Question about thermal pad replacement.

[electronicworld]

Hello everyone, last week i have changed the thermal paste on core die of my rx 580 8gb sapphire pulse, and the temps dropped about 10-15 degrees. But while removing the heatsink unfortunately i ripped off a thermal pad of off a single memory chip. I have used the card for a week without problems both core and memory chip temperatures doesnt exceed 70 degrees celsius under heavy load.

I have three questions regarding this;

1. I already ordered the correct size thermal pads for the gpu and i will be replacing it once arrived. When I take off the heatsink to replace thermal pad do i also need to replace the thermal paste again ?

2. Another worry of mine is, any chance i could have damaged the card by using it without a thermal pad on the memory chip ?

3.This one could be off topic but since i got the card the core and the memory temperature is always linked, is this normal behaviour ?

 

[Shrek]

If the thermal paste is still nice and gooey, I just reuse it; but running a RAM chip without proper cooling may not have been a great idea, but 70°C does not seem so bad.

 

[Metroid]

Usually better thermals only on gpu core and memory, other things like mosfests, vrm and so on dont need to, leave the ones that came with the gpu.

 

[Mussels]

Hello everyone, last week i have changed the thermal paste on core die of my rx 580 8gb sapphire pulse, and the temps dropped about 10-15 degrees. But while removing the heatsink unfortunately i ripped off a thermal pad of off a single memory chip. I have used the card for a week without problems both core and memory chip temperatures doesnt exceed 70 degrees celsius under heavy load.

I have three questions regarding this;

1. I already ordered the correct size thermal pads for the gpu and i will be replacing it once arrived. When I take off the heatsink to replace thermal pad do i also need to replace the thermal paste again ?

2. Another worry of mine is, any chance i could have damaged the card by using it without a thermal pad on the memory chip ?

3.This one could be off topic but since i got the card the core and the memory temperature is always linked, is this normal behaviour ?

1. Quite often i just add a tiny bit more paste to the center

2. No, RX580's VRAM doesnt run hot enough to cause damage that easily. You'll likely still have some air flowing over it.

3. Could be normal for that card, or might be just the software you're using. You didnt give us any information on the GPU, software used, thermal pads used, thermal paste used...

 

[electronicworld]

Thanks a lot for the replies, i used cooler master maker on the gpu die. Thermal pads are stock. I used a little bit of thermal paste on the memory chip which was missing a thermal pad. I monitor temps with both amd radeon software and hwinfo64. Got 0.5mm arctic thermal pad.

 

[Mussels]

Are the stock pads 0.5mm? thats quite thin

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Another much simpler option, is to look for something called K5 pro.

It's a funky paste that replaces any thermal pads easily, you just dollop it on liberally then squidge it together, and it doesn't set so is reusable.

Developed for quick pc repair.

 

[electronicworld]

They are 0.75 mm originally but i cant find 0.75mm anywhere. A lot of articles i read say 0.5mm will work perfectly for the memory chips on my particular gpu.

 

[Mussels]

They are 0.75 mm originally but i cant find 0.75mm anywhere. A lot of articles i read say 0.5mm will work perfectly for the memory chips on my particular gpu.

ah, you should have gone 1mm. You usally want slightly thicker since they compress down - 0.5mm will only work if you can tighten the cooler on them

 

[electronicworld]

On youtube comments i saw alot of people having problems with 1mm, they say gpu die doesnt make contact with heatsink if 1mm is used on memory chips. People say 0.5 mm worked flawlessly for them.

 

[Mussels]

fair enough, some thermal pads are softer than others - and you can always compress them yourself before using

 

[joemama]

1. Either adding some more thermal paste or replace it completely, directly putting it back is going to lead to lots of bubbles in the paste
2. I'm not sure but they should have the throttling function built in to avoid this
For thermal pad thickness I would select 0.5mm and risk the VRM getting hotter than the GPU getting hotter

 

[grammar_phreak]

A couple years ago, I replaced the pads on one of the 4gb Nitro cards I had before I put it into a rig I was selling. At first, I went with 1.0mm pads because they came close to matching the size of the stock pads, but the 1.0mm were too thick and they caused the GPU not to make proper contact with the heatsink. The .5mm pads worked perfectly.

I pulled apart an MSI Armor 8gb RX 580 which doesn't have good thermal pad placement on all VRAM modules. So I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Yes, it's better to caution on the side of err and replace the paste. As pointed out, reseating will cause small bubbles to get trapped. It's also possible that heat cycles might have caused the paste to dry up a little bit since you've been using the card.