HD 580 TIM Issue

[Smithy]

So I've been o/clocking my 5870, and under full load it sits at ~81°C.

I have been taking the cooling unit on and off to clean the cigarette tarnished dust out of the fins, and I hadn't bother to re-apply the TIM on the GPU.

So as most of you know, when you keep doing that you get that funny textured looking TIM with air pockets and not very efficient.

I finally bought some TIM, I cleaned off the GPU and heat pads with methyl alcohol and cotton.

Applied the new TIM, reinstalled the cooling unit and run some benchmarks, and now my GPU sits at ~93°C under full load.

 

Notes*

[YubinTheBunny]

Brand of the Compound?

[LabRat]

the first time you pulled it apart you should have reapplied new thermal paste. perhaps you notice, after such a long time, the old paste got dried out? Anyways, not reapplying new or removing the pads and not putting them back, or back in their correct positions could have created more problems. Also take note that sometimes the new thwermal paste may need "break in" time.

[Smithy]

Yeah, I noticed it got dried out.

The thermal pad were not moved.

But I just realised that the compound I'm using is ceramic based

[LabRat]

I don't like either one of those pastes.  the diamond stuff is thick/the mx stuff i had it seemed to be repelled by the cap on the cpu. never would cling or spread properly. I like Zalman Super Thermal Grease. ( zm-stg1 )