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Thermal Pads vs Thermal Paste, NP9130


jaredhello

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Hey guys.

So I have a question.

Is it better to use thermal pads for the components on the GPU (the memory chips, V-regs and inductors) or thermal paste?

It's hard for me to tell if thermal paste would actually contact correctly between the components and the heatsink. If anyone could let me know what to do I'd really appreciate it.

Also, would better thermal contact for the components lower the overall heat of the card or is that something that only proper heatsinking to the actual core do?

Thanks!

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Thermal paste for GPU die. Thermal pads for other components on PCB; gap is too big for paste.

There is only thermal sensor on die. We don't know temps of the other components. Not sure what you mean by "overall heat of the card." In my experience swapping out stock thermal pads for more expensive higher conductivity ones was a waste of money.

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yes and no. surprisingly, swapping out the stock thermal pads with fujipoly highend ones on my 980M lowered the core temps by a few degrees and improved overclocking ability quite a bit. that was with identical thermal paste and paste job before and after thermal pad swap :)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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yes and no. surprisingly, swapping out the stock thermal pads with fujipoly highend ones on my 980M lowered the core temps by a few degrees and improved overclocking ability quite a bit. that was with identical thermal paste and paste job before and after thermal pad swap :)

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

How can you have identical paste job when the human variable exists? ;)

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[emoji14] :D

the desktop cpu is indeed tricky to repaste and compare values of different jobs with, since the ihs area is so large. but on the gpu side the paste jobs are very consistent with the dot method and same type of paste. thats why i meant that exchanging the pads had quite a significant impact in my case...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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  • 3 weeks later...
Has anyone tried Coollaboratory Liquid MetalPad on a high-end gpu like GTX680m? I've looked at benchmarks and it seems to be the best.

Yeap I've used Coollaboratory Liquid MetalPad's on 680, 880 and 980's and to be honest made very little difference to temps maybe -1c or -2c compared to MX4 paste.

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Do you recommend them? I see the install process is really simple, just got to burn-in properly which isn't a problem with gpu. I've been looking at the laptop pack, will this be sufficient for doing both cpu and gpu? or do I need to get separate gpu pads? thanks in advance!

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To be honest I wouldn't recommend them.

Expensive.

Little improvement in temps.

Can be difficult to get to phase change (Burnin) without the gfx card(s) shutting down due to overheating (Act as insulators until they change phase).

Nightmare stuff to clear off at a later date.

Just go for MX4 or Diamond pastes, Cheaper, more of it and instant results.

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Hello Guys, what I need to say at this point is that in my opinion thermal repasting or cooling pads are the wrong way to go... i have a laptop with gt 755m SLI. The video cards are overheating all the time while playing games. Either the game or the whole PC crashes plus the graphic driver crashes. My solution was UNDERVOLTING. I undervoltet both GPU's and my laptop is very cool now. No games crash anymore and the performance is still the same... :D I'd recommend you to undervolt you graphics card and don't buy anything expensive like a cooling pad. Thanks

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I just got my delivery of the laptop Coolaboratry pack. Ordered it before I saw your reply. I tested on cpu first (3610qm) and it seemed to work as intended. Then, I did my gpu (gtx680m 4gb) which had as5 on it and the difference is amazing. MSI Kombuster Furmark was making the gpu throttle-down to around 660mhz~ core after a few mins. Now it will run it constant at around 70-72C. For me that's over 15c+ difference. The top-end is unknown as before it would touch 89-90c and drop core speed. I haven't had to go through removing it yet, but, the instructions say it should peel off.

Minus the removal experience, I'd have to say this is an awesome product with no mess so far. Just cut to size, metal, then 0.1mm copper, then, metal. Works great, highly recommended. (so far).

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<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> Ideally, thermal paste should be used where the heatsink’s center clamp-down is. General central pressure is usually found in the center clamp-down making the heatsink having maximum contact in that area. This usually being the core processor on the mobo (motherboard) or the GPU on a video card. All other items around this area should use thermal pads as they will more than likely have a visible space in order to guarantee maximum contact for the core component.

As a general rule of thumb, do not use metallic based or conductive thermal compound on a GPU as most have visible wafer caps on their surface die. A ceramic based thermal compound is safer, however less heat conductive. If you know exactly how much to put on, you can try metallic based thermal paste.

All CPUs today have a heat-shield that protects the glass core and cover the wafer caps. So it’s safe to use metallic based thermal compound on a CPU. Never use thermal pads/tape on a CPU whenever possible.

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I just got my delivery of the laptop Coolaboratry pack. Ordered it before I saw your reply. I tested on cpu first (3610qm) and it seemed to work as intended. Then, I did my gpu (gtx680m 4gb) which had as5 on it and the difference is amazing. MSI Kombuster Furmark was making the gpu throttle-down to around 660mhz~ core after a few mins. Now it will run it constant at around 70-72C. For me that's over 15c+ difference. The top-end is unknown as before it would touch 89-90c and drop core speed. I haven't had to go through removing it yet, but, the instructions say it should peel off.

Minus the removal experience, I'd have to say this is an awesome product with no mess so far. Just cut to size, metal, then 0.1mm copper, then, metal. Works great, highly recommended. (so far).

Impressive temp drop, by the sounds of it your gpu heatsink wasn't sitting very flat on the gpu core (A free design flaw with most Clevo machines) or it had a very bad paste job.

Hopefully should you need to replace the pad (for whatever reason) it will come off clean and you've not had any liquid metal leakage.

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Hi.

I'm going to use the Polifony pads for the Vra but the back of the PCB doesn't have any thermal pads.

Should I leave it like this or should I put pads also for Vram the back of the PCB?

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Having installed my 3920xm along with new all-copper heatsink I'm finding my temps to be higher than expected with core 1 giving a glimpse of nice low-temps if it was sitting flush. Will have to lap the heatsink and see if temps improve.

UPDATE: After running for a week with the Coolaboratory Liquid metal pads (2 layer metal on cpu, then, 0.2 copper, 1 layer metal under heat-sink, this was best after 4 installs) and seeing upto 28% throttling at standard settings with temps upto 104c while gaming I decided to try paste again. Luckily, I had IC Diamond 24 carat I'd totally forgotten about.

Using ICD 24, my max cpu temps with both Kombuster running cpu burner and furmark together is only 85c with cpu at 4Ghz and 100% utilization. Max during gaming is 93c on 2nd core.

Big difference of around 20c+ plus now my system is stable with cpu oc @ 4Ghz. For non-overclocking cpu (like my old 3610qm) liquid metal pads works great. From my own testing I would recommend paste especially if overclocking as it's more reliable and given the heat-sink imperfections.

4 different installs (and 2 packs of metal pads = waste of money) all gave different (higher than expected temp) results with 3920xm and brand new full-copper heatsink.

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