News Nvidia GPU partners reportedly cheap out on thermal paste, causing 100C hotspot temperatures — cheap paste allegedly degrades in a few months

[Admin]

Nvidia's AIB partners reportedly use dirt-cheap thermal paste that dries out in just a few months, causing many RTX 40-series graphics cards to overheat.

Nvidia GPU partners reportedly cheap out on thermal paste, causing 100C hotspot temperatures — cheap paste allegedly degrades in a few months : Read more

 

[mhmarefat]

Most, if not all, of Nvidia's partners seemingly use the same thermal paste supplier. The company supplies a cheap thermal paste to Nvidia partners, delivering superb day-one performance but deteriorating much faster than standard thermal paste.

This is criminal activity. Literal scam.

 

[BTM18]

You can't just replace your Thermal paste. It's a lot more complicated. If you take it apart, you will need to replace all the thermal pads. Reuse is a bad idea. What thickness pads do you need ? Who knows? Better not get that wrong.
Kind of irresponsible to recommend folks tear apart their cards without more info on how complicated it can be..

 

[coolitic]

You can't just replace your Thermal paste. It's a lot more complicated. If you take it apart, you will need to replace all the thermal pads. Reuse is a bad idea. What thickness pads do you need ? Who knows? Better not get that wrong.
Kind of irresponsible to recommend folks tear apart their cards without more info on how complicated it can be..

You do not need to replace the thermal pads in my experience. The only thing really "complicated" imo is it likely voiding your warranty depending on which AIB-partner it's from.

 

[jrhansen]

You do not need to replace the thermal pads in my experience. The only thing really "complicated" imo is it likely voiding your warranty depending on which AIB-partner it's from.

Well several countries have rules that kinda makes the "Waranty void" sticker if opened illegal and not a reason to revoke the waranty. However they can propably come up with various reasons to draw the dispute out saying it's you that damaged the card if it breaks so the custommer in the end gives up and just pays for the repair or goes out buying a new card

 

[Aurn]

Well, I hope I won’t have to do this, because it will be very difficult for me ; I can barely do any PC building I haven’t noticed bad temperatures with my Asus 4070 Dual, but maybe I haven’t used it enough in games? I got it in October last year. Still, I played Hogwarts Legacy with it a LOT, so I’m not sure what to think.

Instead of thermal paste, I have seen Honeywell’s PTM7950 pads highly recommended, but it seems impossible to find here in Switzerland

 

[jlake3]

It would be nice to get a complete list of who's affected and who's not. Igor seems to have caught Asus and Manli via teardown, and he makes reference to PNY and Palit but doesn't point to specific models or incidents for them.

Manli is owned by the same parent company as Inno3D and Zotac, which puts them under heavy suspicion in my mind as well. Palit owns Gainward, KFA2, and Galax, and while I'm not ready to fully condemn Palit or PNY without a specific model being cited... I'd put both of them and all Palit's sub-brands under some level of suspicion.

I think that just leaves just MSI and Gigabyte as major, western-market Nvidia AIBs that are not directly or indirectly linked to a brand mentioned in the intro of the Igor's Lab article.

Meanwhile on the AMD and Intel side, it seems that ASRock, Acer, Sapphire, Powercolor, Sparkle, XFX, and VisionTek are not yet implicated nor are under the same corporate umbrella as a company implicated.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Amazing how if it degrades in a period "of months" and we are 20 months after the 4080's release and this hasn't been widely reported since then, I'd say it's become an issue relatively recently. Personally I wouldn't buy any non Super RTX 4000 series card if only to ensure the power connector is 12V-2x6 and not 12VHP.

 

[Pierce2623]

You do not need to replace the thermal pads in my experience. The only thing really "complicated" imo is it likely voiding your warranty depending on which AIB-partner it's from.

That’s actually completely dependent on the pad. Cheap ones will rip apart with part stuck to the heatsink and part stuck on your VRAM and VRMs.

 

[Pierce2623]

Amazing how if it degrades in a period "of months" and we are 20 months after the 4080's release and this hasn't been widely reported since then, I'd say it's become an issue relatively recently. Personally I wouldn't buy any non Super RTX 4000 series card if only to ensure the power connector is 12V-2x6 and not 12VHP.

To be fair the 4070 just used an 8 pin but the 4070 super is sort of a better purchase. It’s about 10% more money for 10% more performance so it’s kind of a wash.

 

[thisisaname]

Paste just good enough to last the warranty out?

 

[M0rtis]

At current prices, manufacturers should be using liquid metal or PTM7950 for their GPUs

Is there any mass manufacturer that has Thermal PUTTY ? Its time to replace the thermal paste on my laptops CPU and GPU and there is mixed info on if the VRMs and memory have pads or putty. I cant seem to find putty locally or via imports at a decent price (50$ up minimum, Aliexpress is banned). Obviously cant use pads as the required thickness is unknown so putty is the only option

 

[hannibal]

Heh!
Makes sense. GPU die more quickly, customer buy new... = profit

And one cent save when selling millions is a lot of money too...

Yeah, this is bad, but really hard to find out without opening the GPU. And it is not something who is not really careful to do. You can break so many things, if you don´t know what you are doing,´. Not a hard thing to do, but cutting some wires in $3000+ GPU is not fun...

 

[jordanbuilds1]

cheaping out on thermal paste is a huge no-go. i would expect asus or msi to do something like this but ALL their partners is wild. guess everyone went broke.

 

[thestryker]

Color me shocked that video card OEMs are going cheap to try to maintain margins anywhere they can.

Instead of thermal paste, I have seen Honeywell’s PTM7950 pads highly recommended, but it seems impossible to find here in Switzerland

If Thermalright Heilos is sold there it's pretty much the same thing.

Is there any mass manufacturer that has Thermal PUTTY ? Its time to replace the thermal paste on my laptops CPU and GPU and there is mixed info on if the VRMs and memory have pads or putty. I cant seem to find putty locally or via imports at a decent price (50$ up minimum, Aliexpress is banned). Obviously cant use pads as the required thickness is unknown so putty is the only option

AFAIK there was only one good putty for this application (TG-PP-10) and it got discontinued by the manufacturer. When I last looked there wasn't a good replacement available anywhere but you could check the manufacturer was T-Global. The problem with most other putty options is the mess they make.

Options I've seen mentioned are T-Global's A7000 (messy) and Upsiren U6 (messy/may have dry out issues depending on install).

 

[ThomasKinsley]

Normally I'd accept this news: stock parts are cheap. But given how expensive GPUs have become ($300 for a "budget" card), this should not be acceptable.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Not to sound like I’m defending this kind of behavior, but we did get a hint that Nvidia is leaving only small amounts of margin for AIB’s when EVGA decided to throw in the towel and say that they are done dealing with Nvidia as a company. Again not defending this but it is way more understandable for a company to nickel and dime their costs when margin is non-existent vs Nvidia’s 40-60% margin on the bom kits they sell to AIB’s.

 

[SleepyD]

With what these things cost, you shouldn’t have to go and change the thermal paste.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

With what these things cost, you shouldn’t have to go and change the thermal paste.

Shouldn’t, but the reality is only Nvidia makes money, AIBs are left with crumbs of profit.

 

[KyaraM]

Got my 4070Ti shortly after it released, didn't have any issues yet. And I gamed every day on it until May, and a bit less frequently after. Could it be that it's mostly newer cards who got the cheap paste?

Edit: To specify, I have a Gainward Phoenix RTX 4070Ti.

 

[watzupken]

They are cheaping out on thermal paste as part of their cost savings due to,
1. Being squeezed by Nvidia - there are tell tale signs that the bulk of the earnings go to Nvidia, and the "bones" to the AIB.

2. They need to keep shareholders happy.

If they choose to cheap out, at least let people have the option to do it themselves. Yet these companies slapped void warranty stickers to prevent you from opening up.

 

[CmdrShepard]

Shouldn’t, but the reality is only Nvidia makes money, AIBs are left with crumbs of profit.

If they didn't put so much useless bling on the cards (RGB crap for example and associated electronics) they could have probably afforded higher quality thermal paste.

 

[umeng2002_2]

This happened to my Asus TUF 4070 Ti. I had to repaste it after 6 months.

 

[Luckyduckymucky]

Loses*

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I've considered Igor to be a reputable source but the number of times that he's the first to report on these issues and giving incomplete data (such as lack of country of origin, exact models, case layout, room temps, etc..) I take what he says with a grain of salt until Gamers Nexus or DerBauer have an analysis.

I'm not saying Igor is doing anything sketchy, it's just becoming a trend.

And as others have asserted, GPUs are NOT simple like they used to be and TH recommending people just tear them apart and repaste since it's trivial is wrong and a generalization. As pointed out there are thermal pads to consider during reassembly where down to the millimeter and quality of themselves could end up killing your card (like reusing them), microtears or misalignment you can't even see if you use the wrong ones.


At the very least if you are hell bent on doing it, have GOOD digital calipers, not HarborFreight HS (Harbor Freight for our European friends is , hit or miss, like buying your tools from McDonald's. Measure the pad somewhere where it hasn't been compressed. Take pictures, don't add pads to every component you see.

GPUs aren't maintenance free but I don't believe in "fixing"/rebuilding them until there is a reason to. Anyone with equipment expensive enough that they'd be mad if it failed should be running something like HWInfo64 at all times, knowing their system and noticing when there are abnormalities.

I'm not just saying that because my 4090 HASN'T exhibited issues but because there are things in life where the old "If it ain't broke don't fix it" isn't just a saying but actually a better idea.

You are all free to do as you like, I'm not a Steve or Roman (Edited; Don't know why I thought his name was Stefan), I'm just your average PC guy who's been in and out of the desktop scene for years who knows what works for them and what doesn't (or is destructive) from personal experience.


TLDR; Take Igors report and TH suggestion with a grain of salt.