295x2 Thermal Pads

[MarkyMark559]

I'm having the hardest time finding thermal pads in the 17 w/mk - I seem to only see Fujipoly Ultra Extremes offer it. However I can't find any vendors that carry .5 and 1mm! WHY OH WHY FROZENCPU!

I've been playing with my settings on my GPU and I notice my GPU doesn't go past 74c I have all the voltages whatever maxed in MSI after burner. The game I play really sucks at using the 295x2 so I'm pushing my core clock to 1140 and mem clock to 1300. I've been running 3d mark and I notice my scores are all OVER the place. Did a bit of investigative research and I believe my clock is throttle itself. When I leave everything at stock I don't get over 60c, and I got a water cooling in my house, so ambient in house isn't that great.

I got a 17.5k on 3d Mark, but but it fluctuates, I get 13k, 9k, etc randomly. So the only thing I can imagine is my card is throttling itself.

Also my card doesn't have a backplate, would that help with vrams etc if I use the pads on those as well?

INFO on system
Win 7 (for fps reason I think)
5830k at 4.6
16g ram
M.2 951 256gb
3 TB (can't remember brand)
x99a
295x2
carbide 500r case

Radiators
280mm
180mm x85 mm
GPU and CPU cooled by loop.

 

[MarkyMark559]

So I think I figured it out myself and the card is throttling itself and causing my games to stutter. I got some more cooling stuff on the way and I'll see if that fixes it.

 

[carlosriosness]

multiple articles i came across give the following information

power should be upped to 150% (or 50% more if using crimson software)

core clock can go up to 1100 easily with stock voltage (up from 1018 or about an 8% increase). do not increase voltage, this causes card to throttle

memory can be increased to 1.6ghz easily (up from 1250mhz or about 22% increase) (this is 6ghz effective up from 5ghz effective) - not sure what the means but yeah


http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/04/08/amd-radeon-r9-295x2-review/10
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/03/16/asus_rog_poseidon_gtx_980_platinum_vs_amd_r9_295x2/7#.Vl8lynarTRY
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/04/08/amd_radeon_r9_295x2_video_card_review/11#.Vl8l03arTRY
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-radeon-r9-295x2-review,34.html

 

[carlosriosness]

i do have a few questions though. i have a xfx 295x2. i want to reapply paste using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.

i noticed Grizzly also sells thermal pads "Minus Pad 8". it says W/mk 8.0 , im not sure what the means? should i be looking for a pad that says W/mk 17?

also how thick are the stock pads .5, 1mm, 1.5mm or 2mm , what is optimum for the 295x2?

how much pad do i need to replace all stock thermal pad, Grizzly sells 30mmx30mm , 120mm x 20mm and 100mmx100mm ?

last question, i hope. is it even worth it to replace the thermal pads, should i just stick to re applying new/better thermal paste?

 

[carlosriosness]

so i re did my 295x2. Grizzly kryonaut on the GPU's, Minus 8 pads on the memory (#1 box's) and Fujipoly on the vram (1.5mm on #3 Box's, 1mm on #2 Box's)

check out these pictures for reference of #1, #2 and #3 Box's i referred to above (yes i know this is for an EK block but it helped):
https://shop.ekwb.com/EK-IM/EK-IM-3831109869086.pdf
https://shop.ekwb.com/EK-IM/EK-IM-3831109869093.pdf

what exactly i bought (all from performance-pcs):
Fujipoly Sarcon XR-m thermal pads 100x15x1.5mm = $18 (a narrow strip left over)
Fujipoly Sarcon XR-m thermal pads 100x15x1.0mm = $16 (very little left over)
Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 pads 100x100x.5mm = $25 (1/5 of the sheet left over)
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 3ml = $25 (a lot left over for future applications)

tested with 10 minutes of unigine Heaven benchmarking software (4K, 2xAA, Ultra quality, Moderate Tessellation)
before grizzy pads and paste: gpu 1 = 74c, gpu 2 = 72c
after grizzly pads and paste: gpu 1 = 61c, gpu 2 = 58c

thats without any burn in time, im sure the thermal paste will get better results with a few more hours of setting in. my CPU actually got hotter (37c with AS5, 43c on kryonaut) (4770k on a h100i). but again, i think it might need to set a bit.

one tip for the minus 8 pads:

the pads dont stick very well. so using a VERY SMALL amount of kryonaut on the chip first helps hold the pad in place while you put your card together. otherwise some pads will slide off the card while you are trying to tighten it back together (it happened to me a few times, can be very frustrating)

real world numbers. in unigine i went from 31FPS before paste, to 33fps after. thats stock. not too big of a deal. but with the cooler temps i was able to OC my card bringing me to 36FPS while staying cooler then stock before i changed the pads. thats where it counts!

fujipoly tips:

i also applied kryonaut very lightly to the Vram and PLX chips to hold the fujipoly in place and to increase it thermal ability (hopefully).