Graphics Card Thermal Reduction

Introduction

Nvidia’s 30 series of graphics cards, while incredibly powerful, generate a ludicrous amount of heat. Each card in this generation produces an average of 50-100 more watts of heat than its predecessor which necessitated a new cooling solution. This pass-through design keeps the GPU core at an acceptable temperature, however, the thermal pads that Nvidia uses on their Founder’s Edition GPUs are of poor quality. The memory modules on my graphics card regularly reached a temperature exceeding 100 C — unacceptable if I want my graphics card to last a long time.

To stop this issue in its tracks, I took it upon myself to change the thermal pads myself to a higher quality solution. What follows is my process to fixing it.

Thermal runaway

Initially to reduce temperatures, I performed an undervolt on my graphics card which means to reduce the voltage running through it. If I was to be successful, I would be able to run my graphics card at a voltage significantly lower than the normal operating voltage with lower operating temperatures with nearly the same performance. After testing, the final undervolt I settled on was.

Base: 1.05V, 1995Mhz

UNdervolt: 775mV, 1665Mhz

With these values sorted out, it was time to do some benchmarking to figure out the thermal temperatures. To record the temperatures I used a program called HW Monitor and paid attention to the memory reading. Those are the results you’ll see throughout this post.

To test the temperatures consistently, I ran a relatively new game called Borderlands 3 in its benchmark test. I chose this benchmark as it was a game that I had previous experience with thermal issues and if I was able to run through the benchmark with the thermals being at acceptable temperatures I would deem this modification a success. After running through the test, the results were as follows.

Memory temp (No undervolt): 110 C

Memory temp (775mv undervolt): 104 c

With the undervolt, I achieved a 6 C decrease in memory temperatures. While not great, it was a good start to ensuring this graphics card would last a long time. However, if I really wanted to make sure it would last a while I would need to go into the graphics card and replace the thermal pads myself.

Thermal surgery

Before jumping into this project, a couple things needed to be established before I could have a successful thermal pad swap: New thermal pad brand and thickness for each thermal pad. After scouring the various online forums of people who did the same mod as this I stumbled on a Reddit post of someone who used Gelid Extreme 1.5mm thermal pads for the front of the graphics card and Gelid Exteme 2mm thermal pads for the back. After reading his results and his process I had the confidence to perform that mod on my card.

Since I was removing the cooler from my graphics card already I also opted to change the stock thermal paste with a new one. I elected to go with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as it is one of the best thermal pastes on the market and I had some lying around. One thing to note is that above a temperature of 80 C this thermal paste begins to harden and cure, resulting in a harder disassembly in the future. I decided this would be worth the drop in temperature and something future me can take care of.

The disassembly begins…

After gathering the confidence to take apart this $1,400 card I began to disassemble it and replace the thermal pads with the new ones. The old ones were rather flimsy and were very “gluey” the new Gelids held their shape much better and were already cooler to the touch.

The 3080ti PCB and cooling solution disassembled.

The gray regions are the old thermal pads that I replaced with the new ones. I took the old thermal pads and traced out their shape on the new ones. The blue region on the left picture is the GPU core and I cleaned off the thermal paste with isopropyl alcohol and put the new paste accordingly.

After replacing all the thermal interface material, I reassembled the graphics card and tested the new solution. The results are as follows.

REsults

I ran the benchmark that I used in the previous test and compared the thermal values.

Memory temp (no undervolt): 110 C

Memory temp (775mv undervolt): 104 C

Memory temp (775mv undervolt & thermal pad replacement): 90 C

With the undervolt and thermal pad replacement the memory module temperature went from 110 C to 90 C, a 20 C reduction. While still a rather toasty temp for memory modules it was a great reduction in temperatures that will undoubtedly prolong the life of my graphics card and for that this modification was a success.

Michaelangelo ParkinsonJuly 20, 2022