EVGA RTX 2060 KO Ultra Overheating PSA

[Particle_Wave]

I recently fixed my 2060 that has had issues since I got it and wanted to share the symptoms and solution to the problem I had.

 

Even with high airflow through my case and my CPU maxing out below 60 degrees, my 2060 thermal throttled in synthetic loads and most games. Considering it's an overclocked card and a small 2-fan design, I just thought the card came with inadequate cooling, and that there was nothing I could do. However, I noticed that it throttled at 83 degrees instead of the 87 degree temp target. Also, the fans would occasionally jump from my custom fan curve to 100% for a few seconds. I finally thought that maybe there are other temperature sensors that I can't see that are causing the fans to ramp up and the premature throttling. If that's the case, then something isn't getting cooled properly. So, a screwdriver and a voided warranty later, I discovered the thermal paste was only covering about 70% of the GPU. With correctly applied thermal paste (and letting my fans go to 60% instead of just 50%), it doesn't thermal throttle in any situation anymore, even with a 130mhz core overclock and 1000mhz memory overclock. If anyone else has thermal issues with this card, you might want to try checking the thermal paste. Hopefully this helps somebody.

 

TL;DR

If your evga 2060 ko ultra thermal throttles regularly, you might want to check the thermal paste.

[FRSHPRNCFBLR]

No warranty voided here, EVGA doesn’t void your warranty for repasting or even putting a waterblock on your card, as long as you return it the way it was sold. 
 

So at least you got that going for you. 

[Lekhaka]

Just found this via google. I've been having the same symptoms and it's been annoying me lol. I will try replacing the paste, so thanks for this post!

At first I thought the 83 degrees thermal throttle must have been a hard-coded limit in firmware or something. But the occasional 100% fan speed for no apparent reason without respecting fan curve was just inexplicable and annoying, because the fans are very loud. And I don't think the increased speed even does much. At a certain point it seems like additional airflow doesn't cool the limited heat-sink fast enough, so you're better off letting it throttle unless you wanna have a jet engine next to your ears. I was about to give up and just let it throttle and sacrifice like 10% performance, but now I'll try this first.

[Lekhaka]

Reapplied thermal paste yesterday. Also took the chance to add some more thermal pads on the chip to create more contact with the heat sink.

 

Now the problem seems to have gone away. It no longer thermal throttles before the set temp, and doesn't inexplicably ramp up fans to 100% anymore.

However in my case the previous thermal paste did seem to cover the whole die when I opened it up, before reapplying the paste. I guess it was just low quality paste, cured paste (but it wasn't solid when I wiped it off) or just bad contact pressure???