Question Help & advice with 5700xt thermal pad replacement results

[Moagem]

Hi,

I've posted this question on two other forums which were instrumental in me learning how to replace GPU thermal pads, and have reproduced it here because tom's has also been the source of a lot of useful information and I hope you can help!

I've been seeing VRAM temps on my Red Devil 5700xt in the 90-92c range under load. I read that replacing the thermal pads on the VRAM could help operating temperatures reduce by a few degrees.

After watching a couple of thermal pad replacement videos and being unable to find any clear indication of the stock termal pad sizes I settled for the 1.5mm thermal grizzly minus 8 pads. I didn't want to go for 2mm so as to avoid putting any undue stress on the components when tightening the heatsink on.

Following replacement of the pads my VRM temp appears to have almost HALVED (from 44c to 22c?!). I used mx-4 thermal past on the gpu die and am seeing a slight increase of 3 degrees or so, but still no more than 60-70c.

My worry is that I'm seeing very slightly worse VRAM peaks at 94c which I can attribute to one of the following issues:

-Thermal conductivity of stock pads is the same as that of the replacements - solution would be to get more conductive pads

-Thickness of replacement pads was not great enough, and even if conductivity is better, mounting pressure is worse. - solution would be to buy the same or more conductive pads, only thicker.

Does anyone have experience of replacing the pads, and if so can you recommend the proper thickness and whether for example a Gelid GP extreme pad with 11W/mK rather than thermal grizzly's 8(?) W/mk would be a better idea?

BONUS - I've seen some deep forum posts around the internet suggesting using a very fine application of thermal paste between pads and VRAM - any opinions on this? Histoical opinion looks to be that it's a massive no although I've also found some manufacturers and forum posts that apparently do it/recommend it as a means of reducing air gaps between pads and chips.

tl:dr - should the red devil 5700xt thermal pads be 1.5mm or 2.0mm, and is 8w/mk an improvement on the stock pads or is greater thermal conductivity required to see a difference?

 

[Nichabell]

A couple things to consider.

VRAM is rated for 100 degrees so you are still in tolerance

Your VRMs are dumping more heat into the radiator making it harder for you VRAM to dump heat into the radiator (think of heat like pressure flowing from high to low)

Your VRMs are running cooler so they MAY be providing more voltage to you GPU and VRAM. perhaps consider under volting if stable

 

[David0ne86]

Did you first try to reduce that ridiculous stock 1.2v that all 5700xt ship with? If not, try that before messing around with pads again. Most 5700xt runs fine at 1.05v and a 2ghz clock. My thicc 3 ultra from xfx saw temps dropping by around 20.degrees on the junction (I'm not kidding, they were 110 constant, post UV always around 90) 5 on the dye (from 72 to 68) and around 85 for the vram (like you, i was around the 92/93 degrees). All this at the cost of a grand total of 2 fps on average.

Undervolting for the 5700xt is mandatory pretty much. True, those are all """within specs"""" temps, but why accepting that when you can get much better temps by just turning down a slider in the adrenalin software.

 

[Moagem]

Hello,

Yes to both of you this card is stable at a significant under clock and under volt and I was seeing better temps with new settings dialled in for no appreciable reduction in performance.

I ended up trying 2mm pads with higher thermal conductivity but the thickness of the pads proved hugely detrimental to mounting pressure on the die - a rice sized bead of thermal paste didn't make it to the edge of the die and I ended up getting really great memory temperatures with the GPU hitting 110C as soon as any load was applied.

For anyone reading this thread in future; 1.5mm pads are sufficient for this card. Use 2mm pads at your own risk and consider the lack of pressure between heatsink and gpu die before using them. Some pads compress better than others, but the gelid pads I purchased (GP Extreme) do not.

Buying some 1.5mm gelid pads, will replace and if there is an improvement I will report back.