Is my EVGA 1080Ti SC2 now broke? [again?]

[MrPils]

I've had this fault from both dried out thermal paste/pads and a faulty display cable in my history of owning PCs. Dont condemn the card so fast, do the basics first... In my experience graphics cards with hardware faults let go suddenly and totally, it's very rare to find a hardware fault that power limiting the card by 5% fixes.

 

[Bradley Peate]

Good news is now you can upgrade and have a reason to do so with out feeling guilty

 

[Kelt]

Good news is now you can upgrade and have a reason to do so with out feeling guilty

Yeh, he can pop right out and snag a 3080 no problem.

 

[Bradley Peate]

Yeh, he can pop right out and snag a 3080 no problem.

Or a 2080 super if it's still impossible still a upgrade at the end of the day

 

[andy_mk3]

You could try washing it in IPA. I bought a 280x cheap off ebay for my wife some time ago, it kept doing a similar thing. I took it apart and washed the whole card in IPA and used a small paintbrush to work any dirt off and blew it dry. It's been faultless ever since and even running an OC.

 

[Roguey000]

I've had this fault from both dried out thermal paste/pads and a faulty display cable in my history of owning PCs. Dont condemn the card so fast, do the basics first... In my experience graphics cards with hardware faults let go suddenly and totally, it's very rare to find a hardware fault that power limiting the card by 5% fixes.

Thanks for the advice. I gave the card another repaste - so far things look good. Temps seems atleast 2-3c lower, and no crashing as of yet. Could it all simply be because of my paste before - ie. not putting enough?

 

[Kelt]

Thanks for the advice. I gave the card another repaste - so far things look good. Temps seems atleast 2-3c lower, and no crashing as of yet. Could it all simply be because of my paste before - ie. not putting enough?

Yeh, could be, it's a common problem.

Hope it keeps good for you.

 

[MrPils]

Thanks for the advice. I gave the card another repaste - so far things look good. Temps seems atleast 2-3c lower, and no crashing as of yet. Could it all simply be because of my paste before - ie. not putting enough?

No problem. Fixing it with a new one is all too common advice these days, glad you're back up and running

 

[Roguey000]

hi guys, last night my card started the same thing again. It seems that after ever repaste it lasts a few months, then starts to have problems.

I am starting to wonder if the paste is bad? As every repaste makes the card work for a couple of months. The paste is MX-4 and was brought from overclockers on the 28th Nov 2019, so a little ago (but shouldnt be too old)?

My last repaste, I put quite a bit on (as I been having so many problems) and spread it out, however after taking the cooler off today I saw this;

To me, it appeared that the paste was missing on the top/right-hand side of the die? That is very strange because I made sure to spread the paste out (I thought it would help). You can see paste around the cold-plate (so it was there at one point).

So before I put the card back together, I took a picture of my next application (today);

is there something wrong with the paste? am I doing something wrong?

I did think about trying either;
- Carbonaut Thermal Pad - 25 × 25 × 0.2 (TH-02E-TG) - however it lists it as 25x25mm; my 1080ti appears to be 20x25mm (so it would need cutting to fit? would scissors work?), Are those pads any-where as good as paste? I wouldnt normally think of putting a pad on but after having so many problems;
- Or, another paste like Hydronaut High Performance Thermal Paste (TH-003-TG)? is this going to do the same thing?

Any help would be greatly welcomed, the 1080ti appears to work after every repaste but I dont want to keep having to fix it every few months.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

From the looks of your application skills id say stick to mx-4. If you used a conductive paste like silver or liquid metal your gpu would have been dead.

 

[Roguey000]

From the looks of your application skills id say stick to mx-4. If you used a conductive paste like silver or liquid metal your gpu would have been dead.

I know there was lot of paste, but I only did that because ive had to remove the cooler 3-4 times already. Each re-paste only lasts a few months (if that), before it needs another repaste. I have been wondering if the paste was missing some of the die, and added more. And before I repaste, I do clean the die each time with TIM remover.

When a new repasting is done, the gpu works perfect again. Before I did the repaste, the gpu wouldnt survive 5 mins with an increased power target of 20% in Valley Benchmark (it would CTD without the increased power-target but would take longer). As soon as I did the repaste, it ran for 3 hours, 15mins without a single error (with the 20% increased power target in Valley).

Ive been reading up 'pump-out' effect; where the paste is forced out because of the rapid cooling and heating of the die/aluminum cooler. This does fit whats happening, the gpu would be constantly changing temps. After many cycles, a good percentage of the paste isnt covering the die, and maybe why it over-heats and CTD (with "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.").

Is there something wrong with my MX4? or unsuitable for GPU's? Its took me awhile to work-out what was going on, I didnt expect something wrong with the paste.

I really dont want to have to keep repasting the gpu every 3 months (or less), and is the reason why ive been looking at something like a Carbonaut Thermal Pad - a more permanent solution.

At one point the gpu looked screwed; A Youtube from awhile back (which suddenly worked without any problems for 3 months after re-pasting, til a few days ago).

Many thanks!

 

[Shiari]

Now, I may be doing it wrong, but I never have to re-apply paste on a regular basis. Typically might see 2-3 years between paste applications here. The only problem I've ever had was not using enough paste on my Vega 64, which has different die heights on its 3 dies and needed more paste as a result.

Would normally use Noctua NT-H1, have also had good results with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, now trying Alphacool Subzero on my 3090.

 

[BS Dave]

Are you replaced the thermal pads? are they the right thickness?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

thermal paste for me lasts forever. iv systems with mx2 paste in them for 10 years still going strong. only heatsink gets clogged with dust and needs a blow out.
also i dont think it could be heat on the gpu thats a issue since even my old gtx 780 once it gets to 80c will start throttling back clocks to keep it at 80c. you card should do similar and pull back on clocks once its at a temp limit thats set in the cards bios or altered in tools like nvidia inspector.
on the other hand as you mentioned with the odd thermal paste pattern it could be a issue of poor die contact so part of the die gets really hot and borks out.
you would need to strip the cooler down to the bare heatsink and do some test fittings with tiny blob of thermal paste and see if its catching on something. should not happen if its a stock card but iv had it on someones card before whre they removed the heatsink and when fitting it back got the fan cable trapped in the wrong place causing tiny lift on heatsink to make poor contact.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

ok just had a closer look at your photos and noticed this circled in red top right corner:

looks like that heatsink fin is been in contact with something, and its in the position where if it was hitting something it would cause heatsink to not seat properly on that corner and as you see that corner has the missing thermal paste too.
it could be nothing and i could be wrong but its a decent guess based on the pics provided

 

[Roguey000]

Now, I may be doing it wrong, but I never have to re-apply paste on a regular basis. Typically might see 2-3 years between paste applications here.

Completely what I was thinking, MX4 seems to get good reviews and should be good for a few years (not months).

Are you replaced the thermal pads? are they the right thickness?

They are original thermal pads, but are looking a little worn - its not helped keep re-applying paste (I think this is my 4/5th time?)

thermal paste for me lasts forever. iv systems with mx2 paste in them for 10 years still going strong. only heatsink gets clogged with dust and needs a blow out.
also i dont think it could be heat on the gpu thats a issue since even my old gtx 780 once it gets to 80c will start throttling back clocks to keep it at 80c. you card should do similar and pull back on clocks once its at a temp limit thats set in the cards bios or altered in tools like nvidia inspector.
on the other hand as you mentioned with the odd thermal paste pattern it could be a issue of poor die contact so part of the die gets really hot and borks out.
you would need to strip the cooler down to the bare heatsink and do some test fittings with tiny blob of thermal paste and see if its catching on something. should not happen if its a stock card but iv had it on someones card before whre they removed the heatsink and when fitting it back got the fan cable trapped in the wrong place causing tiny lift on heatsink to make poor contact.

What I was thinking, the paste should be good for years not months. The temps (when the card is 'bad'), were around 70c - nothing crazy. Nothing to sigial an problem; I understand the temp sensor cant monitor the whole die.

ok just had a closer look at your photos and noticed this circled in red top right corner:
looks like that heatsink fin is been in contact with something, and its in the position where if it was hitting something it would cause heatsink to not seat properly on that corner and as you see that corner has the missing thermal paste too.
it could be nothing and i could be wrong but its a decent guess based on the pics provided

I can see what you mean; I have uploaded an crop image of that area;

The paste was spread-out before (similar to the above image). I dont understand why the paste as 'moved', uncovering the letters DIA - which were covered in MX4 before the cooler was installed (3 months ago). Like it was 'boiled' off the die/pumped-out??

ps. thank-you for help!

 

[BS Dave]

it looks like some sort of poor contact for sure

 

[FlyingFish]

As mentioned above, you have serious contact problems.
Bare in mind that thermal paste is only there to fill the imperfections between two mating surfaces, the better the surface contact the less is required, and your pictures show massive dollops of paste bridging the two surfaces. You seem to only only have contact across the very top and down one side.

In the past I've found that some thermal paste can dry out when running hot constantly, I changed to thermal grizzly kryonaunt which kept its fluidity far better.

 

[Roguey000]

As mentioned above, you have serious contact problems.
Bare in mind that thermal paste is only there to fill the imperfections between two mating surfaces, the better the surface contact the less is required, and your pictures show massive dollops of paste bridging the two surfaces. You seem to only only have contact across the very top and down one side.

In the past I've found that some thermal paste can dry out when running hot constantly, I changed to thermal grizzly kryonaunt which kept its fluidity far better.

That would make more sense to me rather than the paste is bad. Comparing the card to ther EVGA 1080Ti SC2's I cant see anything out-of-place - The pads seem to be in the normal places (a picture from overclock3d.net);

If the cooler wasnt sitting correctly, that would explain a lot. I have never removed the base-place. The pad on the far right did tear in half once, but I put it back on (should be okay?). I did notice there is a screw directly right of the die, but that doesnt appear to be sticking up? The cooler has 3 cables (2 for fans, 1 for lighting) which get replugged in each time, im pretty sure none of those cables are trapped.

ps. here's how the cooler looks after cleaning;

[update] Ive been spent this morning looking at the pictures to see if I could see anything making the cooler not sit correctly. I was looking to the right of the card (towards the power connectors). Couldnt really see anything.. maybe the led cables... but there is a cut-out for those cables. None of the pads look wrong to me.

The heatsink fin you said about doesnt look as bad in the picture with MX4 on, could it be the flash on the camera?

I started to wonder if the paste was being pushed to the right, like the cooler isnt sitting correctly on the left (towards the bracket). The only thing I could see was some pads under the base-plate;

Would these be enough to make the cooler sit poorly? I guess they should be on-top of the memory chips, but they do look like they are nearly on-top of something else.

Does removing the base-plate mean removal of the back-plate too?

I dont have a clue, to me nothing looks majorly wrong.

[Update] Today I took some pictures of the card assembled;

It does appear to be a slight sag, it looks worse in the pictures (when you draw a straight line, it doesnt seem as bad). The card is installed vertical nowadays, so hopefully sag wont be so bad.

 

[FlyingFish]

You might have to spend some time fitting and refitting the cooler to see what clearance you have or don't have. Clean everything up and start dry, assemble things in place, not screwed, then use a torch to have a good look at how things contact each other.
The most important contact is of course the die, so perhaps pop a tiny amount of paste in the middle and then assemble & disassemble to inspect what sort of spread/contact has occurred and take it from there as you build up the thermal pads. At each stage you may need to re-inspect the die contact.

It's also worth while popping over to the Evga forums, they are very helpful over there, I even posted my build when I upgraded my 1080TiFTW3 with the hybrid kit.

Good luck