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ARCTIC include some insulation tape with the card, which you can place over some of the components as shown above. This can protect against short circuiting.
ARCTIC include a pad of foam which protects the rear of the PCB against the proprietary backplate. One side of this contains a strip of adhesive Mylar film, which attaches to the backplate. If you adhere the pad to the PCB then it can be slightly more difficult moving the backplate around to line up the mounting holes.
The next step is to locate the cooler spacers and screws. Set these to the side carefully. The HD7970, 7950, 7870, 7850, 6970, 6950, 6870, 6850, 6790, 5870, 5850 and 5830 only need the 3mm white spacers shown above.
Flip the cooler over to expose the mounting base. Be careful not to touch the base directly as ARCTIC pre-apply thermal paste here. Locate the four white spacers and use the adhesive tape to stick them onto the mounting plate as shown above. The correct hole to use is the inner most of the three grouped holes. Not the one at the very inner position, on its own. Double check that the spacers are correctly positioned, while looking directly down at the head of the base.
They can be moved a little by hand without coming loose. Note, that if these aren't mounted correctly at this stage, then the screws won't feed through properly, and lock from the back of the graphics card PCB.
The next stage is to remove the mounting plate on the graphics card. Simply unscrew two screws holding it in place. Hold the screws in a secure place for a few minutes.
Place the plate over the center of the card, above the GPU Core. This can be used as a visualisation before mounting heatsinks to the graphics card. You will notice that the memory chip at the very bottom of the card won't accept a full sized heatsink, or it will block the mounting of the cooler plate, from above. The mounting plate can be reattached now, back in place for the next stage.
ARCTIC supply two packets of adhesive compound, which have to be mixed together, one is white and the other gray. We used one of the plastic sections of the shipping container to mix. Make sure to squeeze both bags thoroughly. ARCTIC include a ‘magic wand', which is basically a plastic spatula for mixing and applying the thermal glue.
The compound has to be mixed by hand for 5 minutes. It is important to time this fairly accurately, otherwise it won't work as well as it should. After this is done, then you need to wait for a further 15 minutes before applying the thermal glue to the heatsinks.
