Friday, January 24th 2025
RTX 5090 FE Liquid Metal Swap: Thermal Paste Performs Just Fine
Did you catch our launch review of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card? If you did, you'd have noticed the hoops we had to jump through to disassemble the card without breaking anything. As we carefully peeled the card's aesthetic finery and worked out way down to the GPU, we found that NVIDIA is using a liquid-metal thermal interface material (TIM) between the "GB202" GPU and the unified vapor chamber plate of the Double Flow Through cooling solution. After our photography the problem arose of putting the card back together, and we wondered if using a mainstream thermal paste would be a suitable replacement since we didn't have the patience to toy with liquid metal given our review volume. So we pulled out our trusty tube of Arctic MX6, gave it a suitable application, skipped the gasket, and put the card back together.
Here's what we found—the GPU temperatures rise by about 2°C on average over the stock liquid metal TIM. In the graph below, you will see both TIM applications compete with each other over a 370-second stress from a benchmark run. In the chart the start temperatures are slightly different, this does not mean that idle temperatures are higher with liquid metal. At the end of test the maximum temperature reached with the stock liquid metal TIM is around 77.6°C. The Arctic MX6, on the other hand settles to 79.4°C. This +1.8°C temperature increase really isn't significant at all—room temperature changes between summer and winter will cause bigger swings. We also tested performance, and it was spot on, the same as pre-disassembly—not a hint of thermal throttling. Both values are safely below the 90°C thermal threshold for the RTX 5090—that's right, NVIDIA raised the thermal throttle point, it's not 83°C anymore like on the RTX 40-series Ada. Taking the RTX 5090 apart and putting it back together was a challenging experience, but we're glad we didn't have to do a liquid metal application to ensure trouble-free operation. This is good news for all DIYers—don't bother with replacing the liquid metal—a thin thermal paste application works fine, too.
Here's what we found—the GPU temperatures rise by about 2°C on average over the stock liquid metal TIM. In the graph below, you will see both TIM applications compete with each other over a 370-second stress from a benchmark run. In the chart the start temperatures are slightly different, this does not mean that idle temperatures are higher with liquid metal. At the end of test the maximum temperature reached with the stock liquid metal TIM is around 77.6°C. The Arctic MX6, on the other hand settles to 79.4°C. This +1.8°C temperature increase really isn't significant at all—room temperature changes between summer and winter will cause bigger swings. We also tested performance, and it was spot on, the same as pre-disassembly—not a hint of thermal throttling. Both values are safely below the 90°C thermal threshold for the RTX 5090—that's right, NVIDIA raised the thermal throttle point, it's not 83°C anymore like on the RTX 40-series Ada. Taking the RTX 5090 apart and putting it back together was a challenging experience, but we're glad we didn't have to do a liquid metal application to ensure trouble-free operation. This is good news for all DIYers—don't bother with replacing the liquid metal—a thin thermal paste application works fine, too.
62 Comments on RTX 5090 FE Liquid Metal Swap: Thermal Paste Performs Just Fine
"stock liquid metal TIM is around 77.6°C. The Arctic MX6, on the other hand settles to 79.4°C. This +1.8°C temperature increase really isn't significant at all—room temperature changes between summer and winter will cause bigger swings. We also tested performance, and it was spot on, the same as pre-disassembly—not a hint of thermal throttling. Both values are safely below the 90°C thermal threshold for the RTX 5090"
If it was a device that ran at 8'C then a 2 degree rise would be significant. This isn't.
Anyway, it's good to know that TIM paste will do just as good for normal operation as LM while being much safer long term DIY.
Then it will pump out, the leftovers will dry out (burn), and you'll figure what junk that paste actually is. Meanwhile, my 6900xt LM application (conductonaut) is still going strong with the same temps after а year, without reapplying (ever).
And this GPU was even OC'ed to 2.86GHz on air, tested and benchmarked until I got bored to death. If anyone is interested about my experience with this POS paste (that came with €250 order from Arctic webshop btw) on my 6900xt, you can start from here. Cheers.
P.S. Beauty of LM.
These are 20 year old feelings so.. nothing new to me lol :laugh:
It’s fine for CPUs and most mainstream GPUs. Easy to apply, can be found basically anywhere - a no-brainer choice. Then again, I don’t fuck with any CPU that goes above 150 or GPU that goes above 250, so that mostly is what informing my experience. On a ridiculous space heater like the 5090 I probably wouldn’t really trust any paste long term and would run LM or PTM. That being said, our 3090s at work are still running whatever original paste NV put on the FEs and I’ve yet to see any thermal degradation that would be statistically significant, so… eh.
And yeah.. I saw TF7 did better in the list at Elmors.. cant say I agree.
But yeah.. back to the show I guess..
Now compare this to that "hotspot temp reading no more" thread. I swear to God, this site/forum is going places lately... Such extremeness...
I thought the stuff that came with my D14 was terrible, still stands out as some of the worst I have tried lol..
But I am a savage, I will exploit anything on my system that will allow me to. That is how I can get a 5900X to do over 260w with PBO. 300w without lol..