I understand that Nvidia have changed the thermal pads they put on the RTX 3090 FE. When did this change happen? I purchased my RTX 3090 in late May '21. If Nvidia changed the pads after that date do I need to change them myself and if so how do I get the new pads from Nvidia?
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RTX 3090 FE thermal pads
- Thread starter Quartz
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- 3090 nvidia thermal pads
Soldato
Do you have a source for that pad change, or just hearsay?
If Nvidia did change any pad thickness during production, (which I doubt, they may of changed supplier), they would never release a kit for a user to upgrade such items. The risk of damage is too high by your average Joe disassembling the GPU. The FE range has a 3year warranty with the original purchaser if high temps (for whatever reason) do cause the memory to fail.
What is more important is Junction Temps and whether YOU feel its worthwhile upgrading the thermal pads yourself, based on these temps. Do bare in mind that the GDDR6X is rated to 105C
https://www.micron.com/products/ultra-bandwidth-solutions/gddr6x
Me, I bought my FE back in Aug/Sept 21, and decided I wanted cooler temps (they weren't as high as 100C). I followed the guides online, and advice here, and swapped all the pads and replaced the thermal paste for something decent. My core temps dont go over 67C, and Memory Junction maxes at 84C. Yes I've invalidated my warranty, but if the GPU does go faulty I will replace all the original pads (yes I've kept them) and see if the warranty will go ahead.
If Nvidia did change any pad thickness during production, (which I doubt, they may of changed supplier), they would never release a kit for a user to upgrade such items. The risk of damage is too high by your average Joe disassembling the GPU. The FE range has a 3year warranty with the original purchaser if high temps (for whatever reason) do cause the memory to fail.
What is more important is Junction Temps and whether YOU feel its worthwhile upgrading the thermal pads yourself, based on these temps. Do bare in mind that the GDDR6X is rated to 105C
https://www.micron.com/products/ultra-bandwidth-solutions/gddr6x
Me, I bought my FE back in Aug/Sept 21, and decided I wanted cooler temps (they weren't as high as 100C). I followed the guides online, and advice here, and swapped all the pads and replaced the thermal paste for something decent. My core temps dont go over 67C, and Memory Junction maxes at 84C. Yes I've invalidated my warranty, but if the GPU does go faulty I will replace all the original pads (yes I've kept them) and see if the warranty will go ahead.
It's been mentioned a time or two on here.
If there was any change we would have heard more about it with evidence, igor labs etc
You might have read a post I made? I bought my 3090FE back in April 2021. VRAM temps would hit 104c. I replaced the pads just on the rear of the card, and dropped temps to about 94-96c. Not great, but enough to stop fans going crazy.
Why would you think nvidia would provide you a way to buy the pads? If you are having high VRAM temps, you could try and RMA the card with nvidia, no idea if they accept an RMA for that. Or, you can open the card yourself and follow one of the many guides on how to safely replace them. As said, I only needed to change the rear pads to stop the fans going into jet-mode.
I RMA'ed my card with replaced pads in-place. No issues at all getting my replacement.
As I had long suspected, there is so much fear mongering around this point. Im pretty sure now that as I had originally thought, nvidia isnt going to waste time taking apart every card that comes in, and checking what the pads look like. The labour needed for that...
My thinking is if the card comes in and looks physically un-damaged, and whatever issue it has can be tested on the bench, they just go ahead and replace it.
So, if you do ever need to RMA your card, I wouldnt worry.
Why? You think places like igor labs just orders up batches of FE cards at random and opens them up, checks the pads and moves on?
If anything, a change like this can easily slip under the radar. New buyers of the cards with improved pads wont notice the issues. There fans wont go crazy, and the temps wont be as high. So its likely many of them might not ever even know the pads or temps where bad on previous batches. Or, if they are aware might be pleasantly surprised that there card isnt affected.
I was fully expecting to need to re-pad the card I got back from RMA. I even had pads left over.
Was very pleased to see the temps are much improved now.
I havent opened the card to confirm the pads look any different, but see no reason to do so. Happy with the temps, not going to risk making them worse.
You could have just received card that had pad moved and not making full contact with the vram on the die side seen few posting pictures cards coming with pads miss aligned from factory
Then I would still have hit 104+ temps when I changed just the rear pads...