Question After repasting, GPU is underclocking at 300 MHz with absurdly high Board Power Draw, what happened to my GPU?

[pedal2d]

Hi, here's my gaming laptop specs:

ASUS ROG SCAR II GL504GW
CPU: i7-8750H
GPU: RTX 2070
RAM: 16GB DDR4 2666 MHz

I have also previously undervolted my CPU to a stable level using Throttlestop and have MSI Afterburner installed but I didn't bother tweaking any of the values there since I purely use Rivatuner for CPU and GPU stats in game.

Since my 2 year warranty with my laptop expired, I decided to personally clean my laptop and reapply thermal paste to help lower temperatures and improve both performance and life expectancy of the laptop. It was my first time ever doing a thermal repaste and I tried my best to learn the process by watching videos online and following how they did it. I removed all the old 'gunk' and wiped them all clean off using alcohol and tried to the best of my ability getting most of the old 'gunk' out for the new thermal paste. However, I stilled messed up since I thought everything between the heatsink and the parts were only thermal paste. Little did I realize that all the other parts other than the CPU and GPU die made use of thermal pads instead of thermal paste. Not knowing this at first, I applied thermal paste to all the parts that had the old thermal pads and just realized after the deed was done. I fired up the laptop, GPU-Z, and lo and behold found the abnormal readings on Idle.

https://imgur.com/a/MXiPUB5

View: https://imgur.com/a/MXiPUB5


With my second attempt, I decided to order thermal pads online (2mm thick, didn't have the budget to buy the appropriate thickness, just went with the thickest that I could afford) and a new syringe of thermal paste. I did the job better now, only applying thermal paste on the die and thermal pads on the markers on the heat sink. Unfortunately, I couldn't completely remove all the thermal paste from last time. I put the heatsink back, exerted pressure to help the thermal pads make contact, and screwed the heatsink properly.

For the replacement paste and pads, here are my brands:

Gelid Solutions 90 x 50 x 2 mm Thermal Pads
Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 1g Thermal Paste

After all this, I used GPU-Z to get readings and still the results were the same. So far, I have restored my CPU undervolt to default, uninstalled MSI Afterburner, updated my BIOS to latest version, reinstalled NVIDIA drivers (uninstalled using DDU), uninstalled Windows 11 and clean installed Windows 10. I fear that this might be a hardware problem but I still hope that I can fix it. Sorry for the lengthy anecdote, just wanted to provide as much detail as I could since I couldn't find a similar problem online, hoping for everyone's help and insight. I can provide pictures of what the board looks like if needed.

Wanted to try using FurMark for the stress test but I'm scared that it might cause more harm than good, still willing to do this if it could help diagnose my laptop. Thanks again!


TLDR; After failing repasting, GPU is clocking at 300 MHz with absurd Board Power Draw 420 W, what can I do to fix the problem?

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

I guess there could be a couple of reasons why there might be an issues. The obvious ones, being the application of TIM to parts that don't require it, and also possible exerting pressure (maybe too much) whilst replacing the heatsink/pipes.

What kind of GPU usage do you have in game? Can you set MSI OSD to show that and see if it's at 300mhz? What alcohol did you use to clean the paste off?

 

[pedal2d]

Hi, sorry for the late response. I had to download a game overnight for benchmarking.

Yeah, I figured the misuse of the thermal paste might be an issue but I do hope that the claim of Thermal Grizzly that they are non-conductive to be true. With regards to applying pressure, I think I applied just enough that it wasn't difficult to reopen the heatsink when I decided to take a look afterwards when I took my laptop out to ask a local repair shop (they couldn't properly diagnose the problem, just blamed the repasting and applied their 'gaming' thermal paste). Either way, I just wanted to describe what I did in this regard.

I also used local 70% Isopropyl alcohol.

Here's a screenshot using MSI OSD both on the main menu and in-game. One thing I find weird however is I hoped into in-game settings of DOOM and found that the only APIs available are OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan. Similarly, memory clock speed is around 7000 Mhz, I beg to differ that's normal I really don't have an idea what's the normal value for this.

Doom Main Menu

https://imgur.com/a/mGsVADu

View: https://imgur.com/a/mGsVADu


Doom Mid-game

https://imgur.com/a/Sb2QGwM

View: https://imgur.com/a/Sb2QGwM


Doom Settings Graphics API

https://imgur.com/a/btbLQvg

View: https://imgur.com/a/btbLQvg


Pre-emptively, I ran dxdiag and here's some specs that might (or might not help)

https://imgur.com/a/kjxNwGe

View: https://imgur.com/a/kjxNwGe

https://imgur.com/a/Dd6v34s

View: https://imgur.com/a/Dd6v34s

Edit: I ticked the wrong option for showing the Framerate on MSI OSD. I also remarked on how 7000 Mhz might not be as an abnormal clock speed that I think it is.