fixed GPU fans not matching temps. (Also weird behavior)

[Light034]

Hi, I recently changed the thermal paste of my RX 580 8GB Gaming X, but after some testing I noticed that the temps where not right at all, before the fan would go full jet engine at 80°c but now it seems to be maxing the fans at 60°C while gaming and then keeping at that speed until I exit the game and open the adrenaline software, but once I go back to the game after some time it goes back full speed and the temp doesn't even change a little.

Also something weird is that before changing the thermal paste the backplate would get too hot to the point it would (kinda) burn my finger but now when the fans are at 100% the backplate isn't hot, I mean, its good that it's not hot but the fans kind of worry me bc what is the gpu detecting to decide to go on jet mode at low temps?. I'm kinda worried that I messed up some cable or even circuit that regulates the temps within the card that is causing this weird things.

One more thing, before I changed the paste I had set up a nice fan:temp curve but now it seems to have no patern, I had it tuned so once it reached 60°C the fans would spin at 60% but that is not the case, once it gets to 60°C it activates the jet engine. The idle temp now is 40°C but at 40°C the fans should spin at 40% but the fans are at 30% just as if it was at idle temp before I messed up (36~ish) no matter what I change in the fan/temp curve it doesn't seem to have effect once gaming. I'm hoping that I did not ruined anything within the pcb, the paste I used is the Cooler Master Htk-002, not the best one but had done the job before for my cpu and other gpu's.

 

I'm thinking that the thermal paste I used is too old (bought it 2 years ago) and it's isolating the chip preventing it from dissipating enough but at the same time the thermometer (?) doesn't detect well the temp so it boost up the fans. I really have no idea what I did wrong aside from opening my gpu.

 

Hope I can read other people opinions and possible solutions for this.

[Majestic]

How are your regulating the fan speeds? Have you tried disabling all those and let the card control the fans itself? Also, AIB's have become smart with fanspeeds ever since these utilities became popular. In dual fan setups, especially those MSI's, they control 1 fan seperately for the VRM no matter what you set the fan at for the GPU. They probably had a few too many RMA's due to people deciding for themselves when to turn on the fans.

 

So if you let the card heat up further before turning it on, the VRM fan will kick in full blast.

[Light034]

Just now, Majestic said:

How are your regulating the fan speeds? Have you tried disabling all those and let the card control the fans itself?

Yes, I tried the default settings but I get the same result with fans going at 100% with 60°C, here is a screenshot with the default settings, it doesn't go all the way up to 100% because of Min Acoustic Limit but still is very loud.

 Also with the default settings even when the temps drop to 40°C the fans get stuck arround 70%.

[Majestic]

Is the card boosting to the same clockspeeds as it was before you did the thermalpaste swap? And again, those models have two seperate fans. One that only acts on GPU temperature and the other that does VRM. Did you only undo the 4 screws for the heatsink, or did you take off the PCB heatsink as well?

[Light034]

The clockspeeds are the same as before.

 I only touched the heatsink so the VRM should be ok. The only thing I did outside the thermalpaste swap was that I repositioned the thermal pad that was on the power delivery section and placed just in the boxes leaving the capacitors without thermal pad, here is a photo of the pcb of  my gpu, in the red box I paced the thermal pad leaving the capacitors without it, I don't know if it was in between before I removed the heatsink. Also I don't know if this capacitors generate a lot of heat.

[Mesterial]

Temperatures are checked not only on the gpu die, but also sometimes on the memory, AND on the power delivery part. If you messed up with the power cooling, then that's why it is turbojetting as soon as it is asked to draw power. 

[Light034]

I moved the thermal pad to the capacitors but I get the same result, now the temps are a little lower while gaming (52°C max) but the fans still go full speed and it takes them a long time after the load is gone to go to idle speed. Here is another screenshot of the graph and how the fan speed goes up while the temps remain the same. After some mins of load the backplate where the power delivery section is feels a little warm but isn't a lot.

 I'm thinking of buying another thermal pad and placing it next to the other one so both the capacitors and the mosfets have thermal pads.

[Light034]

Ok, I fixed it, it was the easiest fix I have ever had to do. The problem was the thermal paste, I replaced it with a Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut and the gpu fans going full speed is no more. Thanks for answering my thread Majestic and Mesterial!