GPU Cleaning Before & After Thermals: Re-Pasting & Dust Removal
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Date: 2021-03-07
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Comments and reviews: 10
Алексей
Gotta love the coincidence. Here's a long story about preventive measurements:
I bought a used 1060 which came with quite dry thermal paste, although the temps were acceptable 71-2c under 100% load. So around the end of October last year I repasted it with some cheap cooler master paste, I applied a thin layer that I spread out evenly to cover the die and thermals were okay, 63-5c stock at 1911mhz 60-65 % fan utilization and 66-68c at a +121mhz oc (could push it higher, but didn't see the point) same fan speed.
Well just a month ago my card started to act weird, fan speeds would jump up to 80% with thermals reaching 69-70 at stock in the same games but I had sadly stripped a screw and couldn't service my gpu. Finally enough was enough,8 hours ago I somehow managed to remove the screw without damaging anything and used a tube of mastergel pro that came with my hyper 212 BE.
This time I put a lot, didn't spread it out at all and when I did a heaven benchmark and played doom eternal for 2 hours ... temps never reached 60... 59 were my max temps with better clocks and a better score at 60-65% fan utilization (1924 compared do 1898 at my stock profile, I have the oc model ) .
In my case, I believe that the constant shrinking and expanding of the chiplet pushed that cheap thermal paste sideways because when I unscrewed the pcb from the heatink it fell on its own which has NEVER EVER HAPPENED before.
TLDR: Never use cheap thermal paste on your gpu, and if you do make sure to put a bit more than the cpu
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Gotta love the coincidence. Here's a long story about preventive measurements:
I bought a used 1060 which came with quite dry thermal paste, although the temps were acceptable 71-2c under 100% load. So around the end of October last year I repasted it with some cheap cooler master paste, I applied a thin layer that I spread out evenly to cover the die and thermals were okay, 63-5c stock at 1911mhz 60-65 % fan utilization and 66-68c at a +121mhz oc (could push it higher, but didn't see the point) same fan speed.
Well just a month ago my card started to act weird, fan speeds would jump up to 80% with thermals reaching 69-70 at stock in the same games but I had sadly stripped a screw and couldn't service my gpu. Finally enough was enough,8 hours ago I somehow managed to remove the screw without damaging anything and used a tube of mastergel pro that came with my hyper 212 BE.
This time I put a lot, didn't spread it out at all and when I did a heaven benchmark and played doom eternal for 2 hours ... temps never reached 60... 59 were my max temps with better clocks and a better score at 60-65% fan utilization (1924 compared do 1898 at my stock profile, I have the oc model ) .
In my case, I believe that the constant shrinking and expanding of the chiplet pushed that cheap thermal paste sideways because when I unscrewed the pcb from the heatink it fell on its own which has NEVER EVER HAPPENED before.
TLDR: Never use cheap thermal paste on your gpu, and if you do make sure to put a bit more than the cpu
reply
Dale
Isn't the H5 also the same one that you use on standoffs if you ever need to add or remove them from a case? I've had to pull a few standoffs because they were the passthrough ones rather than the normal ones, and my board didn't have a hole in that spot, so I moved it to another location. Also I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of being careful when cleaning the die, not to accidentally scrape off an SMD. It won't necessarily break the card, but it's still not advisable. Definitely just did this to a card not long ago, the paste was so caked on that it actually sucked 2 SMDs off from around the GPU with the cooler when I pulled them apart like normal. The card was a 780ti and it still works fine thankfully, but it startled the hell out of me cause I've literally never seen that happen, and the GTX1070 I repasted right after had even worse paste but it was totally fine. That 780ti also dropped over 20c before vs after, the die wasn't actually making full contact with the cooler before due to improper pressure at the factory, so one corner of it basically didn't make contact properly at all until I remounted it with proper screw tightness and some Kryonaut. Now to get him to give me back my 5700xt so I can sell it so I can buy myself a 2tb 980 pro
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Isn't the H5 also the same one that you use on standoffs if you ever need to add or remove them from a case? I've had to pull a few standoffs because they were the passthrough ones rather than the normal ones, and my board didn't have a hole in that spot, so I moved it to another location. Also I'm surprised you didn't make any mention of being careful when cleaning the die, not to accidentally scrape off an SMD. It won't necessarily break the card, but it's still not advisable. Definitely just did this to a card not long ago, the paste was so caked on that it actually sucked 2 SMDs off from around the GPU with the cooler when I pulled them apart like normal. The card was a 780ti and it still works fine thankfully, but it startled the hell out of me cause I've literally never seen that happen, and the GTX1070 I repasted right after had even worse paste but it was totally fine. That 780ti also dropped over 20c before vs after, the die wasn't actually making full contact with the cooler before due to improper pressure at the factory, so one corner of it basically didn't make contact properly at all until I remounted it with proper screw tightness and some Kryonaut. Now to get him to give me back my 5700xt so I can sell it so I can buy myself a 2tb 980 pro
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Alien
I've actually showered a GTX275 completely many years ago, I mean all the parts, including the board and fans. It suffered an unfortunate accident before that when I spilled a full glass of Coke on it WHILE THE PC WAS RUNNING. (open case, right next to me on the desk). The liquid spilled all over the GPU and the motherboard and I was in-game, playing Counter-Strike. I was so quick to act that my hand just SNAPPED immediately on the ON/OFF button of the PSU, like probably in 0.5 seconds after I spilled the drink. It was like a twitch from the mouse to the button and bam. The motherboard and GPU survived but I had to completely shower them with water and soap and let them dry on the room heater for a couple days, with everything disassembled (heatsinks, fans, etc). The PC ran fine after that.
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I've actually showered a GTX275 completely many years ago, I mean all the parts, including the board and fans. It suffered an unfortunate accident before that when I spilled a full glass of Coke on it WHILE THE PC WAS RUNNING. (open case, right next to me on the desk). The liquid spilled all over the GPU and the motherboard and I was in-game, playing Counter-Strike. I was so quick to act that my hand just SNAPPED immediately on the ON/OFF button of the PSU, like probably in 0.5 seconds after I spilled the drink. It was like a twitch from the mouse to the button and bam. The motherboard and GPU survived but I had to completely shower them with water and soap and let them dry on the room heater for a couple days, with everything disassembled (heatsinks, fans, etc). The PC ran fine after that.
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MrMarcost2
I know the heatsink of the HD5750 is aluminum and scratching it with a screwdriver isn't much of a concern. But, if anyone ever encounters thermal paste that's hardened that bad, and it just wont come off with just Isopropyl alcohol, instead of taking a scredriver to it you can add a little bit of any oil-based lubricant (like wd-40) and spread it a bit; this will soften the paste up enough that you can wipe it off with some isopropyl and a towel. But if you do this, make sure to clean all of the wd-40! It might not be conductive but i dont want to know what happens when you leave oil-based lubricant on a graphics card
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I know the heatsink of the HD5750 is aluminum and scratching it with a screwdriver isn't much of a concern. But, if anyone ever encounters thermal paste that's hardened that bad, and it just wont come off with just Isopropyl alcohol, instead of taking a scredriver to it you can add a little bit of any oil-based lubricant (like wd-40) and spread it a bit; this will soften the paste up enough that you can wipe it off with some isopropyl and a towel. But if you do this, make sure to clean all of the wd-40! It might not be conductive but i dont want to know what happens when you leave oil-based lubricant on a graphics card
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Steamrick
What I got from this video: The probability of significant thermal improvement correlates directly to the age of the card and how heavily it's been used.
Here's hoping that my own 1080Ti keeps going strong for at least another year or two because getting a decent replacement is near impossible atm. It shouldn't need maintenance though since I reapplied thermal pads and paste when I switched to water cooling in June 2019.
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What I got from this video: The probability of significant thermal improvement correlates directly to the age of the card and how heavily it's been used.
Here's hoping that my own 1080Ti keeps going strong for at least another year or two because getting a decent replacement is near impossible atm. It shouldn't need maintenance though since I reapplied thermal pads and paste when I switched to water cooling in June 2019.
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Lebon19
I wish I could do that with my GTX 680. I'm too insecure to do anything about it. And it's the only GPU that I have that can handle both of my monitors because it's the first era with DisplayPort and I need it with my ultrawide. It's too bad because I swear it would improve everything about it, like that 760 in the video. To boot, it's a blower style card... So, yeah....
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I wish I could do that with my GTX 680. I'm too insecure to do anything about it. And it's the only GPU that I have that can handle both of my monitors because it's the first era with DisplayPort and I need it with my ultrawide. It's too bad because I swear it would improve everything about it, like that 760 in the video. To boot, it's a blower style card... So, yeah....
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SPC
Repasting laptop GPU's is absolutely a must, I have an old Alienware 17 from 2014 and the thing used to sound like a jet engine and regularly hit 66c in windows or browsing, now since I repasted the cpu and gpu+cleaned dust.. I get solid temps around 31c in windows and even though its old i still can game on it since the Temps no longer throttle the gpu and cpu performance.
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Repasting laptop GPU's is absolutely a must, I have an old Alienware 17 from 2014 and the thing used to sound like a jet engine and regularly hit 66c in windows or browsing, now since I repasted the cpu and gpu+cleaned dust.. I get solid temps around 31c in windows and even though its old i still can game on it since the Temps no longer throttle the gpu and cpu performance.
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vin
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.
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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.
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Liam
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.
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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.
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H31MU7
People need to consider doing this to higher end laptops every year or so. The difference it made in my XPS 9560 was staggering. Games used to start stuttering after 15 minutes and after closing the game you couldn't even use Chrome or anything for a good half hour. Now it runs better than brand new.
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People need to consider doing this to higher end laptops every year or so. The difference it made in my XPS 9560 was staggering. Games used to start stuttering after 15 minutes and after closing the game you couldn't even use Chrome or anything for a good half hour. Now it runs better than brand new.
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