Hi Guys, I have just got another Palit GTX 580 3GB for some Tri-Sli Goodness. However as I am keeping them all on air, I wanted to try and give them every chance to keep cool. Thus I was thinking about replacing the TIM on them. Has anyone done this before (I guess loads have) and is there any hints and tips outside of the normal youtube videos guides that people can let me know about? Will normal CPU TIM be OK to use? this is what I have (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/20g-arctic-cooling-mx-4-thermal-compound-for-all-coolers) My temps at the moment are OK, under load the middle card hits around 85, but I wanted to see if I can keep this temp, but reduce the 100% fan speed that it needs to keep this temp! Even with ANC on my 'phones I can still hear them trashing away! Thanks B
I've done it before with mixed results, my hottest card I owned, GTX275, I had more favourable results and I managed to shave a good 9c+ off underload. Other card I have done it on didn't get quite as hot so changing the tim wasn't as noticable. MX4 is what I use these days, the stuff they put on is utter shite and amazes me that they use it on expensive cards seeing as a single application of something like mx4 would probably cost, mere pence.
I usually do this anyway, as often time they use terrible tim at the factory and apply it quite badly. I use ceramique but many other metal free are fine too. Also be prepared to need thermal tape/pad if needed for ram/vrm or other things if the cooler covers those.
handy to have a few bits of various thickness thermal pad, as the crap they use normally just falls apart when you take the heatsink off You can get away without it though, and just change the tim on the gpu MX4 is probably the best paste to use
Playing with the voltage can also help. Using one card at a time find the lowest stable voltage to cool things down!
I did this on my laptop GPU's, as well as when adding waterblocks to other graphic cards. MX-2 is ideal for this. Just splodge a bit on, and spread it out evenly over the GPU. I find licking your finger well helps spreads the stuff evenly. (Worked every time for me.)
Just dawned on me that all my gpu tim replacement was with mx2, I have mx4 now but haven't used it on any gpu's.
Thanks for this feedback great stuff. Where do I get thermal pads from? and that voltage idea Blogins is a great one. I had thought to under clock them slightly, but I want to be careful not to lose any gain from having three and I know the ROI on scaling is limited as it is.
I would take the card apart and check the thickness of all the pads, as some will be thicker than others. Thermal pads here may as well order the TIM at the same time.
I use Thermalright ChillFactorIII, simply because I got lazy with my placement last time with MX-4 and shorted out the GPU. Green flashing screen was rather interesting for a few minutes before I got bored. Plus CF3 is nonconductive, so I can just throw it around without too much of a worry, helps reduce the consequences if I make a mistake.
How did that happen when MX4 is claimed to be non conductive? The mx compounds have always been non conductive!!
Perfect +rep Ill give it a go on my new "spare" card and if I mess it up I can tuck in under the carpet and pretend it never happened!
Haven't a clue. All I know was that it leaked from GPU die to the surrounding transistors, because i'd done an absolutely terrible job of applying it, and the GPU was giving me a bright green screen. Didn't notice till I'd re-enabled SLI, though, since it was the second card. Tore it down, cleaned it out, used CFIII I had spare from my Archon: it all worked fine.
TIM replaced on one card this afternoon, throw it in idle temp down from 56 to 47, which I think is a nice jump. Will do the other two and then see what happens under load. Also, the thermal pads on the memory etc. was undamaged and didn't look like it needed replacing - I will upload a couple of pics
