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EVGA Pascal cards hotspot problem

My pads turned up this morning.

Pads in seprate bags and labled with four pages of pictures and install instructions.

Clearly thrown some time and money here to resolve things.

I am impressed with how they have handled this. They could have just released the bios and said thats it.
 
Pads came into today for my Classified, Straight forward installation also replaced the stock TIM with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and idle temps have gone down by about 3'c with load temps going down about the same.
 
I know people have always gone on about "better TIM". But I initially used the new Tim that came with the "optional" pads. But as I had already ordered up some grizzly. Decided to re seat the cooler once again with the super Tim (which I have used in the past for my CPU). The results were identical. But then again, even before fitting the new pads, my temps were pretty good, 25C idle, or there about and high 50's gaming (always pretty cool up here in this part of Scotland). Fair enough, I use my own custom fan curve, but then again, I have from day one.

I do wonder if some of the reported improvements from different Tim, are because the cooler wasn't fitted as well as if could have been in the first place? Most tests I've seen of the top tims, only seem to show a couple of degrees difference at best.
 
Got the pads and thermal grizzly on yesterday ( mine came without any paste from evega).

Scottish temps with heating on for me at idle were 27- 37. Seem to be hitting 26 -30 now.

Games anywhere from low 50 (skyrim special edition) to 59-63 for the witcher.

Just been running aggresive profile, notice it seems a bit quiter now.

Start playing with custom curve now things are sorted see if i can get noise and or temps down a bit more.

Did not enjoy the install, straight forward apart from the l.e.d connector which I found a bitch to get out. Took some time.

Getting the four sprung screws back into place at the end also seemed a bit counter intutive. At first I thought I had arsed up as it snaps back into place and you think everything should be lined up, but its not.

Was going to take it apart again as I decided I must have put the baseplate on the wrong way round but after taking a deep breath I worked out the cooler would move to line up the screws and was only held in place at the top end.

Not a difficult install but those were the two parts that caused me some momentary panic.
 
I'm wondering why TIM makes any difference, as long as it is applied properly.

Assuming the temperature reading is being used to control fan speed, wouldn't better thermal contact between GPU and heatsink simply reduce fan speed rather than temperature ?

Can anyone explain why my theory might be wrong ?
 
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I can't comment on Thermal Grizzly as I used MX-4 but my temps now are pretty much the same as with the stock stuff.
 
I'm wondering why TIM makes any difference, as long as it is applied properly.

I like to spread mine rather than just using a blob in the centre and pressure down to being irrational and paranoid.

Grizzly is a thick paste, I think I will try something else next time, don't think it lends itself well to the paraniod application method, done better in the past with other brands.

Was not my finest hour in terms of application. Took three attempts and even then ended thicker than I would have liked.
 
Finally got around to doing mine this morning. Instructions were fine for my 1080 FTW, except for missing out one of the screws that prevented getting the baseplate off (near the metal PCIe bracket).

I couldn't manage to get the sodding power connector off (the one at the short end of the GPU) so just flipped the heatsink off and continued the installation. All pads appeared to be making contact with no gaps, so thats good.

I didn't use the TIM that came with it and just put on some MX4 (rice sized) instead. I had a proper schoolboy moment and didn't record temps in specific scenes before the mod, so see if the core temps had reduced after.

It appears to be roughly the same, i went into the Witcher 3, and then cranked it to the highest DSR resolution I could, so that there was 100% gpu usage, and just let it sit there for a while. The highest it got was 67, and when I just put it back to the res I usually use and left it there, the it was at about 61-63.

Its probably about right, I might reapply the TIM, but not sure I can be bothered. They seem about right, and even if it was worse, its a degree or two at most. Boost wise its still above 2000, hovering between 2025 and 2050 for my offset.

Still haven't applied the vBIOS update though, and probably won't. I run a custom curve, so will just stick with that for now.
 
I'm wondering why TIM makes any difference, as long as it is applied properly.

Assuming the temperature reading is being used to control fan speed, wouldn't better thermal contact between GPU and heatsink simply reduce fan speed rather than temperature ?

Can anyone explain why my theory might be wrong ?

It's not really - though depending on fan curve you may see e.g. different idle temps as fan is off for that temp range anyway or whatever. Though in practise the differences are tiny so meh. If it happens that the difference is enough to keep you at a slightly quieter fan speed then I guess it was worth it. Personally I'll only change paste if I have to due to taking something apart anyway rather than aiming to routinely re-paste stuff.
 
Let's say you have some fairly poor TIM on you GPU, and assume that the fan starts up at 50C @ 500rpm. For every 1C increase in temperature, the fan increase speed by 20rpm. Under 100% load the GPU heat output increases, therefore increasing the GPU temperature. This obviously leads to an increase in fan speed in order to keep the temperature down. With fairly poor TIM, temperature reaches 80C at 100% load, with a fan speed of 1100rpm, which is 70% of the top fan speed. The temperature now stops increasing, as the 1100rpm fan speed is enough to prevent any further heating up of the GPU.

If the TIM is replaced with Wizzo Cool TIM, the best on the market, the transfer of heat from GPU is more efficient, but will it lead to a lower top temperature ?

At 50C the fan starts at 500rpm, the fan still increases by 20rpm for every 1c increase in GPU temperature. Even with Wizzo TIM, the temperature will still start to increase, as will the fan speed. As the TIM is transferring heat from the GPU to the heatsink more efficiently, the rate of fan speed increase will be different, but why would the GPU still not reach 80C, but with a lower fan rpm ?

A "B" in O Level physics, many years ago is letting me down ! :D
 
My RMA'd 1070 FTW edition has even worse coil whine than the previous one. Recently got a Steam Link and trying to play a game on the other side of the room without headphones is impossible with the goddamn high pitch whine coming from the graphics card. :(
 
My RMA'd 1070 FTW edition has even worse coil whine than the previous one. Recently got a Steam Link and trying to play a game on the other side of the room without headphones is impossible with the goddamn high pitch whine coming from the graphics card. :(

Bad coil whine is the worst! Makes having an expensive card pointless imo.
 
Let's say you have some fairly poor TIM on you GPU, and assume that the fan starts up at 50C @ 500rpm. For every 1C increase in temperature, the fan increase speed by 20rpm. Under 100% load the GPU heat output increases, therefore increasing the GPU temperature. This obviously leads to an increase in fan speed in order to keep the temperature down. With fairly poor TIM, temperature reaches 80C at 100% load, with a fan speed of 1100rpm, which is 70% of the top fan speed. The temperature now stops increasing, as the 1100rpm fan speed is enough to prevent any further heating up of the GPU.

If the TIM is replaced with Wizzo Cool TIM, the best on the market, the transfer of heat from GPU is more efficient, but will it lead to a lower top temperature ?

At 50C the fan starts at 500rpm, the fan still increases by 20rpm for every 1c increase in GPU temperature. Even with Wizzo TIM, the temperature will still start to increase, as will the fan speed. As the TIM is transferring heat from the GPU to the heatsink more efficiently, the rate of fan speed increase will be different, but why would the GPU still not reach 80C, but with a lower fan rpm ?

A "B" in O Level physics, many years ago is letting me down ! :D

My head wasn't playing nice so had to think about this for a moment.

I'm going to approach it from the reverse angle...

At a maximum temperature we've stopped gaining temp because the heat we're gaining equals the heat we're dissipating. The GPU is the same, so it's gaining the same amount of heat. To keep the temperature steady requires a certain level of heat differential between the heatsink and the air, combined with a fan speed. With bad TIM/application/whatever our heatsink is much cooler than our core. With super-magic-perfect-imaginary whizzo TIM our heatsink is the same temp as core giving as good cooling as possible at a given fan speed.


However, where this gets complicated is we've got a fan curve & the possibility of thermal throttling and these can change our possible outcomes.

Lets say we've set an idiotic fan curve and are at 100% fan in both cases. In this case we're dissipating the heat fine, keepimg both heatsinks the same temperature (equal heat in, equal heat out etc etc), but this leaves our poorer-TIM core hotter (heatsink temp + some delta caused by poor TIM) than the great TIM one (delta is 0 because it's magic TIM).

Now let's try again but with a fan curve that is a bit more normal. You've said the worse TIM one has a higher fan speed - why? The only reason it's fan speed would be higher is because it's already at a higher core temperature. It could, in theory, be a very small temperature difference (e.g. if the fans ramp aggressively at a certain temperature, right around where the better TIM one maxes out anyway) but must be there slightly to cause the fans to run faster (note: slightly higher core temp still will likely have slightly lower heatsink temp so the faster fans are just maintaining steady-state, not cooling the whole thing down again)

Edit: Of course, if you allow different fan curves as you knew your TIM was worse... then all bets are off :D

I... can't be bothered working out how throttling plays into the whole lot. Sorry :(

TLDR: Aye, better TIM should on paper be nice. I still don't think it's worth replacing it unless you have to :p and this is getting pretty far from the main point of the hotspot problem (though kinda related, being about heating/cooling & heat transfer? Maybe?? :o)
 
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Now let's try again but with a fan curve that is a bit more normal. You've said the worse TIM one has a higher fan speed - why? The only reason it's fan speed would be higher is because it's already at a higher core temperature. It could, in theory, be a very small temperature difference (e.g. if the fans ramp aggressively at a certain temperature, right around where the better TIM one maxes out anyway) but must be there slightly to cause the fans to run faster (note: slightly higher core temp still will likely have slightly lower heatsink temp so the faster fans are just maintaining steady-state, not cooling the whole thing down again)

Thanks for the explanation.

Let's assume that at 100% load but with no fans running, Wizzo TIM causes the GPU to reach 100C, and the heatsink reaches 95C. With Acme TIM, the heatsink reaches 90C.

If fans are enabled and controlled by a fan curve, the GPU with Wizzo TIM reaches 70C before it stops heating further. The further increase in temperature is prevented by the fans reaching a speed which means enough heat is being dissipated to prevent a further temp increase.

Hang on I think I might have just realised what might be happening....

With Acme TIM, heat from the GPU to the heatsink is transferred more slowly. This means that the fans ramp up for a little longer before the GPU temp stabilises.

That'll do for me ! :D
 
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