Chris Redfield

try not overclocking it as hard... or at all and see if that helps 

Are you sure you have set your fan speed properly without the zero RPM mode?
If you have bad fans it could lead to over heating issues with the graphics card while you mining. If that continues it could wear down the graphics card faster.

Well hidden in this case means buried deep in the options you have.
You have options with sub-menus that in turn may have their own sub-menus, that's what I'm getting at.

Don't be afraid to explore your BIOS and remember the ESC key is your best friend for not messing anything up  - Just spam the ESC key to back out and exit without saving anything if you have to.

Gaming, the FE's stock thermal pads are genuinely garbage.

I just replaced my 3090 thermal pads (because the VRAM was hitting 110C, dropped to 90C after replacing the pads). While I did that, I also repasted. 

For the thermal paste I bought Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut
For Thermal Pads, I used: Thermalright Extreme Odyssey Thermal Pad with a thickness of 1.5mm (Because that's what the FE version used for thickness)

Arctic MX-5 is also good, but I haven't used it on a 3000 series gpu, so you would need to look up thermal benchmarks for an honest opinion.

I think the original thermal paste is pretty high quality. Because my GPU core temps haven't changed very much after repasting. In fact, they might have gone up 1 or 2 degrees because the new pads are cooling the memory a lot better.

If I was in your shoes I would use DDU and remove all drivers and start fresh to see if that clears up the issue.
 
What are temps like when microstuttering?  Maybe poor factory paste applied and its dry already?

Well yeah,now it makes sense.Thanks guys!

So what's your temps then, *under load*(playing games etc)? 
 
You need some fan control software from mb manufacturer, or set in bios (software would be preferable at least until you found a setting you want to keep) 
 
True, but that was just an example what I think you can do... as said I don't think it's worth it personally, though I do think it's worth it to keep temps as low as somehow possible as that means less automatic downclocking and can at least make for a smoother experience. 

Benchmarks are always a solid choice, always fun to see how well you score too but then its just down to playing some games or whatever and seeing if you can see any artifacts or if it craches

You need a variety of things to test OC.  Ive had things pass hours of AIDA and OCCT just to fail and have a system restart in cinebench.

It is.  Like I said, it’s a lead chip.  I don’t know that it was even necessarily the chip I guess.  Could be a lead mobo.  Something is substandard somewhere.  All I got.

This is true I think, though there is an older school opinion that if you want to slow the already slow deterioration of traces it shouldn’t be run above 75°c.  How true this is I don’t know.  Even using that old school approach though the 95°c thing should still last multiple years.  Possibly longer than the chip would even be used.  I’ve got an 18 year old chip in my basement that still works fine afaik.  Haven’t turned it on in a while.  Was it worth saving? Probably not.

When I OCed my old 4470k system, I could get it up to 4.5ghz and have it pass an hour or two of both prime 95 and fur mark.  This wouldn’t keep it crashing in games though.  4.2ghz was a crash a week in games.  Much more stable but too much for me.  4.1ghz was a crash every three weeks or so.  It took 4.0ghz for true “this doesn’t happen” stability.  It is a lousy example of the chip though. 

about 90-95c is bout the max Id run it at

The problem is there seems to be levels of stability, and people seem to sometimes use the term “rock solid stability” when they mean “stable enough for my use case” stability.  The question become what confidence level of what stability level would a test like that produce?

Personal opinion is if it passes a few hours of realbench scores appropriately in benchmarks, doesn't throw any wheas, and doesn't crash when you're using it for what you use it for, it's fine

id run a few more than 2h, but then youre gona have to hit it with other loads like games and whatever else you want to do with it

It's possibly stable, even if you had tested with small FFT and it didn't crash, there would still be a possibility for crashing in other workloads, the most difficult one to test is transient responses, it's when the load on the CPU is fluctuating even if the CPU wasn't being utilized to 100%, keep using your PC and observe if any issues arise.

Id argue no single test is enough to know if its stable, as all loads stress the cpu differently. 
 
Prime95 is fully unreastic, its using normal instructions, and not doing anything weird.
 
Id probably just use it as a main system as se iff you have weird issues.

That fans have nothing to do with the cooler, they are just fans. If they don't spin you over tightened them or they are touching the rad or they are not getting power.
 
Also if you put the pump on the sys-pump header and nothing in the CPU fan header your computer is going to think you have no cpu fan.
So put the pump there or put one of the fans in the CPU fan header.
 
I have no idea how that aio runs its fans so I can't tell you what is going on.

uh dude, does you pc still turn on.. then its not fried.
 
Also modern cpus can be run without any heatsink for a short bit with no issue.
Double check that you are providing power to the aio properly, find the install manual for it and follow the steps.

The above posters are correct. As long as only the fins are bent, you are fine. To be sure, connect the pump to a computer and let it run with the radiator in different positions. Put it on a paper towel and check if stays dry. If it's dry after an hour, I see no reason not to use it.

If it bothers u, just use a pair of needle nose pliers or tweezers to straighten out the fins.

Liquid passes through the center channels, not the fins. the fins are just there to give more surface area for dissipating heat. The tiny bend in the corner of the rad is of no consequence and wouldn't make an impact on temperatures. 
 
You're fine to use it as is. 

If it's just the radiator metal you're fine.
If something else was pierced like a housing / hose.. you have other problems to take care of.