Gadgetory

thermal compound or thermal interface material is the stuff that goes between a heat generating component and the cooler whose job it is to remove the aforementioned heat from the aforementioned component now today's video will cover how to replace the factory applied thermal compound on your graphics card with an aftermarket one to reduce the operating temperature of this sensitive electronic component potentially improving its lifespan and in some cases even its performance thanks to GPU boost technology or another way to leverage it would be to have it actually run quieter making the fans not spin as fast but then have it run at the same temperature if that's your thing which if it is by the way stay tuned because our review of the CM silencio 650 2's is coming very soon cooler masters casemod World Series is your opportunity to show off your modding skills and win great prizes entries close February 7th 2015 click now to learn more now our test today focuses on a particular model of graphics carnac geforce gtx 960 super super clock that was graciously provided by EVGA but this principle applies to lots of different types of electronic dude adder II in a desktop computer the CPU motherboard or really any type of expansion card might have a cooler with a with lame-duck thermal goop on it and on a laptop the same can also be true one thing to be really careful of though is warranty coverage some manufacturers don't want you poking and prodding at their product or they will invalidate your warranty fortunately EVGA is cool with that as long as you return the card to at least as far as outward appearances go the factory configuration before sending it in front RMA they'll even let you replace the cooler outright with something else if you want to but we won't be doing that because a EVGA ACX 2.0 plus cooler with its dual double ball bearing 92 millimeter fan design quad heat pipes and fanless operating mode is already pretty darn good and be because that would introduce an additional variable that would make it impossible for us to know if our goop replacement made a difference so we're just going to take it off and put it right back on again when we're done after we overclock it after all if you're not going to push your hardware to the limits mods like this are certainly a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon but not exactly necessary so the settings I dialed in were a hundred and ten percent power target plus 0.25 millivolts on the GPU and plus 144 megahertz to boost with the thin speed locked at 17% or around 580 rpm and all of this was in a room with an ambient temperature of about 21 degrees Celsius this yielded temperatures of 67 degrees using EVGA OC scanning utility 1 million particle plasma stress test running at 2560 by 1440 resolution in windowed mode the boost clock I observed with these settings was 1586 megahertz although it should be noted these settings were not verified in actual games and these stress test programs often allow higher clock speeds than you can achieve in the real world anyway let's get to business first gather all the materials you'll need the card itself isopropyl alcohol and a lint free wipe a screwdriver and replacement thermal compound I'll be using icy diamond because it's among the best on the market start with the four screws positioned around the processor itself usually near the middle of the card and tensioned by Springs loosen them in a cross pattern then remove them fully for our card this was actually enough to completely free the cooler but on some other cards you may need to remove the rest of the screws on the back and even others on the top bottom sides or even rear i/o you can test if you've got everything by giving the cooler a wiggle then once you're sure all the screws are removed you can gently pull it free never force it and be mindful of your fan power plug you don't want to accidentally yank on it since those connectors are often very fragile now you can see from this footage I took when I did my initial swap that EVGA is using like a a pre-done exactly square thermal paste patch rather than relying on manual application and that it seems to be working for them the baseplate of the cooler is making very even contact with the GPU core through only a thin layer of material this is very desirable you need thermal compound on your GPU or it'll overheat but a thick layer can actually insulate the GPU causing it to run hotter speaking of which some graphics cards will have what are called thermal pads they're a little bit thicker on components like voltage regulator modules or memory chips leave these on and reuse those pads unless you have replacement pads of the exact same thickness replacing pads with a thick application of paste can cause poor contact between your cooler and your graphics card with the cooler off it's time to clean both the GPU itself and the base of the cooler with 99% isopropyl alcohol 70% is fine too by the way I recommend starting with a couple slow high pressure passes on the cooler base with your cleaning cloth to remove the bulk of the goop from the surface then fold that away and find a fresh part of your cloth and use a buffing motion to take off the rest do the same for the GPU itself just as an FYI the compound on there won't damage your card if it gets on the chip package or even on the board PCB but that's not a license to be sloppy try to remove as much as you can with the compound removed I usually do a final pass with a fresh cloth to remove any lint or residue apply thermal compound isn't rocket science and remember less is more you want enough for it to spread out and cover the whole GPU but not so much that it gets mushed out on the sides and gets all over the place I use the line method but a dot in the center also works just don't waste your time spreading it out it's messy unnecessary and can actually trap air bubbles in the compound in some cases although normally those would be squeezed out by the same pressure that spreads the thermal compound with the other techniques once you tighten the mounting screws on that note now it's time to tighten the mounting screws again in a cross pattern throw this baby on the test bench and find out if it worked boom low temperatures using the exact same testing parameters of 64 degrees about a free degree improvement Wow gallery so it's not exactly earth-shaking so if you're sitting there wondering what exactly was the point of doing all this to a brand new piece of hardware that's obviously working just fine I don't blame you but I was ready for that question so here are some other situations where it might make more while EVGA didn't do this some manufacturers use really low performance thermal material either to save a buck or for reasons that are unlikely to ever even occur to most consumers things like stability over time or at extreme temperatures during storage so there's that and even the most well intentioned manufacturer who chooses the highest quality thermal compound can have a sloppy application once in a while so if your component is running hotter than you're expecting or not turbo in as high as you'd like you can follow this guide to try a thermal compound replacement since it doesn't cost very much and finally this might actually come in handy if you're trying to breathe new life into an older piece of hardware to thermal pastes particularly the lower quality ones don't stay potent forever and may need to be refreshed every once in a while speaking of things to refresh once in a while your monitor and mass drop is currently giving you the opportunity to refresh to one of the sexiest monitors on the market for a limited time they have the LG 34 UC 87 be the sort of very near cousin of the current love of my monitor life LG's 34 UC 97 for about 350 bucks off of its retail price at their lowest drop at this point you should probably be familiar with mass drop because of 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full details on pricing and the duration of the drop if you're interested in a curve display but have been scared off by the price so this might be a great opportunity to take care of that anyway speaking of great opportunities to take care of things there's a link in the video description you can buy cool t-shirt like this one you can change your amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code you can give us a monthly contribution directly if you like our videos and that was my opportunity to do my outro now is my opportunity to say you don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already peace