Thanks to viewer Aaron (& others) for the video request on this one. Took us a while to get around to it, but really wanted to emphasize the before/after thermals and we had to collect some older cards! Watch our Best Cases of 2021 (So Far) list: th-cam.com/video/ffuAnwGivO8/w-d-xo.html Learn about common warning signs of a bad used GPU: th-cam.com/video/J2VkkEHDG5E/w-d-xo.html Grab the GamersNexus tear-down toolkit! Supports most video cards on the market and gives you high-quality, long-lasting tools: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gamersnexus-tear-down-toolkit
Awesome video! Thanks for all the hard work on the content. GN is my reference for high quality reviews. I do a lot of these cleanings myself refurbishing and flipping old PCs and parts. The worst one I came across so far I called "smoky smoke". It was completely covered with a brown layer of nicotine resin mixed with dust. You can probably imagine the smell... However, I'm still always a bit concerned about thermal pads though... 0.75mm is almost impossible to find. Is it OK to replace it with 0.5mm? And how much difference there is between an ARCTIC one versus the cheap stuff on Amazon that advertises 6W/mK? When you have to replace a large volume of them, cost becomes a concern especially if you only do it in your (limited) spare time. Would it be possible to make a content piece about thermal pads? Like proper replacement, characteristics (specific gravity?), and differences in quality, pressure, and thickness? Thanks so much again. And greetings from a Brazilian living in Canada 😉
Definitely want to say I appreciate all the work, too. Such a go to for know how. But what y'all got for the absolute gremlins? What shorts first typically in a video card? Even if there's nothing to be done just knowing would ease the pain lol.
Those EVGA cards you show, seems EVGA have had a nice consistent build quality for a good few years. :) [Edit] I wonder if the unused heat spreader was just from a holdover from the other cards? So standardised parts, and only fitting thermal pads to the cards that need them?
Ant specific paste recommendations or just use whatever you have for CPU? ie Arctic Silver etc? I heard of some total disasters using Liquid Metal but not sure if that was just user error or no recommended for GPU (and would it be less likely to "dry out" over time?)
Sounds good, in those kind of timescales they should soon progress to industrial, technology, and then hit the singularity before Autumn. So you'll get a free PC upgrade for a few days, then they will take over the planet...
I open up the case a couple of times a year and vaccuum inside. Whiny fans can be fixed with a wet wipe and a thin tool like a screwdriver, to clean the blades, haven't needed to do that with my rig(8 years since built, 5 since GPU upgrade), possibly due to the semi-regular vaccuming, but I've done it with my mom's laptop.
I bought a blower style RX 480 a year or so back, for like £40, advertised as "not working". I took it apart, and this thing had so much dust in it, when I put it in the sink the heatsink was practically *watertight* on top of that, the thermal paste was crumbling off in chunks. Once I sorted it out, it went from running 70°C idle to 30°C.
just yesterday got a 1070 TI with the same issue, founders edition style cooler and the paste was old "for parts" for 100 bucks I said screw it and after my 1080 died on me I couldn't pass it up, beats my 770 lol
I bought a 2080 Ti for $100 which they said shut down after intensive load. I found out that it was just heavily covered in dust, so I cleaned it and there are no issues as of right now.
Dust cleaning and thermal repasting is one of the most underrated PC maintenance tasks there is. Absolutely nobody gives second thought to the hardware once it's installed and running. Learn the hard way like a lot of gamers. Running systems hard for years in environments that lack cool airflow, or have heavy dust buildup. Then later come to the ugly realisation your computer is producing 5x more noise & your games stutter, run poorly with reduced FPS and even crash sometimes. I had this method done to my computer by a really good local tech who operates a private business. When I received it back it was almost quieter than stock, and my FPS/stuttering issues were immediately resolved. My performance increased and some games benefited from higher FPS. (ELDEN RING is a big one for thermal throttling for some reason). Going from 35-40fps average back to capping at the games 60fps is huge. If you love your computers and abuse them daily with heavy gaming use and let them run in high temps. Please do this at least once every 2 years. You don't need a new PC. Just get it professionally restored.
@@wherearemytesticles They only make what people value lol, a lot of people love RGB myself included. Sure some may like an F1 shaped card, but a majority wouldn't.
If you still want to soak the dust in your GPU heatsink, but don’t feel comfortable using water, you can use 90% isopropyl/ethyl alcohol. The alcohol won’t conduct electricity nearly as well as water and it obviously evaporates much faster.
@@ginxxxxx The amount of gpus they have is nothing compared to the total market. It literally doesn't make any difference for availability. And I want at least the reviewers to have cards so I know if I should bother trying to get one. It's just a perk of being a reviewer.
Did this with an old laptop. Temps went from throttling to actually boosting and the fans not ramping up anymore! A must do to bring to life any old pc or laptop!
I have GTX 690. For the most it just idles as a GPU in a office machine. About as close to silent as can be. It is silent if it is not used for gaming. vs a GTX 1050? Well it is paid for. It also will game better. If necessary. It does run two monitors easily. Well it does have two GPUs I think the GTX 680 will also do just fine for anther 10 years as a office GPU . 680 & 690 are good for 4K. Both can also can run Two 2560 x1440 60hz monitors. But for gaming? Maybe not made for gaming at 4K? The old R 5 1600 and the gtx 690 spends most of the time just running at idle. For office use not much reason to overclock either CPU or GPU. But the 3800X system? That gets hammered.
It's kind of amazing how thermal paste can age. I had thermal issues with an old, original Xbox. It would consistently shut down in the middle of a game. I took it apart and the thermal paste was like old gum. Actually fairly difficult to remove. I did the work and I haven't had issues with it since.
@@ginxxxxx I’m not sure how a review channel purchasing and/or reviewing GPUs is “causing the crisis.” I’m pretty sure the main issues are: scalpers, miners, the downtime in production from the pandemic, very high demand, mfg. queues and an overall silicon shortage… Reviewers like GN are important for us to know which cards are worth our time or not, versus day LTT which seems to have lately taken the stance of “buy anything and everything if you can” How would they even have prevented the “crisis”? That’s not their job and the cause is far beyond one channel lol.
@@ginxxxxx I’m a scammer? What are you on about? Either you’re a child or you need professional help, and either way you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about lol.
@@martinivanov1319 cases also rarely had windows or glass, the new market is "clean" aesthetic and cartoon images and such dont fit well in that mold. I agree though I would love to see more unique designs. We can do without printed stickers though.
This was a really good video and a reminder to maintain the tech that a user has probably invested a lot of money into over the years. I really appreciate the pro-reuse/recycling message.
The thermal pad thickness is exactly the reason why i have always been too scared to take any card apart. I simply have no clue what thermal pads to get for any of my cards and i cannot find any information online.
My limited experience is that close is usually good enough. A few 100x100 pads of 1 and 2 mm thickness off ebay and you'll likely be ok for most cards, but techpowerup teardown photos are great for a glance at what is under the heatsink before you actually commit to a teardown.
Been building and maintaining PCs for many years, but have never really thought much about re pasting GPUs, till recently when one of the machines i build with a 1660 TI came back and had some insane temperatures, it put on the emergency RPM on the fans and went to 4200ish RPM, 89c and 107c hotspot, sounding like a race car revving. After repasting it i was able to OC the card with +80mhz and +700mem mhz, and it went down to 71c, 85c hotspot under stresstest at 2300rpm, really made me realize that i should probably do this to some of my other older cards like 970gtx and 1070 TI that has been running for years...
I bought a Bosch GBL 800 E blower and use that, it makes things sooo much easier and quicker than how I used to clean it for many years (manual cleaning)
Fun fact, I used to do this every roughly 3-4 months just like you and would always get a nice satisfying cloud of dust and the interior would always have a "restorative" feel to it afterward. Thermals also saw a noticeable improvement. I then moved to a place with a fancy active air filtration system and zero carpet. I think it's been about 2 years since I opened the thing up. When I do open it up I expect it to still be very clean. Last time I did, I wiped my finger on a horizontal surface and it didn't leave a trail. Still took the whole thing apart and cleaned it as I couldn't believe it. I mean it does have filters but those were also pretty clean. Moral of the story: if possible live in a clean environment. Dramatically cuts down on so many maintenance issues overall, not just computer related.
Just stripped, cleaned and repasted the old R9 270X 2GB that sits in the PC in my workshop. It was utterly filthy given the environment it lives in. I ran an extended Furmark stress test before and after. Before: Core temp 67°C, fan speed 53%. After: Core temp 54°C, fan speed 38%. With a normalised fan speed (before 53%) the core temp came down to 46°C. Great result!
Thank you to all from GN for making this - I have been waiting for a properly tested experiment like this for a long time! I have been super curious about the actual difference it makes, but I have never had the patience to test it properly myself 🙃
I found when you rinse stuff with tap water, it helps to rinse again with a bit of distilled water. Small droplets that evaporate off the surface will leave some residue of minerals etc. in tap water. Distilled water evaporates clean.
Animal I really have to wonder about how much mineral deposit you get in a couple of minutes of tap water. I am not knocking the rerinsing idea at all because I have often times noticed my cleaning liquid picks up a lot of dust and such and the small drops will leave a thin residue that a second wipe gets but for most tap water in the civilized world it takes years of use and regular wetting drying cycles to get noticable build up from dissolved minerals. There are some outliers and I know of a well that is safe to drink under consumption standards that lays down rust colored stains in months and another that has really heavy calcium from limestone. The limestone one still takes years in a kettle to build a noticeable film. I am just thinking that your residue is more likely due to dirt residue from the cleaning and/or you need to check your water/plumbing because that's a lot of suspended junk in your water.
@@OmniMontel The rinsing itself is not a problem I think. I was only concerned about the residue that's left when the droplets evaporate off the surface, aka when you let it dry. We have relatively mineral-rich water here, mostly limestone I think. I did an experiment once where I put a drop of tap water and a drop of distilled water on a clean glass surface and waited until both were evaporated. I could clearly see the residue from the tap water on the glass surface (if you look at it under a bright light with a dark background and no reflected light). I couldn't see anything where the distilled water was. I also did some tests with other liquids (lens cleaning solution, rubbing alcohol...) everything left a residue except distilled water.
@@alphanimal lens cleaning solution eh yeah definitely depending on the solution (some are actually designed to leave antifogging films and other stuff like that), amazed on the rubbing alcohol, distilled water is supposed to be evaporated then condensed water so no surprise, have had distilled water that had picked up a lot of crap from the jug a few times but that was an issue with the container and keeping it in a vechile long term. Like I said with your tap water I would get it checked, it's not supposed to have that much crap dissolved in it. If it's constantly leaving a residue on your drinking glasses and such then it's weird and you should find out what it is. If you do get it tested and it's not ridiculous like over 150mg/L of normal stuff like calcium or magnesium then eh whatever, you've got hard water in your area. For something like washing a heatsink not a big deal if it's other stuff like say Thallium.
@@OmniMontel Sorry I'm not sure if the stuff I tested classifies as rubbing alcohol, so I might be wrong there. It was Ethanol but I don't know what purity. The tap water is fine, it's just hard water.
Great video as always, I myself purchased a 2nd hand GTX 1070 Zotac AMP. Managed to get a great deal on it before the prices on used parts sky rocketed. When I received it, it was dusty and had cracked thermal paste on the GPU Die. I did test it before taking it apart though. After cleaning it I did not see much difference in performance/thermals but the Fan noise is alot quieter so it goes to show that doing regular maintenance on your parts work.
What a coincidence! I just performed this procedure on my old trusty GTX970SSC less than a week ago. I sold it to a buddy in 2019 and he used it heavily in a very dusty room until he upgraded last summer. Traded a 1440p monitor to him for it and a Logi G27 wheel set. It was caked in brown dust (he smokes) which meant I went thru ALOT of Q-tips and rubbing alcohol to get the grime off. Kudos to EVGA as I was impressed with the build of the card and the thermal pads were in perfect condition. Fresh MX4 and she's up and running 68C @ 1450 core / 7500 mem Folding at Home in my HTPC which feeds a 60" plasma 1080p TV so it'll suffice for any gaming duties there. As soon as prices get more real it'll probably be bumped out with the trickle-down effect but until then resurrection is necessary. Good piece for the uninitiated GN, and welcome instead of reviews of unavailable hardware.
I cleaned my friends 1060 a few months ago, temps went from mid 70’s to mid 60’s. Not sure how performance was effected but thermals were certainly better.
Now THIS is content! Such a great response from GN to listen to their viewers for video ideas. Cleaning, although sometimes frustrating or even functionally a waste of time, is still nonetheless one of the most satisfying things to do. Kind of makes me want to hijack my brother’s computer for a day just so I can clean it out for him.
7:03 if I'd been doing a clean at home and heard that noise as I disassembled it, I'd probably have been convinced I'd managed to break it and burst into tears lol
I've recently taken apart, cleaned, repasted and put new pads on my GTX 1080ti Aorus Extreme. It dropped from 83c to 78c on average after 30 mins. of fiery ball of GPU-death test (furmark). It's been approx. 20 months since the last cleaning, and first time changing the pads. - was happy to see that. Have been putting together PC's for a couple of years now, to sell on local used market - normally it's not a big change, but it's always nice to be able to lower the dba when showing it to customers. Worst-best I've seen was a MSI GTX 980 I changed the paste on and cleaned, got it from 94c to 81c inside a case with good airflow and 4 120mm fans. That was a noticable change, but then again, I think the fanblades was twice as heavy as stock, just from all the dust on them! As always, thanks for the great content - good idea with this vid, would love to see you "test" a full system before and after in the same way.
More videos like this should be made to inform people on how they can extend the life of their components. Good job Steve and keep up the good work. Does anyone here know of any site that can tell me/us how thick the thermal pads need to be for certain models. Trying to get this information from vendor is very tedious and most times you don't even get a reply.
This becomes more important the older and more used the card is. I recently got an 8800 GTS 512MB off ebay for my old Windows XP gaming machine. Card showed up, and idled at 70C and had frame rates in the single digits due to massive thermal throttling. I took it apart, cleaned out a literal wall of dust clogging the heatsink, applied new thermal paste and now it idles at 40C. 30C improvement just on idle temps from removing dust and new thermal paste. And yeah, I know, my newer Windows 10 PC destroys a 2008 era gaming PC, but that 2008 era PC is still up and running, and now yes, it can play Crysis again.
As someone who prefers to buy moderately high-end, and run the crap out of the hardware for years, I appreciate videos like this. Hopefully the current silicon shortage will help others to appreciate videos like this. I would love to see a resurgence in repair and maintenance interest -- not quite a "lost art" yet, but definitely more niche than I think it should be. Thanks!
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As someone who "prefers" to buy moderately low-end, and run the crap out of the hardware for years… But I heartily agree with your general sentiments.
They had a problem with not enough thermal pads being applied shortly before release of the 1080Ti FTW3. EVGA handled the situation very well but they probably wanted to avoid another incident. Besides the FTW3 is a very over built card in general. It only really gets close to its limit with a hardware mod and sub ambient cooling.
This inspired me to take apart my 960 and 1080, replace the paste, run the heatsinks under water, and put them back together. It was very satisfying when they still worked lol
Your dedication to providing thorough and consistent content is why I love you guys. Yall set the standard that every other Tech TH-camr should be living up to.
@@Azraleee What kind of dishwasher do you have? The water in the usual dishwasher is far from being deionized. You actually add salt in order to lower water hardness.
Just repasted and cleaned my R9 270X. It runs now 11 °C colder on Furmark alone and it is more stable when doing light OC. Love your Videos Steve, keep up the Great work!
Independly from this video I cleaned my MSI Gaming 1080ti and replaced the Thermalpaste with Kryonaut and GPU temps have been lowered by 8-10 degrees C and hot spot temps are up to 15 degrees lower. Amazing results for 15mins work. Also the default paste was applied very roughly and was also on the surrounding GPU frame, the silver one as seen in 20:04, that prevented optimal pressure from the cooler.
For removing thermal paste I always use ronsonal lighter fluid. Works great. I found out that trick about 25 years ago and have been using it since. Have used that literally 1000,s of time to clean and reapply thermal paste. Love the channel and content
Did this to an ol' Zotac 970 Mini last year which had regular usage since new, it wasn't that bad with dust as it was in a filtered case in a clean environment but cleaning out a few small clumps of dust and repasting took it from throttling at 85 deg C to topping out at ~73 deg C whilst overclocked and hitting higher clock speeds. Worth doing.
Good on you Steve! I also encourage people to look into deshrouding. First part of a gpu that wears down is the fans and while you can buy replacements on ali or ebay, you might have decent 120 mm fans lying around. Some zip ties and a 3/4-pin to mini-gpu adapter and you've got better thermals for cheap.
I did this on my 980 reference and I had a similar 12 degree drop. Did it on an Asus 970 and got a modest 5 degree drop. Thanks for the great info, I will definitely be doing this again.
3/4" paint brushes found at craft stores are great for dust removal. You can dab at the dust and also use a vacuum (mine has the hose that pulls out) to take it up. The brush will get into the sink fins nicely
A big thank you for this video. A lot of people are afraid to disassemble their gpu's because of what they cost. So hopefully this will give them the courage to do so.
Thank you, helpful video. My 2-year-old 2080 became unusually hot to over 80°C when it used to have just around 65°C max. Opened it up, no dust issues but the thermal paste didn't look good. Now with new thermal paste applied I'm back at 64°C again.
I have a GTX 760. I most likely need to get my hands on proper tools. So glad to see there's a POTENTIAL for much more improved thermals after cleaning and repasting. THANKS!
The airflow on that Formula One racing card must be great! Would actually be interested to see if they could design a GPU to make good use of the direct case airflow instead of just blowing it around the case.
You should be extremely careful with taking a heatsink off of a GPU/CPU that doesn't have an IHS. The reason for this, is because you could actually shatter the silicon upon removal. You should use a heatgun on a low setting ( with the fan assembly removed! ) or run the GPU beforehand to soften the thermal paste. For chips that have an IHS, I'd still recommend softening the paste first, as a precaution.
I genuinely appreciate the amount of volume normalization care that went into the hand drier part. Those specific units in particular are absolutely *deafening* in person, I wish I could normalize it like that for when I have to use one...
After watching I've been curious how mine would look like after 3 years, so I checked my Asus Strix 1080Ti's thermal paste application; to my horror not even 20% were covered with thermal paste and what was applied was completely caked, brittle and dry. I re-applied with paste I had available and that dropped my temperatures a whopping 18°C in idle and around 15°C full load... also it's now half as loud.
Yeah, some manufacturers don't apply well. I had a EVGA here once that crashed from time to time. Sent it in and they said it's fine and just returned it to me. I then took the cooler apart and saw that 2 of the VRMs didn't have any pads on them. Put some on them and it never crashed again.
I only like dust gathering in my expensive electronics for the satisfaction I get, blasting compressed air through the vents holes, and watching clouds of dust fly out. I love it. Come to think of it, my kid's PC is due a deep cleaning, yay! 🤣
This looks like 90 percent of the gaming cards I buy locally. People install them, never touch them again until they are almost dead, cooking for years full of dust and then buy a new one. The same people that won't buy a well maintained mining card because "Its been mined on"....so crazy.
I have passed an Asus prebuilt with one of those 5750 cards to a family member, I got it from a friend several years ago and then used it a while. Surprisingly solid system, even though the 5750 is not really good for much these days. Post-covid-vaccinations, I should go over there and clean the card up and re-paste it, it could last another 10 years for basic web surfing like it's doing now.
I remember fixing a mates computer which was overheating. There was one giant dust bunny clogging the cooler and it was only two years old. Don't smoke in your room and keep your PC off the floor. Great results Steve.
Been slowly working through my old cards that had never been taken apart. HD 7970 6GB went from 97+ to 68 degrees at 100% fans and load with Furmark. Took a while with so many thermal pads but worth it.
I wanted to thank you for doing this guide. Bought some 1mm and 0.5mm thermal pads, then some decent thermal paste. Heatsink on my 2070 super (which was made in 2019, according to GPU-Z) made a horrible snapping noise when I pulled it off. Paste was dry as a bone. Cut the 0.5mm pads to size, 1mm wasn't necessary, and I was able to salvage the thick pads on the VRM's and caps. All the screws went onto a magnet so they didn't get eaten by the carpet bugs.
I'd be interested in a look at 1080ti card performance on release drivers vs on the latest drivers. Just to see what if any uplift has been gained by driver maturity.
Good to see a video like this. Me and my friend both got gtx 760's around the same time, but I've upgraded a few times and he's still using his. I don't have pets and he has 2 cats. From the looks of these results he could see a pretty good temp and noise reduction if he wanted to clean his card up. I just don't think he cares lol.
Hey Steve, the recent uprise in temperatures - I presume - drove a replacement in some cards for the thermal pads with silicone based, possibly curing (?) thermal putty. My 3080 is one such application and since it is not a thermal material I had worked before, and particularly after seeing the prices of thermal putty tubes; I've been wondering; would it be possible to replace these with, say, high performing thermal pads instead? For easier maintenance in the future particularly. Even the most expensive pads are cheaper (and also reusable) than generic putty. Or are thermal putty reusable and I am misinformed? There hasn't been much coverage on these from what I have seen.
@@shaneeslick From what I found on some spec sheets online; high quality putty offers virtually no aging (1), but there are also many variations inclusive of (1, in form of pads) and (2,3) in form of industrial tube for applications, as well as this (3, one quick visual example of it I could find for application) tub like distribution. I do not know what type and for what purpose has been selected for these recent applications, seemingly with GDDR6x memories, to replace traditional thermal pads. (3) offers some insight to this but it is a very short video without a follow-up. Hence why I thought this would be a great next step to cover these - novel to me - applications as well as providing further insight after the present maintenance guide by GN. 1: www.fujipoly.com/usa/products/sarcon-thermal-management-components/thermal-gap-filler-products/gap-filler-pads-putty/ 2: lipolytim.com/thermal-products/s-putty-thermal-conductive-putty-series/ 3: th-cam.com/video/Rt42_QIKkAQ/w-d-xo.html
Thanks Steve! This has been very informative! I would love to see a similar video showing benchmarks before and after a re-seat and re-paste of a CPU that is 5-10 years old.
I'd be really curious if the effects of the dust cleaning and repasting could somehow be tested independently. Of course I realize that's kind of hard to do since you need to remove the heatsinks to clean them on most of these and if you were to not replace old dry paste after removing the heatsink that's not really a fair comparison. Dry past can still be thermally conductive but it's *not* going to be able to find its way into the exact position it was in before when you reseat the heatsink. I guess you'd have to do everything you can to clean the heatsink without actually removing it for the test to even work. But in the cases where there was significant improvement I'm really curious how much of that was due to just the dust buildup.
I just did this to my Gigabyte 2080 when the fans started to work harder than they had in the past. Went from 86 and thermal throttling (fan failsafe mode, jumping between boost and non boost clocks) when playing iRacing to 68 and much quieter. Idle temps also went from 60 down to 38. The card was very clean, but the paste was dried and looked like there wasn't enough mounting pressure from the factory.
4:00 might've flipped the scenarios if reading from a script. Not 100% sure, but based on my personal experience when installing GPU water blocks and upgrading thermal pads, if it's too thick, the GPU die or core won't make contact with the waterblock/vapor chamber/etc. and if it is not thick enough, there will be too much force on the PCB, potentially cracking the core. But Beve Sturke's point is really important, make sure to use exactly the thickness (mm) that was designed for your GPU cooler on memory chips/mosfets. If you need a manufacturer suggestion, I had good success with Gelid but your mileage may vary... Always be extremely careful when doing these repairs/mods unless you are good at board repair/want a paper weight. As always keep up the excellent work GN
After re-padding two 3080's I can say it's important to get the correct CRUSH thickness. I went from floppy Asus & Gigabyte pads to stiff Thermalright pads and needed 0.5mm thinner for some spots due to less squish/crush.
Thanks to viewer Aaron (& others) for the video request on this one. Took us a while to get around to it, but really wanted to emphasize the before/after thermals and we had to collect some older cards! Watch our Best Cases of 2021 (So Far) list: th-cam.com/video/ffuAnwGivO8/w-d-xo.html
Learn about common warning signs of a bad used GPU: th-cam.com/video/J2VkkEHDG5E/w-d-xo.html
Grab the GamersNexus tear-down toolkit! Supports most video cards on the market and gives you high-quality, long-lasting tools: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gamersnexus-tear-down-toolkit
Awesome video! Thanks for all the hard work on the content. GN is my reference for high quality reviews.
I do a lot of these cleanings myself refurbishing and flipping old PCs and parts. The worst one I came across so far I called "smoky smoke". It was completely covered with a brown layer of nicotine resin mixed with dust. You can probably imagine the smell...
However, I'm still always a bit concerned about thermal pads though... 0.75mm is almost impossible to find. Is it OK to replace it with 0.5mm? And how much difference there is between an ARCTIC one versus the cheap stuff on Amazon that advertises 6W/mK? When you have to replace a large volume of them, cost becomes a concern especially if you only do it in your (limited) spare time.
Would it be possible to make a content piece about thermal pads? Like proper replacement, characteristics (specific gravity?), and differences in quality, pressure, and thickness?
Thanks so much again. And greetings from a Brazilian living in Canada 😉
Definitely want to say I appreciate all the work, too. Such a go to for know how. But what y'all got for the absolute gremlins? What shorts first typically in a video card? Even if there's nothing to be done just knowing would ease the pain lol.
Those EVGA cards you show, seems EVGA have had a nice consistent build quality for a good few years. :)
[Edit] I wonder if the unused heat spreader was just from a holdover from the other cards? So standardised parts, and only fitting thermal pads to the cards that need them?
Can you replace paste with liquid metal and compare temperature
Ant specific paste recommendations or just use whatever you have for CPU? ie Arctic Silver etc?
I heard of some total disasters using Liquid Metal but not sure if that was just user error or no recommended for GPU (and would it be less likely to "dry out" over time?)
Dust bunnies in my case have already evolved into an actual bunny society and are now entering the renaissance era
Sounds good, in those kind of timescales they should soon progress to industrial, technology, and then hit the singularity before Autumn. So you'll get a free PC upgrade for a few days, then they will take over the planet...
A friendly reminder to rewatch the first season of Solar Opposites before the second season gets released on March 26
All nice and well for now. But do watch out for a bunny with funny stache above upper lip in next few hundred years from now.
Sounds like they have started to generate some great artists or shit like that
I open up the case a couple of times a year and vaccuum inside. Whiny fans can be fixed with a wet wipe and a thin tool like a screwdriver, to clean the blades, haven't needed to do that with my rig(8 years since built, 5 since GPU upgrade), possibly due to the semi-regular vaccuming, but I've done it with my mom's laptop.
I bought a blower style RX 480 a year or so back, for like £40, advertised as "not working". I took it apart, and this thing had so much dust in it, when I put it in the sink the heatsink was practically *watertight* on top of that, the thermal paste was crumbling off in chunks. Once I sorted it out, it went from running 70°C idle to 30°C.
just yesterday got a 1070 TI with the same issue, founders edition style cooler and the paste was old "for parts" for 100 bucks I said screw it and after my 1080 died on me I couldn't pass it up, beats my 770 lol
I bought a 2080 Ti for $100 which they said shut down after intensive load. I found out that it was just heavily covered in dust, so I cleaned it and there are no issues as of right now.
@@notsure6834 IG most people doesn't even try to clean their PC
Linus is crying after he saw Steve can carry 4 cards at once
ah yes he can carry 4 cards at once, but can he *_drop_* 4 cards at once?
huh linus also can do that. but i wouldn't suggest he do that😂
Linus will drop all of them lmao
Laughs in Raja Koduri
@@writehse no he will drop all 5 of them.....where the 5th came from nobody knows LOL
"taking the thing apart completely can extend its life span"
proceeds to pull all the capacitors and chips off of the board for cleaning
It'll live forever now.
@@morrokbyo it's name was Robert Paulsen.
NO!
@@GamersNexus That's the next trend, replacing the 'stock' solder with high conductive solder.
@@33gles by thermal grizzy
I may just be easily impressed or whatever but that F1 design looked pretty cool
There's a bed frame like that too. You could make it a theme!
@@artisan002 some Hot-Wheels pajamas and lightning McQueen slippers to match?
@@SonGoku-97 could make a trend out of that😂
@@SonGoku-97 Speed Racer poster on the ceiling. LOL
Part of me misses the days of gimmicky PC parts.
Dust cleaning and thermal repasting is one of the most underrated PC maintenance tasks there is. Absolutely nobody gives second thought to the hardware once it's installed and running.
Learn the hard way like a lot of gamers. Running systems hard for years in environments that lack cool airflow, or have heavy dust buildup. Then later come to the ugly realisation your computer is producing 5x more noise & your games stutter, run poorly with reduced FPS and even crash sometimes.
I had this method done to my computer by a really good local tech who operates a private business. When I received it back it was almost quieter than stock, and my FPS/stuttering issues were immediately resolved. My performance increased and some games benefited from higher FPS. (ELDEN RING is a big one for thermal throttling for some reason). Going from 35-40fps average back to capping at the games 60fps is huge.
If you love your computers and abuse them daily with heavy gaming use and let them run in high temps. Please do this at least once every 2 years.
You don't need a new PC. Just get it professionally restored.
Its always so interesting to see how odd older cards can look especially as even with AIB cards they all still have similar designs now.
New ones look weird as well ngl
what is aib?
Sapphire Toxic 6900XT looks epic af
@@sawii1482 Add in Board
@@wherearemytesticles They only make what people value lol, a lot of people love RGB myself included. Sure some may like an F1 shaped card, but a majority wouldn't.
If you still want to soak the dust in your GPU heatsink, but don’t feel comfortable using water, you can use 90% isopropyl/ethyl alcohol. The alcohol won’t conduct electricity nearly as well as water and it obviously evaporates much faster.
I would use QD Electronics Cleaner because it will dry faster than the water. Just use it in a well ventilated space.
heatsink is just piece of metal lmaojust let it dry long enough
@@dangerd9315 Water with salts in it can cause corrosion. Especially to bare copper
@@w0udo6yv4o4 So just use distiled
The question behind this video is perfect. The results are unexpected and thus makes this video top tier GN content.
@@ginxxxxx no
@@ginxxxxx The amount of gpus they have is nothing compared to the total market. It literally doesn't make any difference for availability. And I want at least the reviewers to have cards so I know if I should bother trying to get one. It's just a perk of being a reviewer.
@@ginxxxxx What else should they do? Call for a riot? 😂
@@ginxxxxx you didn't even answer @Erilans question :P
@@ginxxxxx I only hear frustration and hate. Don't know where it's coming from, but the best of luck to you
Did this with an old laptop. Temps went from throttling to actually boosting and the fans not ramping up anymore! A must do to bring to life any old pc or laptop!
My 680 Classified went from 80C to 45C after swapping old dried out paste at 100% fan speed and load.
Very nice!!!
Nice !
That’s hot
@@GalateaToha lol
I have GTX 690. For the most it just idles as a GPU in a office machine. About as close to silent as can be. It is silent if it is not used for gaming. vs a GTX 1050? Well it is paid for.
It also will game better. If necessary.
It does run two monitors easily. Well it does have two GPUs
I think the GTX 680 will also do just fine for anther 10 years as a office GPU . 680 & 690 are good for 4K. Both can also can run Two 2560 x1440 60hz monitors.
But for gaming?
Maybe not made for gaming at 4K?
The old R 5 1600 and the gtx 690 spends most of the time just running at idle.
For office use not much reason to overclock either CPU or GPU.
But the 3800X system? That gets hammered.
It's kind of amazing how thermal paste can age. I had thermal issues with an old, original Xbox. It would consistently shut down in the middle of a game. I took it apart and the thermal paste was like old gum. Actually fairly difficult to remove. I did the work and I haven't had issues with it since.
That must have been cool took a broken thing little bit of maintenance runs great again!
After changing my laptop paste to thermal grizzly i had 20c drop in temps. If I didn't do it myself I would not believe.
Let's go, another deep dive on these kinds of stuff is always a hit. First it was the thermal paste, then the chairs, now the GPU maintenance!
@@ginxxxxx you do know they buy a lot of their cards on their own right? E.g. Titan RTX
@@ginxxxxx I’m not sure how a review channel purchasing and/or reviewing GPUs is “causing the crisis.” I’m pretty sure the main issues are: scalpers, miners, the downtime in production from the pandemic, very high demand, mfg. queues and an overall silicon shortage…
Reviewers like GN are important for us to know which cards are worth our time or not, versus day LTT which seems to have lately taken the stance of “buy anything and everything if you can”
How would they even have prevented the “crisis”? That’s not their job and the cause is far beyond one channel lol.
@@ginxxxxx No, lol
@@ginxxxxx I’m a scammer? What are you on about? Either you’re a child or you need professional help, and either way you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about lol.
I mean you guys wanna talk about needing more unique parts these days, I'd take a GPU that looked like an F1 car man lmao
true. i remember gpus from 10-15 years ago having very unique designs and always pictures and stuff on the card itself and the boxes
@@martinivanov1319 cases also rarely had windows or glass, the new market is "clean" aesthetic and cartoon images and such dont fit well in that mold. I agree though I would love to see more unique designs. We can do without printed stickers though.
@@crisnmaryfam7344 wtf do u mean cartoon images? its images of game characters and other stuff or just some abstract design
It'll go super well with my car bed. No judging.
@@martinivanov1319 yeah keep those cartoons off those gpus that are used to play cartoons!
This was a really good video and a reminder to maintain the tech that a user has probably invested a lot of money into over the years. I really appreciate the pro-reuse/recycling message.
The thermal pad thickness is exactly the reason why i have always been too scared to take any card apart. I simply have no clue what thermal pads to get for any of my cards and i cannot find any information online.
Fortunately, you can always use calipers to measure it! It would mean a bit of a delay while you measure and order pads, though.
@@GamersNexus True, thanks for the tip :)
My limited experience is that close is usually good enough. A few 100x100 pads of 1 and 2 mm thickness off ebay and you'll likely be ok for most cards, but techpowerup teardown photos are great for a glance at what is under the heatsink before you actually commit to a teardown.
They do sell varying thickness pads in kits on amazon and ebay. Just look for the higher efficiency pads. Can't remember the term at the moment sorry.
There are some kits provide a few different heights on amazon, very handy. Eyeballing it can sometimes work
i've now seen so many squarespace ads that i'm never ever gonna even remotely consider them.
After stacking the cards I immediately thought Steve was gonna pull a Linus and drop the gpus
Been building and maintaining PCs for many years, but have never really thought much about re pasting GPUs, till recently when one of the machines i build with a 1660 TI came back and had some insane temperatures, it put on the emergency RPM on the fans and went to 4200ish RPM, 89c and 107c hotspot, sounding like a race car revving.
After repasting it i was able to OC the card with +80mhz and +700mem mhz, and it went down to 71c, 85c hotspot under stresstest at 2300rpm, really made me realize that i should probably do this to some of my other older cards like 970gtx and 1070 TI that has been running for years...
Jesus. I must be an obsessive, I clean my towers and components for dust every other month.
That's good practice!
With four dogs, every month for me. No fun toting a 40lb tower to the garage to use the air compressor. 🤷🏼♂️
I bought a Bosch GBL 800 E blower and use that, it makes things sooo much easier and quicker than how I used to clean it for many years (manual cleaning)
Fun fact, I used to do this every roughly 3-4 months just like you and would always get a nice satisfying cloud of dust and the interior would always have a "restorative" feel to it afterward. Thermals also saw a noticeable improvement. I then moved to a place with a fancy active air filtration system and zero carpet. I think it's been about 2 years since I opened the thing up. When I do open it up I expect it to still be very clean. Last time I did, I wiped my finger on a horizontal surface and it didn't leave a trail. Still took the whole thing apart and cleaned it as I couldn't believe it. I mean it does have filters but those were also pretty clean.
Moral of the story: if possible live in a clean environment. Dramatically cuts down on so many maintenance issues overall, not just computer related.
Once a month with a compressor and every year a strip down clean. My new build is in a Lian Li Lancool 2 so more dust now, so this might get revised.
Just stripped, cleaned and repasted the old R9 270X 2GB that sits in the PC in my workshop. It was utterly filthy given the environment it lives in. I ran an extended Furmark stress test before and after.
Before: Core temp 67°C, fan speed 53%.
After: Core temp 54°C, fan speed 38%.
With a normalised fan speed (before 53%) the core temp came down to 46°C.
Great result!
Thank you to all from GN for making this - I have been waiting for a properly tested experiment like this for a long time! I have been super curious about the actual difference it makes, but I have never had the patience to test it properly myself 🙃
I found when you rinse stuff with tap water, it helps to rinse again with a bit of distilled water. Small droplets that evaporate off the surface will leave some residue of minerals etc. in tap water. Distilled water evaporates clean.
Animal I really have to wonder about how much mineral deposit you get in a couple of minutes of tap water. I am not knocking the rerinsing idea at all because I have often times noticed my cleaning liquid picks up a lot of dust and such and the small drops will leave a thin residue that a second wipe gets but for most tap water in the civilized world it takes years of use and regular wetting drying cycles to get noticable build up from dissolved minerals. There are some outliers and I know of a well that is safe to drink under consumption standards that lays down rust colored stains in months and another that has really heavy calcium from limestone. The limestone one still takes years in a kettle to build a noticeable film.
I am just thinking that your residue is more likely due to dirt residue from the cleaning and/or you need to check your water/plumbing because that's a lot of suspended junk in your water.
@@OmniMontel The rinsing itself is not a problem I think. I was only concerned about the residue that's left when the droplets evaporate off the surface, aka when you let it dry. We have relatively mineral-rich water here, mostly limestone I think. I did an experiment once where I put a drop of tap water and a drop of distilled water on a clean glass surface and waited until both were evaporated. I could clearly see the residue from the tap water on the glass surface (if you look at it under a bright light with a dark background and no reflected light). I couldn't see anything where the distilled water was. I also did some tests with other liquids (lens cleaning solution, rubbing alcohol...) everything left a residue except distilled water.
@@alphanimal lens cleaning solution eh yeah definitely depending on the solution (some are actually designed to leave antifogging films and other stuff like that), amazed on the rubbing alcohol, distilled water is supposed to be evaporated then condensed water so no surprise, have had distilled water that had picked up a lot of crap from the jug a few times but that was an issue with the container and keeping it in a vechile long term. Like I said with your tap water I would get it checked, it's not supposed to have that much crap dissolved in it. If it's constantly leaving a residue on your drinking glasses and such then it's weird and you should find out what it is.
If you do get it tested and it's not ridiculous like over 150mg/L of normal stuff like calcium or magnesium then eh whatever, you've got hard water in your area. For something like washing a heatsink not a big deal if it's other stuff like say Thallium.
@@OmniMontel Sorry I'm not sure if the stuff I tested classifies as rubbing alcohol, so I might be wrong there. It was Ethanol but I don't know what purity. The tap water is fine, it's just hard water.
distilled waster is just water with all the minerals removed
6:23 "If you wanna buy a tool kit..."
Me: "IFIXIIIIIIIIIIT!!!....wait wrong channel..."
*Explosions*
#JayzTwoCents
Great video as always, I myself purchased a 2nd hand GTX 1070 Zotac AMP. Managed to get a great deal on it before the prices on used parts sky rocketed. When I received it, it was dusty and had cracked thermal paste on the GPU Die. I did test it before taking it apart though. After cleaning it I did not see much difference in performance/thermals but the Fan noise is alot quieter so it goes to show that doing regular maintenance on your parts work.
Careful carrying those, probably worth $20k in today's market or something...
Lol 69k
Hahaha like pilling up 1kg pure gold bars
1080 Ti buy-it-now £600.
Dang man gpu’s extremely rare I bet that one is worth like 6 figures haven’t seen those since the great age of 2020
GTX 1080 is still a decent enough value for the time being
What a coincidence! I just performed this procedure on my old trusty GTX970SSC less than a week ago. I sold it to a buddy in 2019 and he used it heavily in a very dusty room until he upgraded last summer. Traded a 1440p monitor to him for it and a Logi G27 wheel set. It was caked in brown dust (he smokes) which meant I went thru ALOT of Q-tips and rubbing alcohol to get the grime off. Kudos to EVGA as I was impressed with the build of the card and the thermal pads were in perfect condition. Fresh MX4 and she's up and running 68C @ 1450 core / 7500 mem Folding at Home in my HTPC which feeds a 60" plasma 1080p TV so it'll suffice for any gaming duties there. As soon as prices get more real it'll probably be bumped out with the trickle-down effect but until then resurrection is necessary. Good piece for the uninitiated GN, and welcome instead of reviews of unavailable hardware.
I cleaned my friends 1060 a few months ago, temps went from mid 70’s to mid 60’s. Not sure how performance was effected but thermals were certainly better.
@asdrubale bisanzio I certainly agree I’m just not sure it had any effect as the 1060 in question is quite power limited by design
10 degrees should translate to some 30MHz higher boost.
@@Piterixos yeah I’m pretty sure you’re right, not that 30mhz makes any meaningful difference though
Now THIS is content! Such a great response from GN to listen to their viewers for video ideas. Cleaning, although sometimes frustrating or even functionally a waste of time, is still nonetheless one of the most satisfying things to do. Kind of makes me want to hijack my brother’s computer for a day just so I can clean it out for him.
First GPU you took the heatsink off, that was exactly my experience lmao. Took me about half an hour to clean the old paste off.
Hey, I sitll have one of those HD5750's lying around after I upgraded to a GTX 1050. What a design, I love it.
7:03 if I'd been doing a clean at home and heard that noise as I disassembled it, I'd probably have been convinced I'd managed to break it and burst into tears lol
Everyone knows the first rule of PC building: just pull/push harder
I've recently taken apart, cleaned, repasted and put new pads on my GTX 1080ti Aorus Extreme. It dropped from 83c to 78c on average after 30 mins. of fiery ball of GPU-death test (furmark). It's been approx. 20 months since the last cleaning, and first time changing the pads. - was happy to see that.
Have been putting together PC's for a couple of years now, to sell on local used market - normally it's not a big change, but it's always nice to be able to lower the dba when showing it to customers. Worst-best I've seen was a MSI GTX 980 I changed the paste on and cleaned, got it from 94c to 81c inside a case with good airflow and 4 120mm fans. That was a noticable change, but then again, I think the fanblades was twice as heavy as stock, just from all the dust on them!
As always, thanks for the great content - good idea with this vid, would love to see you "test" a full system before and after in the same way.
More videos like this should be made to inform people on how they can extend the life of their components. Good job Steve and keep up the good work. Does anyone here know of any site that can tell me/us how thick the thermal pads need to be for certain models. Trying to get this information from vendor is very tedious and most times you don't even get a reply.
This becomes more important the older and more used the card is. I recently got an 8800 GTS 512MB off ebay for my old Windows XP gaming machine. Card showed up, and idled at 70C and had frame rates in the single digits due to massive thermal throttling. I took it apart, cleaned out a literal wall of dust clogging the heatsink, applied new thermal paste and now it idles at 40C. 30C improvement just on idle temps from removing dust and new thermal paste.
And yeah, I know, my newer Windows 10 PC destroys a 2008 era gaming PC, but that 2008 era PC is still up and running, and now yes, it can play Crysis again.
As someone who prefers to buy moderately high-end, and run the crap out of the hardware for years, I appreciate videos like this. Hopefully the current silicon shortage will help others to appreciate videos like this. I would love to see a resurgence in repair and maintenance interest -- not quite a "lost art" yet, but definitely more niche than I think it should be. Thanks!
As someone who "prefers" to buy moderately low-end, and run the crap out of the hardware for years…
But I heartily agree with your general sentiments.
I didn't think I was going to watch this whole video but it was a lot more interesting and entertaining then what I expected.
EVGA: “Would you like a GPU with those thermal pads?”
Better that than the new Gigabyte 3080 cards, with no thermal pads on the back to connect the PCB to the backplate...
They had a problem with not enough thermal pads being applied shortly before release of the 1080Ti FTW3. EVGA handled the situation very well but they probably wanted to avoid another incident. Besides the FTW3 is a very over built card in general. It only really gets close to its limit with a hardware mod and sub ambient cooling.
evga after not giving enough thermal pads: "here's all the thermal pads in the world" *laughs maniacally*
That squarespace ad is great, 10/10
This inspired me to take apart my 960 and 1080, replace the paste, run the heatsinks under water, and put them back together. It was very satisfying when they still worked lol
i'm about to attempt to clean my 960 myself now
I just cleaned and re-pasted my strix 1080ti. Fantastic card, and a noticeable improvement in thermals just from an easy cleaning and new paste.
Your dedication to providing thorough and consistent content is why I love you guys. Yall set the standard that every other Tech TH-camr should be living up to.
Thank you so much for this! I own a GTX 760 and it’s been having a ton of heating problems recently, and I’m going to try to dust it off soon!
Steve: Doesn't really want to recommend we put the bare metal heatsink under running water.
Roman: Put's the board in the dishwasher.
Dishwashers in Germany use deionized water, so that actually is safe.
@@Azraleee What kind of dishwasher do you have? The water in the usual dishwasher is far from being deionized. You actually add salt in order to lower water hardness.
Spray heatsinks with brake cleaner then rinse done
@@Azraleee you don't need di water thats like in a closed water systems an acid batteries
@@broken1965 Yes! because plastic loves the heavy solvent that is brake cleaner...
(F.Y.I For the Love of God, DON'T DO THIS)
Just repasted and cleaned my R9 270X. It runs now 11 °C colder on Furmark alone and it is more stable when doing light OC.
Love your Videos Steve, keep up the Great work!
Independly from this video I cleaned my MSI Gaming 1080ti and replaced the Thermalpaste with Kryonaut and GPU temps have been lowered by 8-10 degrees C and hot spot temps are up to 15 degrees lower. Amazing results for 15mins work. Also the default paste was applied very roughly and was also on the surrounding GPU frame, the silver one as seen in 20:04, that prevented optimal pressure from the cooler.
For removing thermal paste I always use ronsonal lighter fluid. Works great. I found out that trick about 25 years ago and have been using it since. Have used that literally 1000,s of time to clean and reapply thermal paste. Love the channel and content
*Steve showing a clip applying thermal paste*... That’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s check the comments.
Did this to an ol' Zotac 970 Mini last year which had regular usage since new, it wasn't that bad with dust as it was in a filtered case in a clean environment but cleaning out a few small clumps of dust and repasting took it from throttling at 85 deg C to topping out at ~73 deg C whilst overclocked and hitting higher clock speeds. Worth doing.
Good on you Steve! I also encourage people to look into deshrouding. First part of a gpu that wears down is the fans and while you can buy replacements on ali or ebay, you might have decent 120 mm fans lying around. Some zip ties and a 3/4-pin to mini-gpu adapter and you've got better thermals for cheap.
I've already re-pasted my rx480 a year ago. Really imporved the temps to when it was brand new.
my room is so bad for dust that i clean it and it becomes the same state a week later
I did this on my 980 reference and I had a similar 12 degree drop. Did it on an Asus 970 and got a modest 5 degree drop. Thanks for the great info, I will definitely be doing this again.
3/4" paint brushes found at craft stores are great for dust removal. You can dab at the dust and also use a vacuum (mine has the hose that pulls out) to take it up. The brush will get into the sink fins nicely
A big thank you for this video.
A lot of people are afraid to disassemble their gpu's because of what they cost. So hopefully this will give them the courage to do so.
GTX 760, wow, antique!
Not as old as the HD 5750!
@@GamersNexus still have my xfx 5770's I had in crossfire. come to think of it they had a double lifetime warranty..... hrmmm. lol
i still have mine the asus gtx 760, absolutely working fine
Babys.... my XFX 8800 GTX is sitting in my Gigabyte GTX 1080 Ti Aorus Xtreme edition box next to me.
@@GamersNexus i have two of those 😅
Thank you, helpful video. My 2-year-old 2080 became unusually hot to over 80°C when it used to have just around 65°C max. Opened it up, no dust issues but the thermal paste didn't look good. Now with new thermal paste applied I'm back at 64°C again.
This was a great idea, I'm still running a 1060 6GB, so I might do this myself.
I have a GTX 760. I most likely need to get my hands on proper tools. So glad to see there's a POTENTIAL for much more improved thermals after cleaning and repasting. THANKS!
One takeaway: get a case with good, easy to clean dust filters.
Fractal Define R4 for me love it
My 1080ti is almost 5 years old and still running strong. Just need to take care of it.
When will you release that cat test site 😂😂🙀🙀 our two furrballs would really love to see some standardized box test for quality and stuff.
Awesome to see this days after I cleaned and repasted my 1060, lil trooper idles at 28degrees 💪
The airflow on that Formula One racing card must be great! Would actually be interested to see if they could design a GPU to make good use of the direct case airflow instead of just blowing it around the case.
I have to clean my case out every month because I live with 2 smokers. Thank you for the tutorials.
You should be extremely careful with taking a heatsink off of a GPU/CPU that doesn't have an IHS. The reason for this, is because you could actually shatter the silicon upon removal. You should use a heatgun on a low setting ( with the fan assembly removed! ) or run the GPU beforehand to soften the thermal paste. For chips that have an IHS, I'd still recommend softening the paste first, as a precaution.
I genuinely appreciate the amount of volume normalization care that went into the hand drier part. Those specific units in particular are absolutely *deafening* in person, I wish I could normalize it like that for when I have to use one...
"Better airflow for my immune system" -Love that airflow!
Just love this kind of videos on a lazy Sunday taking some beers.
After watching I've been curious how mine would look like after 3 years, so I checked my Asus Strix 1080Ti's thermal paste application; to my horror not even 20% were covered with thermal paste and what was applied was completely caked, brittle and dry. I re-applied with paste I had available and that dropped my temperatures a whopping 18°C in idle and around 15°C full load... also it's now half as loud.
Yeah, some manufacturers don't apply well. I had a EVGA here once that crashed from time to time. Sent it in and they said it's fine and just returned it to me. I then took the cooler apart and saw that 2 of the VRMs didn't have any pads on them. Put some on them and it never crashed again.
I only like dust gathering in my expensive electronics for the satisfaction I get, blasting compressed air through the vents holes, and watching clouds of dust fly out. I love it. Come to think of it, my kid's PC is due a deep cleaning, yay! 🤣
I'm shocked that evga 1080ti still works. I literally had 3 of those die on me. After the last RMA I just sold it.
This looks like 90 percent of the gaming cards I buy locally. People install them, never touch them again until they are almost dead, cooking for years full of dust and then buy a new one. The same people that won't buy a well maintained mining card because "Its been mined on"....so crazy.
this is strangely therapeutic watching someone taking old videocards apart
I have passed an Asus prebuilt with one of those 5750 cards to a family member, I got it from a friend several years ago and then used it a while. Surprisingly solid system, even though the 5750 is not really good for much these days. Post-covid-vaccinations, I should go over there and clean the card up and re-paste it, it could last another 10 years for basic web surfing like it's doing now.
Excellent timing for me who just got a 3080. Time to clean my 980 and sell it for $500.
its not even worth 200$ but some idiot will pay 500$
@@alouisschafer7212 maybe I should sell my rtx 2060 for 600 xD
@@user-jc2in3cp3g You can get 700 for sure. Just look at ebay. Not saying anyone should perpetuate whats going on, but also when in rome...
I remember fixing a mates computer which was overheating. There was one giant dust bunny clogging the cooler and it was only two years old. Don't smoke in your room and keep your PC off the floor. Great results Steve.
so, wait 8 years before replacing thermal grease on your gpu.
Hahah, yeah.
Been slowly working through my old cards that had never been taken apart. HD 7970 6GB went from 97+ to 68 degrees at 100% fans and load with Furmark. Took a while with so many thermal pads but worth it.
The 2077 in cyberpunk means you'd be able to get current line of graphic cards in 2077 and then you'd be able to play the game
haha
Thanks for editor adding that 7:03. That sounded straight like a stock glass breaking sound.
We've got that exact Handdryer at my University where I work. "Feel the power" indeed. Dyson Airblade RIP.
I wanted to thank you for doing this guide.
Bought some 1mm and 0.5mm thermal pads, then some decent thermal paste.
Heatsink on my 2070 super (which was made in 2019, according to GPU-Z) made a horrible snapping noise when I pulled it off. Paste was dry as a bone.
Cut the 0.5mm pads to size, 1mm wasn't necessary, and I was able to salvage the thick pads on the VRM's and caps.
All the screws went onto a magnet so they didn't get eaten by the carpet bugs.
When Steve carried the cards precariously, all I could think was "if this was Linus, he would have dropped them 5 times already"
It's because Linus has sausage fingers.
This is a really useful video to do for the community. Hopefully it spreads to a more mainstream audience.
I'd be interested in a look at 1080ti card performance on release drivers vs on the latest drivers. Just to see what if any uplift has been gained by driver maturity.
Thanks GN! You got my GeForce 8800 GTX down from 110f to 108f idling on desktop. You're a lifesaver!
Fahrenheit?
"Better airflow for my immune system"
LOL
Good to see a video like this. Me and my friend both got gtx 760's around the same time, but I've upgraded a few times and he's still using his. I don't have pets and he has 2 cats. From the looks of these results he could see a pretty good temp and noise reduction if he wanted to clean his card up. I just don't think he cares lol.
Thermal cycles are what abuses cards the most? I must really clean mine then. Because I am a serial ragequitter.
@@ginxxxxx what. It is literally their job. You don't get mad at artists for hoarding all the coloured pencils.
This inspired me to redo the thermal paste on my graphics card. I used a Kryonaut and my gpu temp is down, while gaming, from 83c to 73c! Thanks guys.
Hey Steve, the recent uprise in temperatures - I presume - drove a replacement in some cards for the thermal pads with silicone based, possibly curing (?) thermal putty. My 3080 is one such application and since it is not a thermal material I had worked before, and particularly after seeing the prices of thermal putty tubes; I've been wondering; would it be possible to replace these with, say, high performing thermal pads instead? For easier maintenance in the future particularly. Even the most expensive pads are cheaper (and also reusable) than generic putty.
Or are thermal putty reusable and I am misinformed? There hasn't been much coverage on these from what I have seen.
@@shaneeslick From what I found on some spec sheets online; high quality putty offers virtually no aging (1), but there are also many variations inclusive of (1, in form of pads) and (2,3) in form of industrial tube for applications, as well as this (3, one quick visual example of it I could find for application) tub like distribution. I do not know what type and for what purpose has been selected for these recent applications, seemingly with GDDR6x memories, to replace traditional thermal pads. (3) offers some insight to this but it is a very short video without a follow-up. Hence why I thought this would be a great next step to cover these - novel to me - applications as well as providing further insight after the present maintenance guide by GN.
1: www.fujipoly.com/usa/products/sarcon-thermal-management-components/thermal-gap-filler-products/gap-filler-pads-putty/
2: lipolytim.com/thermal-products/s-putty-thermal-conductive-putty-series/
3: th-cam.com/video/Rt42_QIKkAQ/w-d-xo.html
Thanks Steve! This has been very informative! I would love to see a similar video showing benchmarks before and after a re-seat and re-paste of a CPU that is 5-10 years old.
I'd be really curious if the effects of the dust cleaning and repasting could somehow be tested independently. Of course I realize that's kind of hard to do since you need to remove the heatsinks to clean them on most of these and if you were to not replace old dry paste after removing the heatsink that's not really a fair comparison. Dry past can still be thermally conductive but it's *not* going to be able to find its way into the exact position it was in before when you reseat the heatsink.
I guess you'd have to do everything you can to clean the heatsink without actually removing it for the test to even work. But in the cases where there was significant improvement I'm really curious how much of that was due to just the dust buildup.
I just did this to my Gigabyte 2080 when the fans started to work harder than they had in the past. Went from 86 and thermal throttling (fan failsafe mode, jumping between boost and non boost clocks) when playing iRacing to 68 and much quieter.
Idle temps also went from 60 down to 38.
The card was very clean, but the paste was dried and looked like there wasn't enough mounting pressure from the factory.
I expected that fall crash and bang.
4:00 might've flipped the scenarios if reading from a script. Not 100% sure, but based on my personal experience when installing GPU water blocks and upgrading thermal pads, if it's too thick, the GPU die or core won't make contact with the waterblock/vapor chamber/etc. and if it is not thick enough, there will be too much force on the PCB, potentially cracking the core.
But Beve Sturke's point is really important, make sure to use exactly the thickness (mm) that was designed for your GPU cooler on memory chips/mosfets. If you need a manufacturer suggestion, I had good success with Gelid but your mileage may vary... Always be extremely careful when doing these repairs/mods unless you are good at board repair/want a paper weight. As always keep up the excellent work GN
We are truly in GPU hell now boys.
Or heaven, depending on how you look at existing hardware and maintaining it.
Sold 2 x 2nd cards purchased for grand total of USD 300, and with the cash purchased a GTX1080ti. No complaints here!
After re-padding two 3080's I can say it's important to get the correct CRUSH thickness. I went from floppy Asus & Gigabyte pads to stiff Thermalright pads and needed 0.5mm thinner for some spots due to less squish/crush.