Thick thermal paste for GPU?

[silajim]

Hi, I need to repaste my gpu (5700XT) because of pump out. Noctua NT-H1 lasts a week and half before needing to repaste, MX4 lasts about a month or so (let's say month and a half) Is there any good high viscosity (like OEM) thermal paste? Where I live there is no ICD so that's not an option. 

 

Are the SYY-157 and the Thermalright TFX and option? 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Pump out?

Am I missing something or is this just a term I've not heard?

[silajim]

When the thermal paste squirts out of the sides due to thermal expansion and retraction of the heatsink

[Skiiwee29]

6 minutes ago, silajim said:

When the thermal paste squirts out of the sides due to thermal expansion and retraction of the heatsink

this is normal... and what you want. The more paste between the heatsink and die the more resistance and the more the heat will stay on the chip and heat it up more. This is how its designed to work. it creates a very thin barrier to efficiently transfer the heat from the Die to the heatsink. 

 

You also need to remember that most of the 5700xt's if I recall originally shipped with a thermal pad over paste as a result of a height variance that could cause issues. That is why several Youtubers used a nylon washer method to fix it with Thermal paste.

 

 

 

[TetraSky]

7 minutes ago, silajim said:

When the thermal paste squirts out of the sides due to thermal expansion and retraction of the heatsink

That's probably because you put way too much then.

Because if you put just enough, it won't come out of the sides in a "squirting" manner. Ever. Unless it was liquid metal or very liquid-like for some reason.

 

Thermal paste doesn't just "squirt out" from underneath the heatsink when properly applied in the right quantity. It might show a bit on the sides from the pressure of the heatsink, but that's it.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

4 minutes ago, silajim said:

When the thermal paste squirts out of the sides due to thermal expansion and retraction of the heatsink

That's a good thing. It keeps the paste thin and makes sure there's not to much    in-between hindering the thermal transfer

[silajim]

It's a MSI 5700XT not a reference one, so yeah it hard thermal paste that pumped out over the course of 9 months, maybe the heatsink is not perfect and it happens. I've tried a plethora of applications over the past few months, just enough thermal paste, too much of it, plastic washers to increase mounting pressure, seems like thicker thermals paste is the solution. I even tried one of those carbon thermal pads and the card was throttling with one of those.

 

Over the course of a month, let's say after repaste the card has a hotpot of 90c after a month it's 105c give it too weeks more and it's 110c and then it start throttling plus the fans are running at 100% to keep it under control so I have to repaste every month with the MX4 and every 2 weeks for the H!

[Pixelfie]

Your current pastes are completely fine, that's what you want.

 

But if you really want a thick paste some Silver 5 is always a good choice

[silajim]

1 minute ago, Pixelfie said:

Your current pastes are completely fine, that's what you want.

 

But if you really want a thick paste some Silver 5 is always a good choice

yeah, repasting every month is not acceptable and silver 5 is conductive/capacitive 

[Pixelfie]

21 minutes ago, silajim said:

yeah, repasting every month is not acceptable and silver 5 is conductive/capacitive 

Nope, this is what the Arctic site says:

Not Electrically Conductive:
Arctic Silver 5 was formulated to conduct heat, not electricity.
(While much safer than electrically conductive silver and copper greases, Arctic Silver 5 should be kept away from electrical traces, pins, and leads. While it is not electrically conductive, the compound is very slightly capacitive and could potentially cause problems if it bridges two close-proximity electrical paths.)

 

Source: http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

 

It's slightly capacitive but it shouldn't be an issue

[Falkentyne]

41 minutes ago, silajim said:

Hi, I need to repaste my gpu (5700XT) because of pump out. Noctua NT-H1 lasts a week and half before needing to repaste, MX4 lasts about a month or so (let's say month and a half) Is there any good high viscosity (like OEM) thermal paste? Where I live there is no ICD so that's not an option. 

 

Are the SYY-157 and the Thermalright TFX and option? 

Thermalright TFX is the best choice for GPU's but it's very hard to spread.  It's suggested that you put the syringe in very hot water (although not boiling) and leave it in about 15 minutes before application.  This makes it easier to spread.  Another trick is to put it in an X pattern on the chip and then use a hairdryer to heat the paste and then spread it fully.  But not everyone has a hairdryer so dunking the syringe in very hot water is an option.  But it's literally almost the most expensive to buy on the market, only being topped out by Kryonaut Extreme, which wins the gibberling award at a horrendous $23 for two grams.  (cheaper if you import the 6.2g from Aliexpress).

 

SYY-157 is good also, and unless you got a very dry batch, it's much easier to spread than TFX and it's a lot cheaper to buy.  Almost on MX-5 level of cheapness if you buy the 8 gram one.

 

A third option is FuzeIce Plus.

[erdembat]

On 7/20/2021 at 7:37 AM, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

That's a good thing. It keeps the paste thin and makes sure there's not to much    in-between hindering the thermal transfer

It's not a good thing. It doesn't keep the paste thin. It's already thin whatever the type of paste is. There can't be too much. It's simple physics. You can't have more inside. You can only have less paste inside due to paste pumping out to sides. Read beyond what Youtubers say. Remember Youtubers are not engineers they are people with camera turned into salesperson.

 

Kryonaut and Noctua NT-H1 generally thinner pastes are susceptible to pump out issue. Thinner pastes have more efficient heat transfer but after certain cycles of heat and cooldown it will pump out to the side. It's just the way it is. That's why high heat transfer paste manufacturers(usually thin silicone based material) tell you, you need to reapply paste every 6-12 months. You can test it yourself. Grab Kryonaut or NT-H1 and apply to your GPU then after temps start to rise up open up and scoop the pumped out bits onto the middle(pastes almost never degrade in quality they only pump out to the side). Also air bubbles are just a bigfoot flat earth stuff. 

[Dogzilla07]

@erdembatJust to clarify so people don't get the wrong idea, the new Pink Kryonaut Extreme does not have this problem (it is reduced), compared to the original gray Kryonaut. Nobody should be buying the old Kryonaut.

 

@erdembatalso, necro, man, ...

 

And as mentioned, for GPU use, and Laptop use, and especially Laptop GPU use, thicker, more viscous, harder to spread paste (TIMs) are the way to go. As have the peeps on the notebook forum figured out in their many hundreds of pages long forum topic.

 

For CPU use, thinner, low viscosity, short lifespan paste (TIMs) are an absolutely valid way to go and normal.

 

8 hours ago, erdembat said:

There can't be too much. It's simple physics. You can't have more inside. You can only have less paste inside due to paste pumping out to sides. Read beyond what Youtubers say. Remember Youtubers are not engineers they are people with camera turned into salesperson.

In theory yes, in practice almost yes, but actually both you and everyone in this topic are both right and wrong about this at the same time. 

 

Yes technically as GamersNexus showed it is not possible to put too much paste, as the mounting system is designed to pump it out the side (this is not the pump-out effect). If the mounting system malfunctioned temporarily, permanently, or is not sufficient, it might give the wrong impression.

 

However you still theoretically want as much Metal to Metal contact as Copper is much more conductive than any TIM, so ideally, if u you can achieve perfection by putting the exactly needed amount of paste to cover the medium-larger grooves, but not leave unnecessarily large amounts of TIM residue in the <small grooves you will get some fraction of a degree of temperature less.

 

But, it is gonna be impossible to achieve for the vast majority of people with the vast majority of setups, in vast majority of cases, and in a time frame that's acceptable to vast majority of users. As you need figure our what state your CPU IHS and the bottom of the Heatsink are, you need to figure out the mounting pressure, need to figure out the behaviour of the TIM you're using, and figure out (through trial and error), how much you should put on. This requires dexterity, experience, patience, huge amount of time of trial and error and ton of paste (And most importantly if you're comparing this to somebody's else data, or your data from before, more than 1 "copy" of the cooler, to eliminate variance in production).

 

That's why Steve from GamersNexus is technically right, as Erdembat above. It's too much of a hassle, for too little gain. Ensuring you have proper mounting, and lapping will always provide more gain. And even the gain from these two is not worth the effort for the average user. Changing to a better static-pressure optimized fan will almost always make more difference (within reason, and with a few caveats).

 

TL:DR The more properly designed a mounting system is(especially regarding mounting pressure), the less it matters if you overdid paste (TIM). And most mounting systems all quite well designed in this regard, but there's outliers. That's why reviews are important, so we can skip the outliers and buy the good stuff.