# Performing Pad Change&Paste on Asus TUF RTX3090



## purecain (Sep 5, 2021)

Unfortunately as the title states, I just noticed my memory temps were hitting 108c in GPU-Z. 

The GPU temps are fine, but the memory is insufficiently cooled imo. Ive seen a few people apply this 'upgrade' to their cooling 

and the common consensus is that you save around 10% or more. 

Will update with pics when everything has arrived. Ive just ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 12.5W/mk with Thermalright 12.8wk 2mm.

Ive also got a pack of Arctic Cooling Thermal Pads 6.0W/mk as back up as I only have one pack of the other coming. 

I'd appreciate your opinions, tips or advice if youve already completed this cooling mod.


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## Mussels (Sep 5, 2021)

I did this with my 3090, but had to slap other heatsinks on top to cool the damn things... then just gave up and went custom water


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## mtcn77 (Sep 5, 2021)

I think it is poorly indicated, though not as dissuaded as reference cooler assemblies. You  either miss the original thermal pad - if they are thermal wax - or you cannot screw it on right and overcompress the damn thing breaking vrms. It would have been better if you avoided it altogether.


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## phanbuey (Sep 5, 2021)

I did this on my 3080, and it's just scary AF...  (especially since i did it twice due to pads being wrong size the first time).  You should be fine, but it's definitely the least fun I've ever had modding computer gear.

In any case after i finished the second time the card posted with a black screen -- some wiggling and tons of swearing fixed it though, and I have ram temps that sit in the low 80s now.


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## purecain (Sep 5, 2021)

Thanks for the input, @phanbuey - I'll be going for those 80c ram temps.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 6, 2021)

purecain said:


> Unfortunately as the title states, I just noticed my memory temps were hitting 108c in GPU-Z.
> 
> The GPU temps are fine, but the memory is insufficiently cooled imo. Ive seen a few people apply this 'upgrade' to their cooling
> 
> ...



I hope you got a caliper to measure the thickness of the stock pads or a feeler gauge to determine how wide the gap is between the gpu heatsink and vrms/ram


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## sepheronx (Sep 6, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> I hope you got a caliper to measure the thickness of the stock pads or a feeler gauge to determine how wide the gap is between the gpu heatsink and vrms/ram



They tend to be rather standard.

The GPU memory modules next to the GPU core are 2mm till it touches the heatsink, and 3mm in the back plate.  I have re-padded a few 3080's of different make/models and it seems to be the standard.

I am having to redo my 3080 vram pads coming up.  The Thermalright pads are too stiff and so the temperatures are climbing again on the vram modules.  So I ordered Gelid brand ones which are a lot squishier.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 6, 2021)

purecain said:


> Ive just ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 12.5W/mk with Thermalright 12.8wk 2mm.





phanbuey said:


> You should be fine


I'd agree. You ordered good materials and as long as you're careful you'll be fine.


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## purecain (Sep 9, 2021)

Right just performed the procedure. Recorded it for the community and my camera battery died half way through. Typical...

So I found the stock thermal pads almost dry and hard in places. The pads on the back were too big imo @ 2.5mm+(just noticed the sizes in the above post).

I replaced the pads front and back with 2.0mm Thermalright Extreme Odyssey. They were too thick for the fron and i'm going to replace again with 1.5mm pads.

I'm going to replace front and back again as my temps are the same. The GPU is 10c cooler with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.

In gaming the memory temps dont exceed 90c. Mining pushes the memory up to 108-110c.

I think i'm going to try sepheronx's idea and see how the Gelid 1.5mm pads do. 

@ phanbuey - You weren't wrong about how much fun the process was. What a nightmare.


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## phanbuey (Sep 9, 2021)

tip - I used thermal paste on the chips and the back of the pads on my last time, and that got me a huge temp drop.  The pads themselves arent a big difference.


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## Mussels (Sep 9, 2021)

Paste might add that little bit of needed extra thickness, if the size is a tiny bit small, too

messy tho


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## phanbuey (Sep 10, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Paste might add that little bit of needed extra thickness, if the size is a tiny bit small, too
> 
> messy tho



it adds a bit more thermal conductivity as well -- a bit of extra gooiness - definitely messy, but shaves off another 5-8C off the chips.


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## Dr. Dro (Sep 10, 2021)

Mine hasn't been overheating to that extent (it's a launch date card, first batch), most I see is 90-94°C on memory junction after extended periods of time gaming (I don't mine) so I've been putting it off doing this, but as the card nears one year of use and our very harsh summer approaches i've been considering replacing the pads as well. 

It seems you've already done it, but I've found this post with the exact measurements on a blog, it's worth bookmarking just in case 

These pads are very expensive, so i'm looking forward to seeing which one you get the best results with, so I can do it on mine


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## purecain (Sep 11, 2021)

Ok so ive researched the issue, added a 200mm fan to the top rear of my pc to help remove the hot air from the CPU Heat sink, this lowered my system temps by about 2c. No effect on the gpu and memory under mining load that is worth mentioning.

So for my next trick I'm going to replace to 2.0mm pads that were originally 3.0mm with 1.5mm pads of the same brand on the back of the card. I'm going to buy some thermal grease for the memory chips and apply the tiniest amount as I actually noticed the stock cards pads did use this. I'll make sure I can record the horror show this time, for your amusement.  

Just one more thing, the main videos that are up with large temp drops are not all honest depictions of whats really going on. Check out the gpu temps under mining load, youll notice they are far too low.

I wont say which person and video's are being dishonest but lets just say there is definitely a financial gain for these companies, and that may well of lead them to over exaggerate their findings to get as many

new customers as possible.

If any Thermal Pad companies want to send me some of their pads I will try them and document the findings honestly here and on YouTube.

Just checking how the pads have compressed when the heat sink was replaced and noticed that some have hardly any contact while another has considerable indentation. It looks like there might be more to replacing these pads than I originally thought. I'll take a pic and add it up later so you can see what I mean.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 11, 2021)

purecain said:


> a 400mm fan


Is this a typo?


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## purecain (Sep 11, 2021)

Ahhh sorry yes... I meant a 200mm not 400mm. Thanks for pointing that out...  fixed it.



Make sure to use 3.0mm pads on the back. There are standoffs like what you would see on a PC case for your motherboard. There isnt as much pressure on the back side ram ic's and I think this is costing

me a few degrees C.

I just took the front of the card off and everything looks to be making good contact but the back plate is bowing slightly to make up for the fact I replaced 3mm pads with 2.5mm ones. I'll correct this next week. I need to buy some 3.0mm pads now. I had originally thought that the thinner pads would of been the answer or at least help with cooler temps. That was the wrong assumption unfortunately.

If after the pad replacement the memory temp is still a limiting factor for much higher speeds and hash rates it might be a good idea for us to pool resources and have a batch of active backplates made up.
We could implement a 120mmNoctua Fan and heat pipes into the design. If anyone from Noctua see's this, I have a few ideas I wouldn't mind sharing.


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## purecain (Sep 12, 2021)

How easy is it to get a hold of heat pipes to mod our own back plates. Maybe we could use convection in another way and design something unique. I'm up for the challenge though if anyone else fancies trying their hand at R&D.
The videos and advice being posted on youtube seem to be nothing more than youtubers jumping on the hype train to get hits. Theirs no real info to take away from most of them.
Ive been thinking about how we could make use of the 3mm gap the stand offs give us on the TUF.  I'll research creating heat pipes and post what I find.
Right ive found some heat pipes 10x150mm and a heat pipe bender for £30.  still looking. PM me if your interested in teaming up on this project.
I found these 

 but you have to buy a minimum of 10 which is over £1000. I may try applying the round heat pipes to top of the back plate and use the bending tool to curve the pipes up so that they
can cool, so that they are in front of and behind my cpu cooler fans.
These are on ebay @ £12.50 

 We could also use copper shims.

 Ive never used them before, does anyone have any experience using these to cool GPU/CPU's or IC's???

This is whats been created by others for the same purpose. This is what i was thinking of creating. 



Ive bought one of these and i'll post up the results as soon as it arrives. My 3.0mm and 1.5mm Thermalright pads just arrived aswell.


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## purecain (Sep 16, 2021)

Please merge these posts MOD. TY!
I've taken the cards back plate off again to replace the 2.5mm pads with 3.0mm pads of the same brand and type.

I'm now getting 102-4c as my max temp which is a 8-10c improvement while mining, and it literally crawls up to that point where before the temps just shot straight up to 112c.

In gaming its no where near that, if i remember correctly the memory never gets hotter than around 75-80c. I'll see how high it get tonight. Very happy im starting to see an improvement though.


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## purecain (Sep 24, 2021)

I just got the heat sink below in the mail.

I tried just placing it on top of the back plate without any pads to see if it made much of a difference. I had the fins coming up between the CPU cooler and the rear exhaust fan.

It seemed to help the memory keep cooler for longer, although once heated up become hot and needs the dedicated fan that came with it installing.

Unfortunately for me I need to take the card apart once more to make sure the memory chips on the front of the card are making proper contact. I suspect thats where my problem is. 

The backplate is making perfect contact now, so hopefully adding a .5mm pad on top of the 2.0mm pads will be enough to make perfect contact. 

Without causing the internal heatsink to not have enough pressure on the GPU die and cause the GPU to over heat.

Will update over the next couple of days.


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 24, 2021)

Looks like a well engineered ghetto mod


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## purecain (Sep 24, 2021)

Thats what I thought when it arrived like this...  






Obviously had a rough journey... ^^ I'll send the seller a message and see if he'll replace it. 

Ive bent it back into shape for now. The design is good for a -2c drop in memory temperatures with its own dedicated fan.

I'll place a large thermal pad between the backplate and the heatsink tomorrow and see if theres any improvement 

including adding a dedicated HSF.

Like I put previously, I suspect the internal HSF which contacts the CPU and memory isn't making proper contact with the thermal pads. There was hardly any imprint the last time I checked. 

I'm still trying to get the memory down to low 90's under mining load. Cheers!!!


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 24, 2021)

purecain said:


> Thats what I thought when it arrived like this...


Dude, that is unacceptable... 


purecain said:


> Obviously had a rough journey...


And it wasn't packed very well. They needed to use bubble-wrap not card-board. Seriously? Who does that?..


purecain said:


> I'll send the seller a message and see if he'll replace it.


And if they don't, demand a refund.


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## purecain (Sep 24, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Dude, that is unacceptable...
> 
> And it wasn't lacked very well. They needed to use bubble-wrap not card-board. Seriously? Who does that?..
> 
> And if they don't, demand a refund.


I will be doing, I was worried about the pipes cracking. You can usually kink metal, once but bend it after that in the exact same place and you get cracks.

I'll update what the seller has to say about it, the actual delivery was quite quick. Definitely inadequately packed though.


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## Ferd (Sep 25, 2021)

purecain said:


> I just got the heat sink below in the mail.
> 
> I tried just placing it on top of the back plate without any pads to see if it made much of a difference. I had the fins coming up between the CPU cooler and the rear exhaust fan.
> 
> ...


Hi 
How and where is this supposed to be mounted ? 
on top of the backplate ,? Or you remove the backplate and put this instead?
Does it any mounting mechanism? Since it’s supposed to be used with thermal pads does it provide a good pressure to compress the pads ?
 Lol so many questions, I just didn’t understand how it’s supposed to work looking at those pictures


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## Mussels (Sep 25, 2021)

2-3C drop means its not doing anything for sure

check out those pads, make sure nothing is too tall and pushing them away... the thickness really does need to be stupidly precice and sometimes thermal paste for that extra 0.1mm is the right call


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## Hyderz (Sep 25, 2021)

purecain said:


> Thats what I thought when it arrived like this...
> View attachment 218108View attachment 218110


i can feel the pain through these pics


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 25, 2021)

I'm wondering if the condense has leaked out looking at the shipping damage 2-3c is nothing you might have gotten that simply by fitting decent heatpads to the backplate.


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## silentbogo (Sep 25, 2021)

Out of all fat youtubers, unexpectedly Jayztwocents did the best video on the issue









102C is still a lot for vMEM, so if waterblock is out of question, I'd start with something a bit more drastic.
Instead of juggling around various thermal pad thicknessess, I'd rather use "liquid thermal pads" which are common in newer laptops (on the memory side of small HS), and put some 3mm Arctic pads on top.
It's not gonna reduce a number of junctions heat has to go through, but it'll provide slightly better and more even contact for RAM chips.





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Buy Computer-Systems K5 PRO Viscous Thermal Paste for Thermal pad Replacement 10g (iPhone, Apple iMac, Sony PS4 & PS3, Xbox, Acer Aspire etc): Heatsinks - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases



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And you should definitely check the contact between upper and lower heatsink. Sometimes it's also uneven(e.g. it'll lean towards VRM and partially lift off the VRAM plate). Alternatively - use a pair of side-mounted 40mm fans in pull config, like on older HIS cards.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 25, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Dude, that is unacceptable...
> 
> And it wasn't packed very well. They needed to use bubble-wrap not card-board. Seriously? Who does that?..
> 
> And if they don't, demand a refund.



Bubble wrap and card board to encapsulate it

If i saw that it would immediately go right back with pictures taken.


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 25, 2021)

This is the Chinese solution,doesn't look quite as impressive but alot easier to ship and less intrusive.





Love the warnings...


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 25, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> This is the Chinese solution,doesn't look quite as impressive but alot easier to ship and less intrusive.
> 
> View attachment 218177
> 
> Love the warnings...



Id be using a mixture of AS 5 with AS ThermEpoxy to mount that heatsink. ( And yes it does work to make a semi permenant bond)


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 25, 2021)

I'd use the supplied rubber bands.....


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## purecain (Sep 25, 2021)

Ferd said:


> Hi
> How and where is this supposed to be mounted ?
> on top of the backplate ,? Or you remove the backplate and put this instead?
> Does it any mounting mechanism? Since it’s supposed to be used with thermal pads does it provide a good pressure to compress the pads ?
> Lol so many questions, I just didn’t understand how it’s supposed to work looking at those pictures


Its supposed to be iether mounted directly onto the ram chips or the backplate with thermal pads.
There is no mounting mechanism other than gravity. It is made from solid copper. AFAIK


silentbogo said:


> Out of all fat youtubers, unexpectedly Jayztwocents did the best video on the issue
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ive followed the link and purchased some of the liquid to supplement the pads. The K5 pro Viscous thermal paste.

Will update as i manage to modify the cooling. I'll wait for this K5 before I try to improve the internal heatsink and thermal pad contact and hopefully heat dissipation.

Thanks a lot for the help@ TechPowerUp Community.



ThaiTaffy said:


> This is the Chinese solution,doesn't look quite as impressive but alot easier to ship and less intrusive.
> 
> View attachment 218177
> 
> Love the warnings...


I think i may try one of these heat sinks aswell. Ty  
Ps. For those people using third party coolers, you can not use the 1mm pads as they do not make contact due to the stand off's which are applied to the cards.  So dont make mine and Jays mistake and look for these stand offs and measure them before ordering your replacement pads. I tried using thinner pads and even after bowing the backplate to get proper contact the temps went higher than I had started with. Just a heads up.


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## Ferd (Sep 25, 2021)

purecain said:


> There is no mounting mechanism other than gravity.


Exactly what I was worried abt , in this scenario thermal pads make no sense ( no pressure/ no compression ) , for the thermal pads to start moving heat they need a certain amount of pressure under which they compress , the become better the more pressure you give them ...
You can look into “putty” that doesn’t require a lot of pressure, regular thermal paste works well without high pressure, they all need pressure eventually, but unlike thermal pads , paste and putty still allow heat transfer in low pressure scenarios...

before buying anything else I would apply some thermal paste on the vram and place the heatsink and hold it with a rubber band ( just for testing , you can find a better solution for long term ) 


ThaiTaffy said:


> This is the Chinese solution,doesn't look quite as impressive but alot easier to ship and less intrusive.
> 
> View attachment 218177
> 
> Love the warnings...


This doesn’t make sense to me , especially the fans , they should ideally be placed on top of the heatsink blowing air down on the fins , not sitting inside and between the fins , it can still work and help drop temps, but most of that would be thanks to convection, not to forced air cooling, it’s just another passive cooler the fans won’t be able to improve more than ~10% , better keep them turned off and avoid the noise


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## Mussels (Sep 26, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Out of all fat youtubers, unexpectedly Jayztwocents did the best video on the issue
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I've never seen that stuff before, i cant tell if its deodorant, toothpaste, or a bad idea


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## nguyen (Sep 26, 2021)

how about trying these copper shim




These shim with 2 thermal paste applications on both side still provide much better thermal transfer than those thick thermal pads (>2mm thermal pads), way cheaper and never degrade (might have to change thermal paste though). 

This guy is using copper shim on his Asus Tuf 3080


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## silentbogo (Sep 26, 2021)

Mussels said:


> I've never seen that stuff before, i cant tell if its deodorant, toothpaste, or a bad idea


That's a relatively new thing. About 4-5 years ago most gaming laptops started to use this stuff. Bought a big can of liquid pads for my workshop.
It's basically a "jellified" thermal paste. Easy to use, easy to clean, and reduces unevenness when mounting a heatsink.
Not sure about thermal conductivity, but it's definitely lower than thermal paste, hence only used on VRAM and VRM.


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## Mussels (Sep 26, 2021)

nguyen said:


> how about trying these copper shim
> 
> View attachment 218238
> These shim with 2 thermal paste applications on both side still provide much better thermal transfer than those thick thermal pads (>2mm thermal pads), way cheaper and never degrade (might have to change thermal paste though).
> ...


the shims dont do much, unless they're 100% the perfect height you cant use em under the backplate, and putting them on top has the same issues where the TIM you use is the limit (they dont exactly have a lot of mass)


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 26, 2021)

nguyen said:


> (might have to change thermal paste though)


Unless you use a quality TIM that does not degrade. Arctic MX4 or MX5 comes to mind. Especially MX5. I've been testing it for a while now and there are no signs of degradation, dry-out, pump-out or any indications of it doing anything other than what it is designed to do.


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## nguyen (Sep 26, 2021)

Mussels said:


> the shims dont do much, unless they're 100% the perfect height you cant use em under the backplate, and putting them on top has the same issues where the TIM you use is the limit (they dont exactly have a lot of mass)



You can sand down the copper shim to the correct thickness (so maybe buy some 1.5-2mm copper shim), which the guy in the video did.









He reduced the VRAM temp on his Zotac 3080 from 100C down to only 70C while mining, that's insanely good temperature (also getting >100MH/s on the 3080)


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## Mussels (Sep 26, 2021)

nguyen said:


> You can sand down the copper shim to the correct thickness (so maybe buy some 1.5-2mm copper shim), which the guy in the video did.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


that would require equipment most people dont have, as well as a lot of precision and effort... getting it wrong with little bits of copper going splat into hardware is a big oof


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 26, 2021)

Copper shims do work when done right. It just takes a lot of effort to get them right...


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## silentbogo (Sep 26, 2021)

Mussels said:


> that would require equipment most people dont have, as well as a lot of precision and effort... getting it wrong with little bits of copper going splat into hardware is a big oof


We're a bunch of computer enthusiasts. In general people are lazy and stupid, but I'm pretty sure that sanding down few copper shims and measuring it with a $5 digital calipers is within capabilities of most people here. Heck, remember when wet-sanding IHS was a thing 15-ish years ago? I remember being so obsessed with this process, I sanded all of my Core 2 Duos and Athlon X2's, along with my Big Typhoon and other "suspicious" heatsinks. Nearly everything was mirror-polished, including my fingertips, and nothing was broken     
Even though it was highly impractical, it made quite a few decent sets for cool macro shots on my old Olympus soapbox camera


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## Mussels (Sep 26, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> We're a bunch of computer enthusiasts. In general people are lazy and stupid, but I'm pretty sure that sanding down few copper shims and measuring it with a $5 digital calipers is within capabilities of most people here. Heck, remember when wet-sanding IHS was a thing 15-ish years ago? I remember being so obsessed with this process, I sanded all of my Core 2 Duos and Athlon X2's, along with my Big Typhoon and other "suspicious" heatsinks. Nearly everything was mirror-polished, including my fingertips, and nothing was broken
> Even though it was highly impractical, it made quite a few decent sets for cool macro shots on my old Olympus soapbox camera


it's going through those years that i know very well we might have 5 whole people on the forum that will do it without killing a GPU, and maybe one that has a relevant GPU and wants to do it


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 26, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Heck, remember when wet-sanding IHS was a thing 15-ish years ago?


I do. And THAT was pointless. However, I'm with you on the rest of your point.


Mussels said:


> i know very well we might have 5 whole people on the forum that will do it without killing a GPU


6. I have before and likely will again do a copper shim fitting on a GPU.. It's not difficult or expensive, just time consuming.


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## nguyen (Sep 26, 2021)

Mussels said:


> it's going through those years that i know very well we might have 5 whole people on the forum that will do it without killing a GPU, and maybe one that has a relevant GPU and wants to do it



Copper shims mod just last forever, those expensive thermal pads are not, especially on air cooling.
Over at OCN I have seen some members mentioning that those thermal pads degraded after about 6 months mining on air (VRAM Tjunction in the ~90C ) .

 It's cheap and effective method, so the extra effort pay off in the long term


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## Ferd (Sep 26, 2021)

Mussels said:


> it's going through those years that i know very well we might have 5 whole people on the forum that will do it without killing a GPU, and maybe one that has a relevant GPU and wants to do it


If I was going to do something like that , I would personally spray some electrical insulating paint or coating to the surroundings , I don’t trust myself enough, sometimes small debris from copper can fall on the board and boom you short something and good luck finding how and what happened


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## Dr. Dro (Sep 26, 2021)

Ferd said:


> If I was going to do something like that , I would personally spray some electrical insulating paint or coating to the surroundings , I don’t trust myself enough, sometimes small debris from copper can fall on the board and boom you short something and good luck finding how and what happened



It's at that point that I personally begin to consider that maybe, I should just buy a nice full cover waterblock for my $1600 2000ish, hopefully GPU 

So far so good, though... i'll begin worrying more when my temps consistently exceed 100, but hopefully by then, i'll have the chance to get a "7900 XT", I'm AMD homesick


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