Odd behavior after thermal paste change (2070s)

[Deimos F]

Specs

Win10 64 bit

i7 8700k (no OC) w/ Noctua NH-D15

16 GB DDR4 2666 Mhz

Asus Prime Z370-A

Gainward Phantom GS 2070 Super

Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 750 W

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Issue:

I recently went ahead and replaced the thermal paste in my GPU with Kryonaut. The replacement was pretty straightforward (the factory-applied stuff was really messy). I had no issue cleaning out the old paste and applying the Kryonaut. The thermal pads on RAM chips and VRMs mostly didn't even move, they just came off clean and stayed in their original positions either on the cooler side or the hardware side. Before putting the cooler back on top of the card I took a clean flat-head screw driver and using it as a mini-spatula carefully pushed down a little on the pads to make sure no air bubbles had developed behind them during separation. I noticed some oily residue pooled on the surface of the RAM chips so I lightly dabbed that away with a paper towel.

 

After putting everything back together (I got it lined up perfectly the first time so there was no side-to-side smooshing to realign screw holes or anything) the system booted without issue, and I can tell you that the thermal paste worked fine and I'm getting better thermal performance.

 

However

 

I was using Heaven Benchmark as sort of a "quick and dirty" test to check for things. I noticed that after the procedure, whenever I fire up Heaven right after booting up everything is slow and sluggish (roughly half the FPS than usual). If I let it run for a little bit, and then restart the Heaven software, things go back to normal and I get my usual performance. I did notice that my benchmark scores went down a little (from 2104 to 2073).

This is weird. It's almost as if, after the replacement, the GPU acts a bit weird for a bit before it "warms up" so to speak? I don't notice any problems during gaming, I'm getting the same performance and no noticeable problems, but it's very strange that after applying the best non-conductive thermal paste on the market my GPU is performing slightly worse than before. Nothing else in my system changed, only the paste.

 

Could this be a problem with the thermal pads? The GPU is less than a year old and the pads themselves seemed very gummy and elastic, with a tiny bit of an oily coating. I'm not super familiar with thermal pads, so I have no idea if that's a good sign.

Any ideas? I'm really clueless right now, can't think of any explanation for this. The attached photo is the naked GPU before I removed the factory-applied thermal paste. That single VRM without any thermal pad over it is in a position that the cooler surface can't make contact with, so I'm pretty sure the absence of thermal pad on it is intentional.

[emosun]

4 minutes ago, Deimos F said:

scores went down a little (from 2104 to 2073

thats not significant enough to be outside of the margin for score variances

 

also , use more than a single program for running diagnostics on a gpu. you currently cannot exclude the benchmark as the problem  , although in my opinion you really dont have a problem currently.

[Deimos F]

So that initial sluggishness after a reboot doesn't strike you as a possible issue?

 

Also, regarding score variances: to be clear I ran the test 3 times before the thermal paste replacement and always got 2104. Afterwards I either had the sluggishness problem and got a score around 1300 or things would go smoothly and I would either get 2054 or 2073. It seems before the replacement the performance was more stable and reliable, and since then I get slightly lower scores when the sluggish problem doesn't show up.

 

Do thermal pads need "time to set"? Could this just be a matter of waiting for the internal physical properties of the pads to re-stabilize?