How To: Optimizing Your Graphics Card's Cooling

[FormatC]

Even with summer gone, cooling remains a hot topic. How can the cooling performance of a graphics card be improved without replacing the cooler, or switching to liquid cooling? We'll cover some causes of poor cooling performance.

How To: Optimizing Your Graphics Card's Cooling : Read more

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

For me, changing the thermal paste on a Sapphire R9 280x resulted in a 8 to 10 degrees celsius lower temps while @ gaming/load. The card went from "very audible" to silent... The thermal paste was so poorly applied, it was on only half of the chip...

 

[Shankovich]

I think if you've had your card for about 2 years, it's time for a reseat. Did mine with Noctua NT-H1 (best imo, no burn in needed), delta-T was around 9 Celsius at load

 

[FormatC]

Especially with higher temps, like on a GPU, the thermal grease will dry out over the time. As cheaper, as faster. So it makes sense to change it periodically.

 

[enterprise24]

Use locking pliers to remove screw with warranty void on it. I try this method on MSI R9-290X Lightning without damage to sticker and can still RMA.

 

[murzar]

In 2015, my AMD 6770 would reach temperatures around 100 degrees Celsius! Summers are savage in my city.

But it wasn't cleaned for ages, just cleaning the fan assembly resulted in a temperature drop to around 80 degrees Celsius.

Got a cheap but branded 4 usd Arctic Thermal Paste.

Temperature was around 65s!

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

In 2015, my AMD 6770 would reach temperatures around 100 degrees Celsius...Temperature was around 65s!

After about five years I became concerned that my single fan HIS 6670 was heating up to 66C in Furmark runs even after cleaning the fan and heatsink on the card. I replaced it's factory TIM with Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut which I had bought for my new CPU and it dropped to 54C. I added lots of sound absorbing material in my case blocking some airflow exit holes near the card, and it's still only sitting at 62C during Furmark runs.

It was DEFINITELY worth it for me to replace the TIM on my card.


Edit: typo.

 

[Olle P]

There are more ways to improve the cooling:
1. Clean the heatsink fins.
2. Clean the fan blades.
3. Optimise the airflow around the graphics card. Try to prevent the heated air from being drawn back into the fans on the cooler.
4. Polish the heatsink's contact surface to get rid of any milling grooves. You want as much direct contact surface between heatsink and GPU as possible.

Thermal pastes:
* As long as you avoid the really cheap purely silicone based thermal paste the difference between pastes should be marginal. Only with milling grooves to fill will there be a notable difference.
* Burn-in time differ between pastes though. Some reach optimum in an hour, other will need weeks of use to reach their final state.
* Thermal paste will not "dry out" and need a replacement unless the heatsink is relocated relative to the GPU.

Cleaning:
"... a thorough clean-up is advisable. ... because mixing different pastes can be extremely counterproductive. ..."
A small amount of mixing shouldn't make any difference at all, especially given (as stated on page one) that the pastes differ very little in chemical composition in the first place.

"... cleaning the GPU package. Avoid scraping or scratching. Even forceful rubbing with a soft cloth can damage the fragile hardware..."
Since rubbing *will* create static electricity that can fry the GPU I'd stick to cleaning the top surface of the GPU only. Trying to remove old thermal paste around the GPU is more likely going to cause damage than improve the thermal result.

 

[jonny27]

Ok hold on a second, I was reading it all until I saw the thermal paste on top of the pads.
I've been hearing unanimously for years that doing this actually decreases thermal performance, as you're adding an extra layer of heat transfer material, and the compression alone should make the thermal transfer "as good as it can be" (or at least as good as a thermal pad can handle anyway). Not only that, but some pastes could actually degrade/corrode the pad's material.
But to my surprise, I'm seeing improved results on paste+pads. Can someone shed some light onto this?

 

[cats_Paw]

Interesting article.
I personally think it would have been a smarter choice to use a laptop gpu (inside a laptop) for this test.
Laptops are more prone to temperature problems, so it should be a better example of worst case scenario.

Another thing is that I have found that my laptop GPU and CPU tend to drop temps of almost 15 C when the thermal paste is reapplied, but in 2 days it goes back up to what it usually gets stable.

This did not happen when the laptop was new, but it seems the thermal paste gets too high temperature, partially making it more liquid and then pushing it out of the heatsink. I have no idea why that is.

 

[vaughn2k]

Toms/Igor, just an observation.
You also need to add that compounds should avoid touching the SMD components, and smearing at the side of the substrates/PCB.
Som compounds consist of silver, and if this happens, it will cause shorts and/or degradation of the GPU..
The picture where a new compound is applied, has some remnants of the old paste, present at the SMDs.. this is a No NO..

 

[FormatC]

At first:
Never use silver based thermal compound, this products are outdated and at the end dangerous. The same with liquid metal (I wrote about this in the review). The right compound will NOT damage the SMD/SMT components - I discussed it also in factory and with a few R&D divisions. The picture you mean was the result of a lot of tests and it is simply more dangerous, to grabb each time all compound. The chance to destroy a component is too big

Second:
Why I used pads AND compound? The surface of this backplate was not really flat and the pad was not able to cover all without air between pad and surface. The high pressure made this layer very thin but the air was finally history. The same with Pad and PCA. I tried both options- with and without thermal compound and to be honest: the compound version was better.

 

[kittle]

Neat article. The idea of using your backplate for additional cooling is a good idea.
but my gtx 980 has no backplate.
Ideas anyone?

 

[NeatOman]

I would've loved to see something like Liquid Ultra on there, I know it made a difference going from some old Arctic Silver I had laying around to Liquid Ultra on my R9 280x but not as big a difference from going stock to Arctic Silver. Still made the card noticeably quieter with the Liquid Ultra although only budged 25MHz on the max overclock which gets too loudfor my liking anywho.

 

[Nintendork]

You also need to undervolt the gpu, what can OC give you, 10%? with so much heat...

 

[Olle P]

@Kittle
Why not just make your own backplate from a sheet of copper or aluminium?
You can even use a relatively thin heatsink.

 

[FormatC]

I would've loved to see something like Liquid Ultra on there, I know it made a difference going from some old Arctic Silver I had laying around to Liquid Ultra on my R9 280x but not as big a difference from going stock to Arctic Silver. Still made the card noticeably quieter with the Liquid Ultra although only budged 25MHz on the max overclock which gets too loudfor my liking anywho.

This old arctic compound is horrible and performs very bad. I also tried liquid metal very often but if you do this, you must know the chemical details of your heatsink material. Pure copper works and liquid metal can give you again 1-2 degrees less (in comparison to the best "normal" thermal compounds on the market). But I saw a lot of mixed stuff in the heatsinks and the follow of this liquid metal. The worst case are DHT systems with both, aluminium and copper. But an alternate are metal pads with a Burn-In temperature of less then 70°C.

 

[Honis]

Would love to see an over the top heatsink cooling since the backplate worked so well. Something like taking a spare VGA or northbridge heat sink and adding it to the backplate or PCB.

 

[nzalog]

Use locking pliers to remove screw with warranty void on it. I try this method on MSI R9-290X Lightning without damage to sticker and can still RMA.

I worry that despite you feeling good about yourself and removing the screw without removing the sticker, they will probably still deny your warranty claim. It's not that hard to see it was tampered with.

 

[nzalog]

I would've loved to see something like Liquid Ultra on there, I know it made a difference going from some old Arctic Silver I had laying around to Liquid Ultra on my R9 280x but not as big a difference from going stock to Arctic Silver. Still made the card noticeably quieter with the Liquid Ultra although only budged 25MHz on the max overclock which gets too loudfor my liking anywho.

Just recently discovered Liquid Ultra, can't wait to try it out.

I'm hoping it'll help my itx sized 1070 stay a bit cooler. I know the heatsink size is a bottleneck but I'm pretty confident that having a better thermal connection to the GPU should help.

I'm a little concerned about the electrical conductivity of Liquid Ultra so I'll probably be protecting stuff with a bit of high temp silicon.

 

[FormatC]

I hope you know the material of your heatsink. If it isn't pure copper, it will be dangerous. But the liquid is overhyped.

 

[rothbardian]

It's not "degree Kelvin" but just kelving. I.E.: "A difference of 1 kelvin." "It was 4 kelvings hotter"

 

[rothbardian]

It's not "degree Kelvin" but just kelving. I.E.: "A difference of 1 kelvin." "It was 4 kelvings hotter"

 

[FormatC]

It was not my translation The German original contains only Kelvin as difference.

 

[BroDragon]

Please suggest a couple of different torque limiting screwdrivers. Thanks!