Question GPU Thermals drop 30° from using paste alone ?

[Donni Kubbitz]

Have any of you ever seen ANY piece of hardware drop by 30° from just paste alone?
I'm asking just bc I have high hopes really is all.

I have a ROG RTX 2070 (8GB Factory OC) that's about 6 yrs old in an extremely well ventilated case that I recently found was getting VERY hot! The neutral temps are just fine but running even a VERY old "AAA" game (Far Cry 3) is slamming the core temp to around 100 with "Hotspots" hitting 106!!! CRAZY!
It was cleaned, decently, this yr, is in a very ventilated case (temps on everything remain the same even if pulling a side panel off), and was really never pushed hard for a significant amount of time.
So I just have VERY high hopes that simply changing the paste out would drop it to the 80's during games like this but I'm pretty sure I'll likely just need an entirely new card......UGH!!

So have you seen temps EVER drop by 30 from paste alone?

 

[Lutfij]

That kind of temp drop can only be achieved if you did a combination of things, they are;
1| Slapped on a waterblock onto the card
2| Used really high quality thermal paste and pads
3| Had more radiator space than you actually needed which if often termed over-radding
4| Air conditioned your room to assist the cooling on the card.

What sort of ambient room temps are you dealing with now? Make and model of your case? Have you tried another title/game besides Far Cry 3?

 

[stonecarver]

Have any of you ever seen ANY piece of hardware drop by 30° from just paste alone?

I had just one GPU that fit that description, my own 8800 GT back in the day. From day one that card was a toaster and at the time I trusted Nvidia to not have a bad card as the card kicked a$$ but hotter than heck.

I kept the card until 2020 and just wrote off the heat as normal and the card was benched when better next gen came out.

One day I was bored and thought I should re paste that old card. What I found was it must have been pasted by a blind monkey on crack from factory. There was about a table spoon of thermal paste everywhere .

Long story short after my re paste card never ran so cool. Just night to day.

Than on the flip side on other cards where the paste is dried out you should also get improvement on heat coming from card.

On every card I have re pasted that was a hot running card, when done I test card and on average non gaming about 37 c than with gaming 50c to 79-85C but I live in a hot summer location.

 

[Viking2121]

Depends on how the dry the paste was I guess, the paste can also crack if you will if dried out too long, I've seen a near 20C drop on my EVGA 3090ti changing to the kryonaut extreme paste, my 3090ti has always ran pretty warm, Had a Gigabyte GTX 1070 with 3 fans, in fact I had 2 of them in SLI back then, seen pretty healthy 20 to 25C drop repasting them cards, but the fans were junk and noisy had to replace them anyway despite keeping the system clean, dusted every 2 to 3 months.

So yeah can be normal in some cases, often times the GPU fan will sorta keep the GPU at the same temp even after the repast just quieter as it doesn't have to run that fast.

 

[CountMike]

Oh yeah, 20-30c or more depending on what caused overheating. Past and/or pads dried or cracked, heat sink moved a bit during cleaning or installation which caused loss of contact or just using better grade tim and pads. Some older GPUs had no cooling for VRM and memory and adding heat sink would cool them by 10-20c even when new from factory.
Some GPUs like GT8800 that run habitually very hot, change of paste after a year of use and added an 92mm case fan on top of it got it down to very decent temps.

 

[Donni Kubbitz]

That kind of temp drop can only be achieved if you did a combination of things, they are;
1| Slapped on a waterblock onto the card
2| Used really high quality thermal paste and pads
3| Had more radiator space than you actually needed which if often termed over-radding
4| Air conditioned your room to assist the cooling on the card.

What sort of ambient room temps are you dealing with now? Make and model of your case? Have you tried another title/game besides Far Cry 3?

Thanks SO MUCH for the response 100% appreciated!
I'll try to answer each numerically as well-gonna do my best.
1) I'll just surrender the game before I do that.
2) Well the paste is quite old (never changed-about 6 yrs) and it is factory but it's the first time I've had temp issues...........I think. Very well could have had GTA 5 probs but never checked bc I just knew it was a brand spanking new system set up very well with cpu so even tho it made noise and heated the room up quite a bit I just never checked it. I'd bet it was probably ridiculously hot when I was playing that, too.
3) I've considered renting out this case to tennants it's so massive. HAHAHA It's the Cougar Panzer Evo Black with all kinds of room inside, all 7 fans placed properly, and pretty flashy stuff
4) Air conditioning hasn't helped and when I don't have ac running I have the system close to a window which I use the curtains from to actually funnel air into the opening of the front of the case. Any time I have ever checked airflow it's absolutely pristine. I can also completely remove the side panel and get very similar temps.
Anbient room temps are sporadic from mid 70's to low 80's. Gonna try some other games rn. Almost certain I won't have a prob with the vast majority of 'em.
OK no idea wth happened but temps are just dandy now. HAHAHAHAHA I literally did nothing. Blaming it on the game now---trash optimization. Still think I should repaste tho, it's been VERY long.
Thanks again. Heh....wth?!?!

 

[Donni Kubbitz]

Oh yeah, 20-30c or more depending on what caused overheating. Past and/or pads dried or cracked, heat sink moved a bit during cleaning or installation which caused loss of contact or just using better grade tim and pads. Some older GPUs had no cooling for VRM and memory and adding heat sink would cool them by 10-20c even when new from factory.
Some GPUs like GT8800 that run habitually very hot, change of paste after a year of use and added an 92mm case fan on top of it got it down to very decent temps.

Apparently it fixed itself.
Just fine tonight and I didn't do anything other than ask around. Maybe it felt threatened. HAHAHAHA No idea!
Think I need to blame optimization.
Still gonna repaste but as far as ventilation goes, this thing has so many fans I could use it as a storage for meat. HAHAHAHA
3 fans on top (exhaust), 3 on front (intake), 1 in back (exhaust), then the 3 on the gpu, then the 2 on the power supply.
All doing everything they should.
I just can't help but wonder why it went back to normal. HHMMMMMM
Either way the card hasn't been repasted at all and it's been just about 6 yrs so ya.....then there's that. Could just be the first sign of it yeling at me to repaste. Also cleaned it less than a yr ago. It gets pretty bad with dog hair EVERYWHERE but I watch, and listen, to it.
Far Cry 3 is a pretty sick game. I SUCK so far. That's typical.
Thanks for your response tho. In a way I kinda don't wanna repaste and screw something up but it's my build, out of warranty and this build was sick from the get go. Everything done well and not a prlb since initial start up about 6 yrs ago.

 

[Zerk2012]

slamming the core temp to around 100

That should of never had been a temp you would see if the card was working correctly it should of been throttling the performance down to lower the temp way before that.