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Thermal paste for GPU

Grimley

Grimley

Grimley

Soldato
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18 Nov 2007
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Deepest Darkest Essex!!
OK folks.
Cut a long story short, My nephew has 'acquired' a GTX 980 (yet to confirm) from a uni friend of his. He says that there is nothing wrong with it apart from that it needs new thermal paste.

Question is - can I buy thermal paste just for GFX cards, if not can someone spec me.

I dont often take GFX cards to bits, last time was to fit a Zalman GPU cooler to a HD4850 & that was a fair few moons ago. Because he hasnt sent me pics yet, I don't know if its a reference card or 3rd party.

So, I don't know if this is going to be easy or hard to do or I end up bricking the card, neither he nor I will want to do that, so anyone with experience of this as I've not done this for donkeys years?

Thanks.
 
You can buy gpu paste but ive always just used mx3/4 or any cpu paste
the memory normally would need thermal pads or they might not make contact with the heatsink
though paste would work on those too as long as it's making contact between memory chips and heatsink still

Always used mx3 on my custom gpu coolers in the past with 0 issues just be sure to use non conductive paste
 
Thanks for that. I've got some MX4 paste I keep for when I do a PC build, which isnt that often these days, so I'll use that. My only concern is that this card is one that Nvidia has made deliberately difficult to take the cooler off (Can't be that hard if they can be custom watercooled?)

I'll probably need to buy some thermal pads as well. I didn't know said pads are available in different thicknesses! so What do I buy?
 
MX4 is fine as it's non conductive. If using something conductive like liquid metal (especially, as it's more runny than most) you'll need to paint over any capacitors etc with nail polish to protect them - I'd just stick with MX4.

Pad thickness: Had a quick look and seems for the 780 and 980ti it was 1mm, so would guess the 980 would be the same.

Nvidea reference coolers do have a hell of a lot of screws, but other than that are pretty logical to dismantle, just don't force anything! There may be a couple off screws you can't access until you take the end bracket off (by unscrewing the DVI/VGA port standoffs)
If you can find a 'tear down' guide for the card it will make things a lot easier
 
Gray2233 said:
Something like MX4 will be fine, whether it's used for a CPU or GPU it's ultimately the same job at the end of the day.
Click to expand...

GPU tends to have a bigger area and generally benefits more from a thicker application so some pastes that work well with CPUs don't always work as well with GPUs.

MX-2 or MX-4 tend to be a good option for GPUs - IIRC MX-2 on a GPU size area tends to have a bit better long term stability but you are probably talking beyond the useful like of the GPU anyhow with either option.
 
Tend to use mx4 now because it is cheap and of decent quality.

With regards to stripping the card. On most small itx cards like that its just noting where the fan connectors are on the board removing the screws on the back side of the pcb and then usually the heatsink comes off pivoting towards the fan connector and then unplugging. Uusally nothing difficult but a few pcb screws on aib cards.

Paste you need to apply a fair amount on a gpu. At the very least a line down the entire centre of the die. Better to do a + or x with the paste thickness being about 2mm bead. It doesnt matter if you put too much like a cpu as long as you dont use conductive paste which mx4 isnt.

Depending on the age of the card it may also be worth it to inspect the thermal pads on the vrm etc when you strip it down if they are cracked/dry etc then best to replace them just ensure you get some of identicle thickness i.e 0.5/1.0/1.5/2.0mm etc.
 
Doing my vega 64 tomorrow, was about to earlier and discovered torx screws, kinda annoying. Had to quickly order some off the rain forest, wish me luck with 3mm thermal pads for the vram, it gets up to 89c.
 
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