I get is pull the cooler and clean the junk and re-apply some quality stuff. 

 As a rule I normally water cool my own personal cards, so redoing everything is a pretty much have to..........;)

 I have had that before situation before. If I do get another graphics card I will be doing my own thermal paste.

 -Dev