Changing thermal pads and repasting GPU | Gigabyte RTX 2080 TI Gaming OC

[PKlempe]

Hey everyone!

 

I'm trying to improve my GPU temps (RTX 2080 TI Gaming OC) because after two years of using the card they pretty much suck (see one of my older posts). After some testing and reading about it online it seems that the thermal paste and pads used by Gigabyte aren't that great and that's why I want to replace them.

 

The repasting (I'm gonna use NT-H2 for that) and changing of the thermal pads doesn't sound that difficult but I'm worried about choosing the right thickness for the pads. I've found these pictures of the cards backplate, PCB and heatsink but I can't find an exact measurement of how thick they are. I believe they should be 0.5mm around the GPU and the rest on the PCB uses 1.0mm. The backplate should be 3.0mm but I probably won't change them because I can't find such thermal pads online.

 

Because this is my first time opening a graphics cards I wanted to ask if anyone has any tips or additional information for me. Maybe I even overlooked something or someone knows the actual thickness of the thermal pads used in this card.

 

Thanks in advance!

[jaslion]

You need the exact thickness but I can't really find it so basically you'll have to open the card, measure it (the not already recessed parts due to pressure) and order correct ones. Then again thermal paste replacement should be good enough as the thermal pads aren't that bad.

[Dr0y]

I read your other post and if you get better gpu temps when opening the side panel then it's an airflow problem in the case.  If the temps did not get better when opening the side panel then I would say that yes a repaste would be good but it doesn't seem to be the case ... unless the situation has changed since then ... I would not mess with the paste and pads unless you tried every other things like more fan/try other fan placement, try to undervolt a bit and such ...

 

also is your gpu vertical mount ?

[PKlempe]

1 hour ago, Dr0y said:

I read your other post and if you get better gpu temps when opening the side panel then it's an airflow problem in the case.  If the temps did not get better when opening the side panel then I would say that yes a repaste would be good but it doesn't seem to be the case ... unless the situation has changed since then ... I would not mess with the paste and pads unless you tried every other things like more fan/try other fan placement, try to undervolt a bit and such ...

 

also is your gpu vertical mount ?

The temps did get a bit better. I therefore replaced the stock exhaust fan in the back with one from Noctua. So now I have 2x 140mm intake fans (Noctua) in the front, 1x 120mm exhaust fan (Noctua) in the back and 2x 120mm exhaust fans (stock) in the top. I also adjusted the fan curves of all of them to ones that are a bit more aggressive.

 

I also tested some stuff after that (side panel was closed) and I can say that when I play Cyberpunk on the highest settings (without RTX) my temps for the CPU are around ~65C° (~60% usage) and for the GPU ~73C° (~60% usage). As soon as I enabled RTX the temps for CPU stayed mostly the same (ocassional short spikes up to 70C°) and the GPU went straight up to 84C° (~85% - 90% usage) after a few minutes resulting in emergency cooling kicking in.

 

What I also did was opening the side panel again and pointing a fan directly at my GPU. I tried what happens when I run "A Plague Tale: Innocence" (a game my GPU doesn't seem to like) and it took 1-2 minutes before it reached 84C° again.

I also tried undervolting it with Asus GPU Tweak and this really improved temps by a lot! But it's kind of a shame to undervolt/underclock a graphics card this expensive. 

 

Regarding your question with the vertical mount: No its not. Here's a picture of my setup. Keep in mind, that this is an older picture, so the new exhaust fan is missing and I also took out the capture card for testing purposes.

[Dr0y]

3 hours ago, PKlempe said:

The temps did get a bit better. I therefore replaced the stock exhaust fan in the back with one from Noctua. So now I have 2x 140mm intake fans (Noctua) in the front, 1x 120mm exhaust fan (Noctua) in the back and 2x 120mm exhaust fans (stock) in the top. I also adjusted the fan curves of all of them to ones that are a bit more aggressive.

 

I also tested some stuff after that (side panel was closed) and I can say that when I play Cyberpunk on the highest settings (without RTX) my temps for the CPU are around ~65C° (~60% usage) and for the GPU ~73C° (~60% usage). As soon as I enabled RTX the temps for CPU stayed mostly the same (ocassional short spikes up to 70C°) and the GPU went straight up to 84C° (~85% - 90% usage) after a few minutes resulting in emergency cooling kicking in.

 

What I also did was opening the side panel again and pointing a fan directly at my GPU. I tried what happens when I run "A Plague Tale: Innocence" (a game my GPU doesn't seem to like) and it took 1-2 minutes before it reached 84C° again.

I also tried undervolting it with Asus GPU Tweak and this really improved temps by a lot! But it's kind of a shame to undervolt/underclock a graphics card this expensive. 

 

Regarding your question with the vertical mount: No its not. Here's a picture of my setup. Keep in mind, that this is an older picture, so the new exhaust fan is missing and I also took out the capture card for testing purposes.

undervolting will help bring temps down a bit and if you can leave clocks at stock and it still boost as high as before then it's not impairing the card in any way. 

 

also from your picture, the card seem to have one fan kinda close to the elgato card ... would it be possible to lower the elgato card to help the air reach the rear fan ?

I suppose those two front fans are in the lowest position possible ... if not you should probably lower them the more you can to push fresh air under the gpu ...

 

from what I see there's not much more to do ... besides what we talked about already ...

 

if you want to repaste and change the thermal pads, be aware that this will have a risk to void your warranty and/or make the rma process more difficult if something ever happens.  Opening a gpu is always risky and you should avoid doing it if there's a way around it ... like a slight undervolt (leave clock stock)

 

if you decide to open the gpu, I don't know why but I have a preference for kryonaut thermal paste, it really spread well, it is thick enough so it won't leak everywhere but thin enough to be able to not fight with it while spreading, it's quite smooth, it gave me good results with a gtx470 and is non conductive.  When applying paste on a bare die you have to cover it completely, no pea size or line ... spread is the way to make sure all the die is completely covered which is quite important. 

 

as mentioned before, the thermal pads should be the same thickness, measure them carefully.  I don't know if there's a big difference in quality from one brand to another (I guess there probably is) so for that you would have to ask around and do more research. 

[ribizly]

On 3/7/2021 at 3:10 PM, PKlempe said:

Hey everyone!

 

I'm trying to improve my GPU temps (RTX 2080 TI Gaming OC) because after two years of using the card they pretty much suck (see one of my older posts). After some testing and reading about it online it seems that the thermal paste and pads used by Gigabyte aren't that great and that's why I want to replace them.

 

The repasting (I'm gonna use NT-H2 for that) and changing of the thermal pads doesn't sound that difficult but I'm worried about choosing the right thickness for the pads. I've found these pictures of the cards backplate, PCB and heatsink but I can't find an exact measurement of how thick they are. I believe they should be 0.5mm around the GPU and the rest on the PCB uses 1.0mm. The backplate should be 3.0mm but I probably won't change them because I can't find such thermal pads online.

 

Because this is my first time opening a graphics cards I wanted to ask if anyone has any tips or additional information for me. Maybe I even overlooked something or someone knows the actual thickness of the thermal pads used in this card.

 

Thanks in advance!

Have you upgraded to any of the newer BIOS versions (F3/5)? Because in those the max TDP has been raised by them and the card quickly boost up to ~300+W and that causes the overheating. 

Let me know if that is the issue, then I can help how to downgrade back to the factory BIOS.