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.