need help cooling a Zotac 3090

[Mcneck]

Hey everyone,

 

last year I got a very cheap Zotac 3090 trinity OC from a dissolved mining rig.

I had a lot of issues with it at the beginning, but after some fiddling around with it, I finally got around to replace the crusty thermal paste and after that it did run fine.

Now after about 10 months the temperatures of the GPU are getting worse again, also the fans are running crazy while playing basically anything. I suspect the thermal paste withered again, or the contact between gpu and heatsink got skewed somehow. Currently the difference between the GPU temp and the hotspot temp is about 35°C I think thats a little bit much of a gap, what do you think?

 

Basically what I am looking for here are some suggestions for price/performance effective measures to get rid of these problems permanently.

I thought about going custom watercooling again, but some past experiences with leaky loops have made me weary of custom watercooling to be honest.

I found the Alphacool Eiswolf 2 AIO, but according to their compatibility chart its only compatible with a zotac 3090 trinity, NOT the trinity OC model... .

I also thought about trying the "ghetto Mod" with some Noctua fans strapped directly to the heatsink, but the results here also seem to be mixed.

 

I attached a 3D Mark run and the corresponding GPU-Z Log-file, I am not sure if the card is already throttling, but I do think so when looking at the clock frequency.

 

 

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt result.3dmark-result

[Brooksie359]

From my understanding alot of oc versions of cards are the same as their normal counterparts other than being binned slightly higher and having higher out of the box performance. I would double check to see if that is the case for your card because that would mean the kit would work on your card just fine.

[wildgg]

23 minutes ago, Mcneck said:

Hey everyone,

 

last year I got a very cheap Zotac 3090 trinity OC from a dissolved mining rig.

I had a lot of issues with it at the beginning, but after some fiddling around with it, I finally got around to replace the crusty thermal paste and after that it did run fine.

Now after about 10 months the temperatures of the GPU are getting worse again, also the fans are running crazy while playing basically anything. I suspect the thermal paste withered again, or the contact between gpu and heatsink got skewed somehow. Currently the difference between the GPU temp and the hotspot temp is about 35°C I think thats a little bit much of a gap, what do you think?

 

Basically what I am looking for here are some suggestions for price/performance effective measures to get rid of these problems permanently.

I thought about going custom watercooling again, but some past experiences with leaky loops have made me weary of custom watercooling to be honest.

I found the Alphacool Eiswolf 2 AIO, but according to their compatibility chart its only compatible with a zotac 3090 trinity, NOT the trinity OC model... .

I also thought about trying the "ghetto Mod" with some Noctua fans strapped directly to the heatsink, but the results here also seem to be mixed.

 

I attached a 3D Mark run and the corresponding GPU-Z Log-file, I am not sure if the card is already throttling, but I do think so when looking at the clock frequency.

 

 

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt 280.31 kB · 1 download result.3dmark-result 625.5 kB · 2 downloads

re-paste it again and see how it runs.

some pastes will have a pump out effect where the paste will pump outwards when the GPU heats up and cools down. this happens with pastes from thermal grizzly for example.

[Mcneck]

14 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

From my understanding alot of oc versions of cards are the same as their normal counterparts other than being binned slightly higher and having higher out of the box performance. I would double check to see if that is the case for your card because that would mean the kit would work on your card just fine.

Yeah, I thought so too, but they have listed every Zotac 3080 TI model that is compatible trinity and trinity OC. But for the Zotac 3090 they have only listed the trinity model... that made me think there might me an issue with the OC Model. I will ask Alphacool directly about it.

 

3 minutes ago, Wildgg said:

re-paste it again and see how it runs.

some pastes will have a pump out effect where the paste will pump outwards when the GPU heats up and cools down. this happens with pastes from thermal grizzly for example.

Yay... guess what brand of thermal paste I used

[DoctorNick]

1 hour ago, Mcneck said:

Hey everyone,

 

last year I got a very cheap Zotac 3090 trinity OC from a dissolved mining rig.

I had a lot of issues with it at the beginning, but after some fiddling around with it, I finally got around to replace the crusty thermal paste and after that it did run fine.

Now after about 10 months the temperatures of the GPU are getting worse again, also the fans are running crazy while playing basically anything. I suspect the thermal paste withered again, or the contact between gpu and heatsink got skewed somehow. Currently the difference between the GPU temp and the hotspot temp is about 35°C I think thats a little bit much of a gap, what do you think?

 

Basically what I am looking for here are some suggestions for price/performance effective measures to get rid of these problems permanently.

I thought about going custom watercooling again, but some past experiences with leaky loops have made me weary of custom watercooling to be honest.

I found the Alphacool Eiswolf 2 AIO, but according to their compatibility chart its only compatible with a zotac 3090 trinity, NOT the trinity OC model... .

I also thought about trying the "ghetto Mod" with some Noctua fans strapped directly to the heatsink, but the results here also seem to be mixed.

 

I attached a 3D Mark run and the corresponding GPU-Z Log-file, I am not sure if the card is already throttling, but I do think so when looking at the clock frequency.

 

 

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt 280.31 kB · 2 downloads result.3dmark-result 625.5 kB · 2 downloads

Checking the log. GPU temp is fine. Hot spot temp is too high. 104.5C max, should be no higher than 93C, according to this post on EVGA forums:

https://forums.evga.com/EVGA-3090-HYBRID-High-quothotspotquot-sensor-m3560625.aspx#:~:text=The hotspot temp includes the,problem%2C but at least possible.&text=Sajin-,104c to 110c on gpu hotspot is too hot.,than 93c for a 3090.

 

Replace thermal pads.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Mcneck said:

Yay... guess what brand of thermal paste I used

Mx 4 and mx 5 have yet to dissapoint me

Cheap too!

[Mcneck]

Finally got around to open up my 3090 and repasted it. pictures from before repasting are attached.

And well… somewhere along the way I seem to have fucked up. I no longer get an output from the GPU. Onboard graphics are working but the GPU does not want to show me a picture.

It lights up, fans are spinning but it seems dead. Fuck me.

 

I double checked if I ripped off any of the caps around the GPU (I didnt)

 

Any suggestions what else I could do?

[freeagent]

That big bare spot is not helpful. I would use a spatula to spread the paste rather then letting compression do the job.

[Mcneck]

5 minutes ago, freeagent said:

That big bare spot is not helpful. I would use a spatula to spread the paste rather then letting compression do the job.

did you read my post? The picture is from before I repasted it

[Mcneck]

I switched the GPU to my other PCIE Slot and it did work for about a minute until my screens went black again… .

Wtf is this? Beyond the cooling issue I had never any problem with this GPU.

 

**EDIT**

 

GPU is running now, no Idea why I had to reseat it couple times before it decided to work again.

The repasting did improve the temperatures greatly! The difference between gpu and hotspot temp is now around 15°C and the hot spot temperature did not even exceeded 90°C in a quick Benchmark. Also the fans are spinning at 1500rpm where they had to go up to 3000 before.

 

Lucky me, no expensive Watercooling necessary... just a annual renewel of thermal paste

 

 

[freeagent]

1 hour ago, Mcneck said:

did you read my post?

Good job. Hopefully you didnt fuck up this paste job like you did your last one.

[Mcneck]

7 hours ago, freeagent said:

Good job. Hopefully you didnt fuck up this paste job like you did your last one.

Man are you a ray of sunshine, absolutely unhelpful comment after comment.

 

On 8/31/2023 at 11:03 AM, Wildgg said:

re-paste it again and see how it runs.

some pastes will have a pump out effect where the paste will pump outwards when the GPU heats up and cools down. this happens with pastes from thermal grizzly for example.

This seems to have happened here, is there any way to prevent this? Or do I really have to do this regularly?

[freeagent]

5 hours ago, Mcneck said:

Man are you a ray of sunshine, absolutely unhelpful comment after commen

Well, maybe I could have been helpful if you didnt decide to be a smartass when you spoke to me the last time.

[wildgg]

13 hours ago, Mcneck said:

This seems to have happened here, is there any way to prevent this? Or do I really have to do this regularly?

With the more ''liquid'' style pastes no, you'd have to buy a paste that is ''thicker'' or more ''dry'' that doesn't suffer from the pump out effect.

imo, having to repaste a GPU every 12 to 18 months is not a bad thing, gives you a good excuse to fully clean it off dust etc while you're at it