You say your TI4200 has a heatsink on the bottom......

I need one there as thats where the card gets extremely hot even at stock settings.

In the center of the back of the card, under the Video chip, is about 1 square centimetre (10mm x 10mm) of flat area surrounded by small components that protrude about 1 or 2 mm, so the area to attach the heatsink there is limited and cramped.

Also, I'm worried about shorting the componenets there with compound so are the heat transfer compounds generally non conductive (to electricity) ?

Is there a way to do this?

I'm disappointed by the general design of video cards because the way they sit in the tower, the heat must rise into the PCB from the Video chip and dissipate down into the heatsink, kinda like pushing sh@# uphill, so to speak!

It's a ESPCO Eagle GF4 TI4200 128mb 8x AGP, It's the second eagle card I've had, no prob with them so far.

I was after the XFX card but I had trouble getting the supplier organised, so I went with this one because it was from my regular dealer.

It has a pretty big heatsink with an imbedded fan driving air thru the fins in an enclosure, (normal stuff).

I didn't think the fan was pulling enough air thru the heatsink, so I pulled the cover off the heatsink and fan assembly, exposing the cooling fins.

I mounted a case fan right next to it, to assure a constant flow of cool air over the fins, (air  blowing into PC), knowing that the heatsink was designed to have airflow thru it, (but now with the cover off, it doesn't blow thru as effectively with the onboard fan).

Another thing, the hot air was exiting out of the heatsink
assembly to cool the ram chips, but the air was already warm, it just needed a higher volume fan there is all!


It's just that they overclock so easily, and I'd like to be able to leave it overclocked for long sessions without worrying about the heat.

Anyway, it does seem a bit cooler now the way I have it,
the only heat obvious is on the back, still quite hot.

I made an attempt to pull the heatsink off the GPU, but it was stuck good so I didn't try too hard, I wanted to check and refit the paste. but I could see squeeze out of paste on 3 edges of the GPU, so I figure it isn't dry.

How hot does it get? Well if you put your finger in the middle of the little transistors or whatever they are on the back of the card, where the center of the GPU is, You will jerk your finger away after about 3 seconds as it burns..... It's always been like that, but only after a bit of intense use, idling it is very hot to touch but doesn't burn.

What about the electrical conductivity of thermal paste? (I have some generic white paste from a local store)
Any ideas there?

I built a duct from duct tape and a plastic ice cream container. Now I duct the nearby fan right over the heatsink and it seems cooler

That's BAD case design

Mine has cooling fans on the back at the position of the connectors