Lifted heatsink off old 970 today, and there was what appeared to be a clear liquid on the heat sink and die. Looks like water.

mookie1590 · May 22, 2022

Sisters old pc I built for her from my old stuff has been blue screening lately. Just decided to do a entire clean up, thermal paste re up on everything, etc. Everything looked fine until I got to the gpu, old 970 I bought in 2014ish.

I have about every year for all our systems, re upped the thermal paste on cpu/gpu. Well this time hers was blue screening. And when I lifted the gpu off, there as thermal paste on the edges, but on the die itself, it looks like there is just "water". I do not know what it is, that is what it looks like. Might do a taste test on it, lmao.

So I'm asking. What could cause this. It is in a dry location, there is never "water" looking stuff on anything else either. Can certain brands of thermal paste turn to "water" over time? Ive used this exact same brand in all our systems and, none look like this except this one component.

The liquid does not seem to be conductive either, no ohm measurement.

I'm just curious if anyone has any idea what this is, or if my thermal paste is the issue. Because there was none on the die and explains why it blue screened on us. Thermal paste is TG-7 thermaltake. Dunno if it is aged thermal paste doing this.