I purchased 2 ASUS XG-C100C 10G NIC’s and they work decently well. My one worry with them is it looks like the stand-off’s are a little tall because the thermal tape does not seam to be in full contact with the chip or heat sink.
Has anyone replaced the stand-off’s on these yet? Or could someone point me to a place where i could get shorter stand-off’s once i measure the existing ones.
I purchased the same card a while ago and noticed the same thing, that being, the thermal pad doesn’t make contact with the heat sink. I also discovered there is a significant performance decrease compared to the Intel X540 T2. There is some discussion about thermal throttling on the Asus XG C1001C and that the lack of contact may be the problem. So I am exploring the possibility of changing the standoffs, that are smaller than typical motherboard standoffs (6.35mm) to allow the chip to make contact with the heat sink using only thermal paste. Of course this will void the warranty.
I was noticing the same thing. I managed to get my hands on a spare one. i need to see if i can find the thread size and find them in a 5.5mm size.
The thing I noticed when i removed the thermal pad was that the heatspreader of the chip looked kind of dull. Then I scratched it with my nail and realized there was a layer of glue/adhesive on it, which apparently is part of the thermal pad that was used.
If you look at the eteknix review, can see a picture of the chip that shows exactly what I mean.If you look closely you can see bits of thermal pads sticking to a layer of glue that’s still on the chip.
Were you able to find smaller standoff’s? If you did where did you get them from.
The glue doesn’t surprise me most thermal pads have glue to attach them so they don’t move when you are putting things together.