bricked? Bricked 3060 During Repaste?

[Zbot1223]

I wanted to replace the fans on my 3060 (Gigabyte 3 fan card) since one of them died (it was making a ton of noise so idk if that counts), while doing that I decided to repaste it with K5 Pro that I saw in a LTT video (the thermal pads were falling off and the thermal paste on the gpu was a VERY thin layer). After the repaste and fan replacement I put the card in and it booted fine, however when under load the temps quickly jumped to 90 and the new fan wasn't spinning, so I took it out, put in another fan (that worked this time) and added more thermal paste to cover the VRMs. However, now it wont display anything. I plugged in an old card I have laying around and the computer wasn't even detecting the 3060 (the fans were spinning though). There is nothing covering the contacts that plug into the mobo and the only thing I can think that could have caused damage to the card during the repasted was I used the provided stick to push some thermal paste into an area where there was a gap on the VRMs near the display ports. I also know I added WAYYYYY too much thermal paste, I wasn't sure how much to add the second time because I was using the K5 to replace the thermal pads and wanted to make sure. I wiped away the excess that was oozing out. K5 is also not electrically conductive so I don't think there was a short, especially since it would have also shorted the first time. Drivers and everything is up to date, I honestly don't know what the cause could be. I might try wiping everything off and trying again, just in case something got in there that could be causing an issue.

[Moonzy]

Bruh I'm not even sure if this is a late April's fool joke anymore

Quote

 

I don't even know where to start, but your card might be dead, I guess u can start by removing that paste

 

Did u also use that paste on your GPU? Is it supposed to replace thermal paste as well or just thermal pad?

[Zbot1223]

6 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Bruh I'm not even sure if this is a late April's fool joke anymore

 

I don't even know where to start, but your card might be dead, I guess u can start by removing that paste

 

Did u also use that paste on your GPU? Is it supposed to replace thermal paste as well or just thermal pad?

My understanding is that it can replace thermal paste and thermal pads, I'm going to remove the paste tomorrow and try again ig.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Why didn't you try to RMA the card before attempting this... janky repair? 

[GuiltySpark_]

This is going up there with some of the greats for GPU carnage. I can't even imagine what kind of damage you did. Next time, ask someone before doing something like this!

 

Best you can do is pull it apart, spent the likely hours cleaning up all that wasted thermal paste, acquire the properly sized thermal pads then report back here before any re-assembly. 

[Zbot1223]

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Why didn't you try to RMA the card before attempting this... janky repair? 

I tried, the Gigabyte customer service said that it would take several months for me to get it back, also the stock thermal pads aren't the best so the fan would probably have died in another year or so. Either way, lesson learned

[dizmo]

I can't even...

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

16 minutes ago, Zbot1223 said:

I tried, the Gigabyte customer service said that it would take several months for me to get it back, also the stock thermal pads aren't the best so the fan would probably have died in another year or so. Either way, lesson learned

Well you basically threw away any chance of a RMA repair/replacement now...  so yea, lesson learned indeed. 

[Moonzy]

8 hours ago, Zbot1223 said:

My understanding is that it can replace thermal paste and thermal pads, I'm going to remove the paste tomorrow and try again ig.

i suspect what happened is that u applied so much that the paste got in the way of the cooler achieving proper mounting pressure
perhaps your GPU die might've overheated on some part and died

or perhaps the paste pushed some SMD components away from the PCB, so when u wipe the paste away, make sure u dont throw any potentially unlodged SMD away too

[dilpickle]

I'm guessing he was following this video

 

https://youtu.be/K91dqC0sWrg

[FliP0x]

In case of overheating, isn't hardware designed to automatically shut itself off in case of overheating? Even early 2000s CPUs had this feature.

 

Since you applied more paste than you needed, are you sure that you're getting proper mounting pressure? CPUs/GPUs likely won't run if the mounting pressure is not right/enough.

[Cs labs]

We are sorry to hear that you experience problems with your board. Our repair team would like to provide their sugestions in order to help you locate and maybe solve the issue. 

We understand that you had a faulty fan which you decided to replace with another and did repaste at the same time. Then board worked ok by fan didn't spin so you had high temperatures. At that point did the board worked ok just before you replace the non spining fan or it stoped working (black or blue screen) and then you replaced the non spining fan? Please let us know.

Also you mention that at your understanding K5 PRO can replace both thermal pads and thermal paste but this is NOT correct. K5 PRO should be used as thermal pad replacement ONLY. For GPU you need to use KRYO33 or another high end thermal paste.

[Federson]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:59 AM, dilpickle said:

I'm guessing he was following this video

 

https://youtu.be/K91dqC0sWrg

LTT really needs to take this video down. So many people have damaged their GPUs because of it. 

[m9x3mos]

1 hour ago, Federson said:

LTT really needs to take this video down. So many people have damaged their GPUs because of it. 

They even said in the video that they replaced the pads with this not the paste. This is the first death I have heard of. Looking at the application, there was technique issues with using too much. 

[Federson]

51 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

They even said in the video that they replaced the pads with this not the paste. This is the first death I have heard of. Looking at the application, there was technique issues with using too much. 

The card definitely died from user error. But when I posted a poor review for k5 after it increased my vram temps, the manufacturer tried to blame the poor performance on me not using enough k5, even though I posted a photo of it clearly expressing out from under the vram heatsink. https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops/comments/rlus4i/comment/hv9nqf1/

 

[Cs labs]

15 hours ago, Federson said:

The card definitely died from user error. But when I posted a poor review for k5 after it increased my vram temps, the manufacturer tried to blame the poor performance on me not using enough k5, even though I posted a photo of it clearly expressing out from under the vram heatsink. https://www.reddit.com/r/MSILaptops/comments/rlus4i/comment/hv9nqf1/

 

Thank you for using our product. It is customer's right to be happy or not with a product and to leave relevant review. It is also our obligation to stand behind our product and provide suport every time some customer has problem with it. In the photos that you uploaded on Amazon review and on reddit it is clear that you didn't apply product correctly. Spreading of K5 PRO shows clearly that only in midle was in contact with heat sink while corners of memory chips were clearly not covered with K5 PRO at all. The fact that in some sides product splits out doesn't mean that all surface was fully covered and it is visible in photos without heat sink.

You used our product on a new high end board which already has installed very high quality materials inside for best possible performance by manufacturer. If you wish to get the same or better results with K5 PRO you have to apply it super correctly. Yes K5 PRO does get messy and hard to clean because it contains the smallest possible particles in order to give best heat transfer results. But this is the truth. You didn't apply it correctly so you didn't get good results. It doesn't fit your needs so you don't have to follow our instructions but we have to inform other users so that they will not make the same mistake. You can put all can of K5 PRO on one memory chip but if it is not spread on all surface of it then you will not have applied enough on all area and you will not have good results. On the video that you are blaming they followed instructions correctly and they got fps increase and this will happen with anyone who will use product correctly.

 

[Federson]

5 minutes ago, Cs labs said:

Spreading of K5 PRO shows clearly that only in midle was in contact with heat sink while corners of memory chips were clearly not covered with K5 PRO at all.

You have X-ray vision and can see through the heatsink?  How can you clearly tell that the corners aren’t covered?

[Cs labs]

22 minutes ago, Federson said:

You have X-ray vision and can see through the heatsink?  How can you clearly tell that the corners aren’t covered?

From your photos with heat sink removed. You uploaded them.

[Federson]

11 minutes ago, Cs labs said:

From your photos with heat sink removed. You uploaded them.

https://m.imgur.com/a/aNGo4ky
this is the only photo I uploaded and there is still a metal heatsink covering the vram. Perhaps you’re thinking of another customer?

[GuiltySpark_]

2 minutes ago, Federson said:

https://m.imgur.com/a/aNGo4ky
this is the only photo I uploaded and there is still a metal heatsink covering the vram. Perhaps you’re thinking of another customer?

I believe they are looking at the images in the reddit link you posted. It seemed clear to me that those weren't your pictures, just an example.

[Federson]

1 minute ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I believe they are looking at the images in the reddit link you posted. 

Right, that’s the one I just linked here as well. There’s small secondary metal heatsink on the vram in that photo. That heatsink is larger than the vram under it, so just because the k5 isn’t also expressing out from under the corners of the heatsink doesn’t mean it isn’t covering the corners of the vram. 

[Cs labs]

This topic was started from another user about a different problem that he has so we should focus on his problem and try to help him. About mr Federson case we have already published full reply on Reddit. Here it is again. If you need more support with your case we kindly ask you to contact us.

From Reddit:

 

Thank you for using our products. We would like to take this oportunity and mention some mistakes that users do with 3080 and 3090 boards resulting to bad performance with K5 PRO while most users get very good results. Here is a photo from a 3080 board where customer complained for bad performance.

https://cs-labs.co.uk/PUBLIC/1r.jpg

As you can see there are two problems here. One problem is that he didn't use enough quantity. Maybe it looks he used a lot but still there is no contact on all surface between components and heat sink. They only touch each other in the middle of component resulting in transfering heat only from 20% of component surface. The second problem is bad heat sink alignment. As you can see on GPU only one side of GPU is touching heatsink while the area in red circle is not touching it. We understand this because of difference in how paste spreads.

Here is a second photo of a 3090 board where problem is more clear.

https://cs-labs.co.uk/PUBLIC/bad%20heatsink%20algnment%201.jpg

Here customer used correct quantity. However heat sink is not aligned correctly. So in one side K5 PRO fills gap perfectly and this is why paste takes shape of components while in the other side in red circle it doesn't touch correctly and we can see how paste spreads. We can see the same on GPU where left side in red cicle doesn't touch heat sink correctly. So heat sink is not aligned correctly and on right side is a bit higher.

But why is this happening? The problem is that these boards have a lot of pads but not all of them are thermal pads. There are a few pads which are used as aligners and do not transfer heat. These pads should be kept and not be replaced with K5 PRO. We are now working on a post with detailed information about each board with such pads.

And since for a lot of users K5 PRO looks messy and imposible to be cleaned here is a video about how to clean it easily and quite fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrXn4AG41JM&ab_channel=ComputerSystemsGR

[Federson]

2 hours ago, Cs labs said:

 

One problem is that he didn't use enough quantity. Maybe it looks he used a lot but still there is no contact on all surface between components and heat sink. They only touch each other in the middle of component resulting in transfering heat only from 20% of component surface. The second problem is bad heat sink alignment.

First problem: we literally just went over this in this thread. https://imgur.com/a/NeDqiGT I added a blue circle for the tiny corner that is the only place k5 didn’t express out from under the heatsink. How you think that leads to only 20% of the component surfaces transferring heat is craziness. 
 

Second problem: Bad alignment??? It’s literally impossible on the 3000 series GPUs. The heatsink has threaded pins that fit through the PCB and are then screwed in on the other side. As long as the pins are through the PCB, the heatsink is aligned. If it weren’t aligned then the screws wouldn’t have fit and I wouldn’t have been able to reassemble the card. Also, as I said in my Amazon review (the one you originally pulled my 3080 photo from) my gpu die temps went down 1-2c and my vram temps went up 10c. If my gpu temps went down, that means I had proper die to heatsink contact.

 

Please stop spreading your BS around. 

[Cs labs]

9 minutes ago, Federson said:

First problem: we literally just went over this in this thread. https://imgur.com/a/NeDqiGT I added a blue circle for the tiny corner that is the only place k5 didn’t express out from under the heatsink. How you think that leads to only 20% of the component surfaces transferring heat is craziness. 
 

Second problem: Bad alignment??? It’s literally impossible on the 3000 series GPUs. The heatsink has threaded pins that fit through the PCB and are then screwed in on the other side. As long as the pins are through the PCB, the heatsink is aligned. If it weren’t aligned then the screws wouldn’t have fit and I wouldn’t have been able to reassemble the card. Also, as I said in my Amazon review, my gpu die temps went down 1-2c and my vram temps went up 10c. If my gpu temps went down, that means I had proper die to heatsink contact.

 

Please stop spreading your BS around. 

Dear customer. It is obvious that you hate our product so much that you have endless time to follow all posts on most popular forums about K5 PRO in order to share with everyone your bad experience, instead of spending a few minutes to actually try what we sugested to you. Unfortunatelly we don't have equal free time to argue with you since we wish to offer support to customers who are actually are using our product and do follow our sugestions. We pointed your mistakes and we explained how critical is to do everything perfect if you wish to get good results on new high end boards like yours. For other boards it is not a big deal but for boards where already manufacturer used best thermal material it is important to do everything perfect. So every time we notice that you might be missleading other users with your experience where you didn't follow our instructions we will have to point your mistakes so that people who are really using K5 PRO can apply it correctly. We hope for your understanding. 

[Federson]

3 minutes ago, Cs labs said:

Dear customer. It is obvious that you hate our product so much that you have endless time to follow all posts on most popular forums about K5 PRO in order to share with everyone your bad experience, instead of spending a few minutes to actually try what we sugested to you. Unfortunatelly we don't have equal free time to argue with you since we wish to offer support to customers who are actually are using our product and do follow our sugestions. We pointed your mistakes and we explained how critical is to do everything perfect if you wish to get good results on new high end boards like yours. For other boards it is not a big deal but for boards where already manufacturer used best thermal material it is important to do everything perfect. So every time we notice that you might be missleading other users with your experience where you didn't follow our instructions we will have to point your mistakes so that people who are really using K5 PRO can apply it correctly. We hope for your understanding. 

What’s your suggestion? “Please add more”? I did that, it’s expressing out from the sides of the heatsink. If you think one tiny corner is causing my vram temps to go up 10c you’ve lost your mind. Also, 3000 series GPUs do use good thermal pads but they’re not top of the line. I replaced them with Gelid GP Extreme pads (after I removed the k5 pro) and my gpu’s vram temps went down 5c from stock temps.