gtx 1070 EVGA GTX 1070 Black Edition Thermal paste swap

[Veltrix]

Briefing:

I've had my EVGA GTX 1070 Black edition now for 2 years, I noticed out of the box it always ran loud, hot and under performed. So recently I decided to do a quick thermal paste swap on it. I forgot to take pictures of the disassembly and how bad the stock thermal paste is. My findings of the stock thermal paste is that it was super thick and excessive. It took me about 20 minutes cleaning up all the stock thermal paste prepping it for my Arctic Cooling MX4 but it was worth it in the end after the results.

 

Testing:

I have the screenshots of the stock thermal paste and the MX4 using Hardware Monitor after doing a 10 minute loop of Heaven Benchmark 4.0.

I also have a small overclock on the GPU and was kept the same throughout the loops
Power Limit: 112%
Thermal Limit: 92*C
GPU core: +50MHz
Memory clock: +600MHz

Fan Speed: Auto

 

Nvidia Driver: 416.34 WHQL

Here are the specs of my PC if anyone was wondering:
CPU: i5 6600K @ 4.2GHz

Motherboard: Asus Z170-E
Case: Fractal Design Define R4
PSU: EVGA Supernova G1+ 750W
SSD: ADATA SX8000 512GB

 

Stock Thermal Paste:

 

MX4 Thermal Paste

 

Notes:

GPU Thermals: -12*C
GPU Core Clock: +3% (P.S. The clock was way more stable and rock solid vs. the fluctuating clock on the stock)

Fan Speed: -38% lower (SOOOO much quieter!)

 

Conclusion:
Worth the hassle of taking apart the GPU and replacing that disgusting stock thermal paste. As you can see here I drop 10 degrees on the GPU and the fan speed significantly lower making for a much quieter experience. I don't see much in GPU clock speed increase but I will take a much quieter and cooler card any day. 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Veltrix
I out Arctic Silver which really should have been Arctic Cooling

[TrigrH]

Quote

 Arctic Silver MX4

arctic silver 5

arctic cooling mx4

 

two different brands, if you used arctic silver you should change it.

 

Quote

Arctic Silver 5 was formulated to conduct heat, not electricity.
(While much safer than electrically conductive silver and copper greases, Arctic Silver 5 should be kept away from electrical traces, pins, and leads. While it is not electrically conductive, the compound is very slightly capacitive and could potentially cause problems if it bridges two close-proximity electrical paths.)

 

[Cyberspirit]

Nice job. That must've been some really bad paste.

 

[phongle123]

Arctic Silver 5 is fine. The reason being is that it is electrically conductive. So you should be careful applying it. However, once applied correctly it has no way of getting onto the PCB to fry it. I use AS5 on all my GPUs and CPUs.

 

For this reason, it is also 1 of the best Thermal Pastes on the market since it contains silver in it. However, this thermal paste is incredibly thick and requires you to boil it in a bag before applying it so it can thin down. However, that just means that you should apply it in smaller amounts than you normally would another thermal paste as it will expand when it is heated up and thinned down. If you don't want to pre-heat it like I do then that just means that it will take longer before you see ideal temperatures. Temperatures with this TIM you see from monitoring programs will go down more over time as the thick paste thins down with heat.

[Veltrix]

8 hours ago, TrigrH said:

arctic silver 5

arctic cooling mx4

 

two different brands, if you used arctic silver you should change it.

 

 

Sorry my bad, it's been a while since I used my paste!