Question Do I need to reapply thermal paste after removing the "Protection Back Plate" from Radeon™ RX 5500 XT OC 8G

[llinfeng]

TL;DR Should I bother to reapply thermal paste when I exposed the socket for 2 minutes on a new graphic card? No jump in temperature so far (2 hours after putting all the screws back, lol.)


Today, I exposed the socket on a Gigabyte Radeon™ RX 5500 XT OC 8G card when removing its "Protection Back Plate" to fit into my Alienware Aurora R5 for a dual-GPU setup. The R5 machine came with a funky "holder" for the original GTX 970 card and the "Protection Back Plate" stood in the way for this pillar/supporter piece.

For the RX 5500 card, it is unavoidable to expose the socket when one wants to remove the "Protection Back Plate", as there are three screws that are fastened through the PCB board from the "inside" of the graphic card. From the outside, removing 4(big) + 2(small) screws will first expose the socket. Then, one can find the three screws on the inner side of the PCB board that holds the "Back Plate".

I kept an eye on the temperature on the Radeon RX 5500, and have not seen anything that went above 70 Celcius through HWiNFO, both before and after exposing the socket on the card.

Please advise whether I should worry about reapplying the thermal paste. Thanks a lot!

 

[vov4ik_il]

If it works, don't fix it until it is broken :-D

 

[SkyNetRising]

Today, I exposed the socket on a Gigabyte Radeon™ RX 5500 XT OC 8G card when removing its "Protection Back Plate" to fit into my Alienware Aurora R5 for a dual-GPU setup.

I'm not exactly sure, what you call "socket".
Is it PCB of the graphics card? Graphics chip itself?

 

[llinfeng]

I'm not exactly sure, what you call "socket".
Is it PCB of the graphics card? Graphics chip itself?

I should have exposed the thermal paste applied onto the GPU chip, between the GPU chip and the heatsink. I did not touch the Graphics chip itself, nor tried to further take it apart. The goal was meant to quickly take out the backplate from the card.

Also, what would be a warning temperature to reapply the thermal paste? Say, 80/90/100 Celcius when using normal Windows applications (no gaming)? And, what temperature when running, say, Destiny 2?

 

[Nemesia]

I should have exposed the thermal paste applied onto the GPU chip, between the GPU chip and the heatsink. I did not touch the Graphics chip itself, nor tried to further take it apart. The goal was meant to quickly take out the backplate from the card.

Also, what would be a warning temperature to reapply the thermal paste? Say, 80/90/100 Celcius when using normal Windows applications (no gaming)? And, what temperature when running, say, Destiny 2?

I think we just don't understand why you did not just remove the old GPU and put in the new one WITHOUT removing the backplate? Was there really a need to remove the backplate on that GPU???

 

[llinfeng]

I think we just don't understand why you did not just remove the old GPU and put in the new one WITHOUT removing the backplate? Was there really a need to remove the backplate on that GPU???

Aha, that's the dual GPU part. I need to boot 6 monitors in total and was previously using the old card plus a USB adaptor. Lately, as the USB adaptor starts to get me unstable output and I started to get flickering output from one certain DP port on the old card (GTX 970). Then, I got the new Radeon card and have all monitors connected natively.

The original pillar/holder piece only worked with the old card, and I find the backplate stood in the way when I wanted to keep both graphic cards in the box. I should have thought more carefully when trying to get rid of the backplate

 

[Nemesia]

Aha, that's the dual GPU part. I need to boot 6 monitors in total and was previously using the old card plus a USB adaptor. Lately, as the USB adaptor starts to get me unstable output and I started to get flickering output from one certain DP port on the old card (GTX 970). Then, I got the new Radeon card and have all monitors connected natively.

The original pillar/holder piece only worked with the old card, and I find the backplate stood in the way when I wanted to keep both graphic cards in the box. I should have thought more carefully when trying to get rid of the backplate

Thanks now I understand hehe