Topic: 7970 thermal paste replacement (Read 6069 times)

According to this Mayonnaise works better than half the products tested

I read this thread and it got me thinking about my own GPU's that i had noticed had gotten much louder in the past couple of weeks, i did blow the dust out a couple off weeks ago but they still seemed louder than before. So i ordered the Phobya HeGrease Extreme

Before cgminer target temp 74 Degrees auto-fan:
MSI HAWK 6870 Temp=77 Fan=4500rpm
XFX Reference 6870 Temp=73 Fan=2460rpm
Powercolor 7950 Temp=73 Fan=2550rpm

I first used a Vacuum cleaner and then a foot pump with plastic nozzle to blow away dust the best i could on all 3 cards (have used compressed air sprays before and not impressed)
The MSI HAWK was the card concerning me the most(used to be quiet) so i took off the heatsink removed the old paste and applied a thin even coat of the HeGrease. Also gave the Heatsink another blast with the footpump while it was detached.

After:
MSI HAWK 6870 Temp=73 Fan=1829rpm Huge improvement
XFX Reference 6870 Temp=72 Fan=2106rpm Small improvement
Powercolor 7950 Temp=72 Fan=2570rpm No improvement

Very impressed with the change to the MSI HAWK running 5 Degrees cooler with less than half the fan speed. But was disappointed with the Powercolor 7950 considering the apparent success of the new paste i thought i would try it on the 7950 too. So took that apart and cleaned off the old paste and was surprised at how rough the heatsinks contact area was so decided to sand/polish the base to a nice shine and apply the HeGrease.

Powercolor 7950 Temp=73 Fan=1600rpm Big improvement

So overall i am very happy with the results however it is hard for me to conclude what processes caused the improvements as i cleaned away dust/applied fresh/different paste and smoothed the heatsink all at the same time.
Well that's my experience i hope it's useful to others.

1) It depends on the style of GPU fan. I take it you're not using a stock, blower style fan? Blower style fans really like cold air being pushed in from the front of the case, and then vented out the back. Most Aftermarket coolers don't work that way, and just recirculate air around your case. Thus, taking the side off and using a fan prevents that hot air buildup inside your case, lowing your delta, and giving you lower temps.

2) A case is designed just as much for airflow as it is for keeping dust/bugs/critters/small children/gremlins out of your expensive computer components.

10 minutes of testing proves you wrong.  My temps are a LOT lower without the side on, and a box fan blowing on it.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%9F%D0%A2-8

use ARCTIC MX 4 for gpu's not Silver...

Artic silver 5 has a 200 hour "burn-in" phase. So you wont see the actual end result untill about that point. It might bring you down as uch as 2-5 degrees.

Doing a test atm with 2x 6870's with stock paste. I'll be putting as5 on it soon and will see what the end result is

Cases and fans are precisely designed with airflow in mind. If you remove a side of the case that ruins it, so I seriously advise you to put it back.

arctic silver would be ok.

real hard core is Coollaboratory Liquid Pro - one wrong drop - GraCa is dead.
but really good results.

i repaste and reseat all my 7970s. I use only Arctic MX4. dont go with any of the cheap stuff. you wont really notice a difference in temps except for about one or two degrees. but then again this is thermal paste

Um I'm guessing that's the contents of a config file be I don't know which one. Could you tell me where to put those entries?

Thanks

not bad....   keep tweaking with your settings to get your hash rate at least up to 700 kh/s, the temps are passable though.



This is what I am using:

"intensity" : "13",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "256",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "8192",
"gpu-engine" : "1040",
"gpu-fan" : "80",
"gpu-memclock" : "1500",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20",
"gpu-vddc" : "1.050",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "30",
"scrypt" : true,

Thanks for the feed back. It helped a lot.... Hows This?

https://photos-2.dropbox.com/t/0/AADZ9Fkbnwc-ucRFHw8HKUqYIfrggAQifECRqpMfmfeKkA/12/25615087/png/2048x1536/3/1372190400/0/2/MiningDay4.png/u3RLtxsAP8quMWESfT629hjxRDESvoLrKZlT2UkGsJU
Day 4 (I know there's still room for improvement.)

I use Arctic Silver with good results personally.  I've found most factory shipped cards have too much thermal paste applied.. this is visible with the paste gathering up over the edge of the gpu creating a crust... most likely trapping heat and acting as an insulator.

I remove the old paste with some paper towels, q-tips, and 99 percent isopropyl alcohol.  Then I dab a bit of the arctic silver on the GPU, and spread it with a nitrile gloved finger tip evenly over the gpu.  Very thin, just enough to cover the gpu.  Then reassemble... and notice an improvement.

The only negative I've heard about arctic silver 5 is it's conductive.  So over application could lead to issues creating connections where there shouldn't be.  I would like to try some other paste, I just haven't found the holy grail yet. 

I've searched the internet for repasting GPUs a while back. First thing I found is that it is strongly not advised to use arctic silver 5 (9.0 W/m•k, which I wanted to use first), as the cooling result isn't that much better than standart grease because it is very thin and that it takes a long time to get thick and therefor could be a troublemaker (it should only be used for CPUs). Then I found a site with an older test where Thermaltake TG-2 was the best paste with a 6°C cooler running GPU compared to stock paste. So I searched for a cheap supply of TG-2 but found out that there also it TG-1 and TG-3. TG-2 has only a thermal conductivity of 1.5 W/m•k (temperature range -40°C to 150°C) while TG-1 has a thermal conductivity of 3.0 W/m•k (temperature range -40°C to 150°C) and TG-3 even 4.7 W/m•k (-50°C to 250°C). So I went with TG-3 and my ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 is now 11°C cooler than with stock paste. The only problem with TG-3 is that it is very thick, it's like plasticine and a bit hard to apply.
Maybe I will try be quiet! DC1 (7.5 W/m•k) or Phobya HeGrease Extreme (8.5 W/m•k) soon to see if I could get even better results.

ok thanks I'll do it now,

I not gutsy enough to leave my Rig unattended yet. I can access it remotely over https using a Lantronix SpiderDuo KVM over IP http://youtu.be/978cSi_SG-o?t=15s From work.

Can you tell I'm an IT guy

That's way too hot to be going that slow.   I used afterburner for overclocking an fans.  Good luck, your going to have a LOT of tweaking ahead. You should be at least at 700kh/s and no more than 75c tops

I just started mining yesterday for the firs time ever, I'm mining LTC with 2 7970s.

I was going to ask what is a good temperature for the GPU to be at, but you answered that. so..

I'll ask you did you install the Sapphire "TirXX" application?? I've been able to control the GPU Fan speed to keep the temperature of my card under 80c.

I haven't pushed them to hard yet I'm at 516Kh/s per card.
https://photos-5.dropbox.com/t/0/AACHXJRw2BtfBDo2wAkrjf5XA_nTRdJsxcJjvOCboI8aKg/12/25615087/png/2048x1536/3/1371837600/0/2/MiningDay1.png/xv_HGrkbBJ7bFz9y0x68ZSf2Yk-YvpXflCIXdFukaiQ

I personally use Arctic Silver 5 on all my re-pasting jobs.

Did you try to undervolt? I have sapphire 7970 with 700 khash/s - GPU 62c, VRM 85c, the ambient temperature is 30c. Coolers are set to 100%.