Worth changing thermal paste on 980 Ti

[dave28]

Just wondering if its worth bothering changing thermal paste on a 980 Ti and how risky it is to do.

Its an MSI Gaming 6G model and i cant seem to find a video of it being done to that card but i can find videos of simular.

I have not tested temps and it runs perfect but i was thinking more because of its age.
I would have thought the original thermal paste is a dried up chalky mess by now

 

[Kelt]

Just wondering if its worth bothering changing thermal paste on a 980 Ti and how risky it is to do.

Its an MSI Gaming 6G model and i cant seem to find a video of it being done to that card but i can find videos of simular.

I have not tested temps and it runs perfect but i was thinking more because of its age.
I would have thought the original thermal paste is a dried up chalky mess by now

Before you do anything I would suggest you monitor the temps using MSI Afterburner and then decide if it's worth changing.

I would only consider changing the paste on my card if it was clearly overheating.

 

[dave28]

Before you do anything I would suggest you monitor the temps using MSI Afterburner and then decide if it's worth changing.

I would only consider changing the paste on my card if it was clearly overheating.

ok thanks, will try that in the next couple of days

 

[watercooledman]

if it runs perfect then leave it well alone.

 

[clone]

If its not broken leave it alone

 

[watercooledman]

If its not broken leave it alone

i await the next thread.

help my 980ti has died.

 

[Ben Campbell]

Don't take apart a GPU if you don't have to. Thermal paste doesn't really stop working unless it's really showing signs. I've still got a 750Ti which has never had the paste changed after around 8 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Edit: if you do decide to change the paste, please look at many videos on how to do it and make sure you know how to put it back together. Don't brick your GPU by accident.

 

[Major774]

Don't take apart a GPU if you don't have to. Thermal paste doesn't really stop working unless it's really showing signs. I've still got a 750Ti which has never had the paste changed after around 8 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Edit: if you do decide to change the paste, please look at many videos on how to do it and make sure you know how to put it back together. Don't brick your GPU by accident.

This... I recently opened up a old GPU that has been sitting around for years. The thermal paste was still very fresh and not dry at all.

 

[oldestgregg]

I have not tested temps and it runs perfect

Why change it then? The best you can ask for by doing it is that it will continue to work just fine. You can only cause problems at this point.

 

[dave28]

Yeah im not going to bother then unless an issue with temps crop up.
I just seen some people talking about changing paste on CPU`s and GPU`s quite afew times and started to wonder about my own gear type of thing

 

[Benass]

Investigate temps first. anything below 80c is fine. anything above 80c worth investigating and discussing.

 

[StephenJ]

Test the card see if it is hot or loud when under load, also think about what situation you would be in if you break the card. i.e can you get a replacement

 

[rubberduck]

Jacob Billing recommends weekly checks of your GPU to see how the thermal paste is 'getting on' and ensuring good action with nice frames.

 

[martian1]

On my Asus strix 1080ti i did change paste but i had a good reason to do so. I had a custom watercool loop in pc but had not got around to getting a waterblock for gpu.
The cpu block sprung a leak months later i did not know till i decided to take a look in case as i was having crashing issues in games and card would not run 3dmark. What had happened was a small pool of water had collected on the backplate of the gpu and must have boiled the paste on the gpu chip. When i took it apart the paste was a chalk powder ! Once a replaced it all was good again and its ran perfect ever since..i ditched watercooling after that just to much hassle and worry. Do not change paste unless cards having issues i was lucky as i found a guide to do it and it was very easy to do on the strix i few screws and cooler lifted away no bother.

 

[ExRayTed]

Jacob Billing recommends weekly checks of your GPU to see how the thermal paste is 'getting on' and ensuring good action with nice frames.

 

[ToOo]

Advice everyone's giving is correct. If there isnt an issue then don't touch it.
That being said I had an MSI 970 and 1080, and my experience was that for higher power cards like those MSI thermal paste can go bad over time. To be clear I put a lot of temperature cycles through my cards, so I'm maybe an extreme case.

 

[d_brennen]

I changed the paste and pads on my ITX card and that took it just below the curve where the fan becomes annoying, great result. Edge case though

 

[Protoype]

I changed the paste and pads on my ITX card and that took it just below the curve where the fan becomes annoying, great result. Edge case though

Which card was this?

I'd agree with everyone else, unless there clearly is a problem from monitoring tools, leave alone..

 

[arc@css]

I recently applied fresh paste on mine and although it has lowered temps a bit, I don't think it's really all that worth it.

In my case - pun intended, I happened to be cleaning everything out and as I had some spare thermal grizzly, I thought I may as well give it a spring clean before I sell it.

 

[d_brennen]

Which card was this?

I'd agree with everyone else, unless there clearly is a problem from monitoring tools, leave alone..

RX570 Pulse ITX. Nice little card but the single fan heatsink can't really keep up and is disturbingly loud when stressed