Video Card Thermal Compound Upgrade

[scitzybunny]

I have used the ICD product for a few months now on my gtx 970 and CPU. Not once I have encountered any issues with scratching. 

 

Personally I fail to understand if there is any issue.

[Marius]

Hey everyone, just wanted to give my two cents to this topic. I've been running a GTX 670 (EVGA FTW one) since the 600 series was released. Over time, thermal compound definitely loses some of it's transfer capabilities, and this was something that I experienced first hand when I just recently changed the TIM on my card.

 

Before changing the TIM about a week ago, I was getting load temps of 78-79 degrees Celsius.

After changing the TIM, my load temps have decreased to 65 degrees Celsius!

 

This is a 13 degree difference, which is huge! The card being about 3 years old (don't remember exactly when I got it... I think 2012...) definitely had a big impact on how efficiently it was dissipating heat. I used some left over Arctic Silver 5, and before anyone yells at me, I know there were some "risks" with using this particular TIM since if it touched the circuits around the GPU it could fry the card, but so far so good.

 

All in all, if you've had a 2+ year card like a 6xx or maybe even 7xx and your temps are high, consider changing the TIM. It took me 10 mins and the performance and cooling increase was definitely noticeable.

 

Edit: I'd like to mention that my idle temps stayed about the same, around 37 degrees Celsius in my case that is not so optimally placed under my desk with little air flow to it.