How to Change your GPU's Thermal Paste (With Pictures)

[Hyydrah]

I prefer to use coffee filters rather than cotton swabs, since the swabs leave a lot of lint.

[AirFie]

thanks dude!

hope change thermal paste will solve my problem.

my gpu get 60 degree Celcious, even at cool booting

[ProGearUk]

I also suggest if you can doing a guide like this for adding a water block to a graphics card. I think that would be useful. 

[Purple]

I prefer to use coffee filters rather than cotton swabs, since the swabs leave a lot of lint.

I've never heard of using coffee filters, interesting.

[boggle4321]

thanks, this was extremely helpful

[Wats]

thanks dude!

hope change thermal paste will solve my problem.

my gpu get 60 degree Celcious, even at cool booting

Take your time. Dust the cooler while you have it all apart.

 

I also suggest if you can doing a guide like this for adding a water block to a graphics card. I think that would be useful. 

I'll consider it however there's already a ton of videos and guides out there showing how to do that.

 

Step 1. Screw it all together :P

[Bastor]

Great guide! Thank you!

 

I'll be getting some Thermal Paste and rubbing alcochol tomorow (probablly MX-2 or MX-4 whichever they have in stock) and changing the paste on my 7870 for the first time ever (I have applied CPU thermal paste a loong time ago but never had to toy with GPU paste).

 

The guide is very nice and it is using the same model of card (though my card is from Powercolor - the 7870 MYST edition and from what I gather powercolor don't mess around by applying normal quantities of thermal paste).

 

I'm actually getting 81 degrees max temperature under heavy load (unclocked) which seems absurd (around 78 when using a custom fan speed configuration with MSI afterburner which still seems pretty high for a loud fan at 70%) and hoping to get at least 10 degrees lower so your guide is coming in as something very useful.

 

I'll make sure to post the results tomorow :D

 

Best Regards and again thank you for the gread guide,

[Wats]

Great guide! Thank you!

 

I'll be getting some Thermal Paste and rubbing alcochol tomorow (probablly MX-2 or MX-4 whichever they have in stock) and changing the paste on my 7870 for the first time ever (I have applied CPU thermal paste a loong time ago but never had to toy with GPU paste).

 

The guide is very nice and it is using the same model of card (though my card is from Powercolor - the 7870 MYST edition and from what I gather powercolor don't mess around by applying normal quantities of thermal paste).

 

I'm actually getting 81 degrees max temperature under heavy load (unclocked) which seems absurd (around 78 when using a custom fan speed configuration with MSI afterburner which still seems pretty high for a loud fan at 70%) and hoping to get at least 10 degrees lower so your guide is coming in as something very useful.

 

I'll make sure to post the results tomorow :D

 

Best Regards and again thank you for the gread guide,

 

70% fan ? ouch. Good luck and I hope you can get that fan speed down!

[ProGearUk]

The one thing that I hate with mx4 which is my compound of choice is that it can be very sticky. I managed to pull a phenom ii 1035t am3 socket processor out of the motherboard when the latch was down and it bent 6 of the pins on the processor. I manged to bend all of them back though so all is well. Good compound but god can it act like glue.

[ERSCreeper]

The one thing that I hate with mx4 which is my compound of choice is that it can be very sticky. I managed to pull a phenom ii 1035t am3 socket processor out of the motherboard when the latch was down and it bent 6 of the pins on the processor. I manged to bend all of them back though so all is well. Good compound but god can it act like glue.

 

This happened to me when I removed the stock cooler of my mom's pc. Ripped it out right but lucky no pins bent.

[SirReallySam]

nice

[mrthuvi]

Great guide. Thanks, man.

[Wats]

Thank you everyone for your comments.

 

I have updated the guide to make it a bit cleaner. Works well on mobile devices.

[Guest]

Did you say spread it with your finger? o.O 

[Wats]

Did you say spread it with your finger? o.O 

Yes, with your finger. But you can put a piece of scotch tape on your finger first if you want :P

 

 

 

 

 

This is directed at you specifically but... There have been a few people calling me out on the spreading method, claiming I will end up with worse thermal conductivity because of the air bubbles. That might be true. However, on dies, if I put enough of a blob to cover the entire area including the corners, most of the compound ends up rolling off of the edges, resulting in me 'breaking out the Q-tips' rather than just grabbing one coffee filter if I ever need to disassemble the card and dust the cooler.

 

The opposite applies for a 'half grain of rice' method on dies. There won't be a horrible mess from paste rolling off of the edges, but there won't be enough compound to travel to the corners.

 

For video cards with an IHS, dot or spread. No real difference in temps. If there is, it is within a margin a error. I'm not sure what else I can say..

[Guest]

My issue with spreading it with your finger is the oils and other foreign material on your skin.

[EricX2]

Is it weird that I had never even thought about the Thermal compound on my GPU before? I have that same card and definitely plan on trying this when I can get some more thermal compound. Thank you!

[Wats]

My issue with spreading it with your finger is the oils and other foreign material on your skin.

No one should use their bare finger. ...I forgot what paste it was, but I got some onto my hand once and it took several washings to remove all of it.

 

I just wrap my finger up tight with a coffee filter or one of those tiny baggies that screws come in.

 

Is it weird that I had never even thought about the Thermal compound on my GPU before? I have that same card and definitely plan on trying this when I can get some more thermal compound. Thank you!

It's not that common to worry about your gpu's paste. But my cards are always running at 100% load, so it's something I worry about :]

[M4XvPA1N]

Is that a 7870? Just wondering.

7870 has a black pcb. Coming from a guy with a 7870

[M4XvPA1N]

Why use stuff to spread it around. Seems like more work to me as the pressure will spread it out evenly and the heat will help too.

[Wats]

7870 has a black pcb. Coming from a guy with a 7870

The cheap 7870s have blue pcb.

 

 

Spread or dot, use any method you like. I use the spread method because I end up using a thinner layer of paste that doesn't go rolling off of the edges of the die so when I disassemble the card for cleaning I only need one coffee filter and not a hand full of Q-tips.

[M4XvPA1N]

He probably used isopropyl alcohol and paper towel to scrub it off. If you are in the same situation, pour 70+% isopropyl alcohol on a clump of paper towel. Scrub as much of it off as you can. Gently clean off any residue using isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth. If you are still having trouble, I suggest you search for a thorough video tutorial on YouTube. I would link one to you, but I'm on IE on the Xbox 360 atm. 

Use 90% and coffee filters. They don't leave any strands of unwantedness :P

[M4XvPA1N]

The cheap 7870s have blue pcb.

 

 

Spread or dot, use any method you like. I use the spread method because I end up using a thinner layer of paste that doesn't go rolling off of the edges of the die so when I disassemble the card for cleaning I only need one coffee filter and not a hand full of Q-tips.

Oh ok. I guess I don't have a cheap one then :)

[Wats]

Oh ok. I guess I don't have a cheap one then :)

Wait... why on Earth did I say that.. 7870s aren't exactly cheap :p

[M4XvPA1N]

Wait... why on Earth did I say that.. 7870s aren't exactly che

Well they go for around $240, the one I bought. Then there is plenty of different versions also. I think it is a great medium-high end card, maxes everything out for me.