Thermal Paste for 7950

[Kruziik_Kel]

im looking into swapping the thermal compound on my 7950 to try bring temps down a bit they are not overly bad sticks around 68 under load idles around 48 typically,

im a bit concerned for the temps while overclocking though before I put one of the fractal design fans that came with my case into the side vent it was 75 under load at 940MHz jumped from 67 at 920MHz, from what ive read too much thermal compound is fairly common on GPUs so hopefully I could get a few degrees out of it. problem is what paste to use?

ive been told the lack of an IHS means using IC Diamond is a no go and normal silver based compounds are supposed to be bad too, the only ones I have around are IC Diamond (Diamond based obviously)and a tube of Noctua NT-H1 (Silver based) are either of these safe to use if not what about a carbon based compound like MX-4?

[fishymamba]

I think the Noctua paste should be fine because it will take years and years for the silver to react with the die as some people say.

IC Diamond is a definite no.

I would just go with the safe route and order a tube of MX-4 or similar.

[Wats]

fishy is very right. Go MX-4

Make sure you spread it out first before you put the heatsink back on. Have you tried running w/o the side panel to see if temps dropped a lot? If they drop a lot with no side panel then time to invest in some fans.

What were using to stress the GPU? Furmark? 75C is fine if you were running that. If you're hitting 75C while running something like Heaven then erm, thats a little warm. Personally I run (7870) 80C in games sometimes but that has to do with some overvolting and wanting to replace the card.

Your card is good until about 90C, so really I don't think it's worth voiding your warranty to lose 2C changing the paste.

[Kruziik_Kel]

fishy is very right. Go MX-4 Make sure you spread it out first before you put the heatsink back on. Have you tried running w/o the side panel to see if temps dropped a lot? If they drop a lot with no side panel then time to invest in some fans. What were using to stress the GPU? Furmark? 75C is fine if you were running that. If you're hitting 75C while running something like Heaven then erm' date=' thats a little warm. Personally I run (7870) 80C in games sometimes but that has to do with some overvolting and wanting to replace the card. Your card is good until about 90C, so really I don't think it's worth voiding your warranty to lose 2C changing the paste. [/quote']

Ive done what I can with fans short of replacing the fractal 180mm in the roof or the fractal 140mm on the side, its averaging 75 after an hour and a half of Heaven or about the same in Crysis 3 maxed out I may just leave it depending on how high it gets but after doing more digging people seem to be putting far too much paste on the GPU (particularly MSI and Sapphire) so it could drop a fair bit if not I may look into something like that Arctic cooler

[Salmiakbal]

I don't see a reason to change the TIM. Even 75C is perfectly fine for a GPU...