Poor Thermal Paste Quality Pointed Out As Culprit Behind Rising GPU Temperatures Overtime

Igor's Lab has conducted an in-depth test across various GPUs and their thermal compounds, pointing out that it's the poor thermal paste quality that leads to higher temperatures after a certain period.

In a new find, it is confirmed that the real reason for the incredibly high temperature of modern-day GPUs is due to the usage of poor quality thermal paste by the AIBs.

Thanks to Igor's Lab, the culprit behind the common problem many GPUs were facing has finally been found (and there is a solution to it, too). Many users have previously reported that their RTX 40 card is running at over 80 degrees Celsius with the hotspot reaching over 100°C. While in some cases, the poor ventilation & airflow of the PC case is to blame in other cases, the problem started to persist after a few weeks or months.

This is exactly what Igor found when he tested a brand-new Manli Geforce RTX 4080 16GB Gallardo and the Asus RTX 4080 TUF Gaming graphics cards. He says that it doesn't matter which AIB the card is from, the problem is almost universal. After tearing down the board, he closely analyzed the thermal paste since the card had worked flawlessly before. The Gallardo edition is surprisingly too good to be true out of the box but as time passes, the thermal paste loses its thermal conductivity to the extent that it would cause the GPU to reach over 100°C at the hotspot.

Initially, when the thermal paste has a thin layer, it would perform as great as some of the best thermal pastes in the market. In the test conducted with an ASTM D5470-17 machine, the thermal paste starts to drip in a short time, which is rare on most thermal pastes. The anomaly found in the thermal paste on Gallardo showed that the effective thermal conductivity would reduce drastically as the layer thickens.

Under a microscope test, Igor finds that the thermal paste contains some kind of oily liquid that would dry quickly in a few minutes. The problem here is that the liquid isn't inside the thermal paste but rather on the outside, which floats between the very large aluminum oxide particles measuring 16µm used on the thermal paste.

Even though the large aluminum oxide particles help the paste achieve higher thermal conductivity with the GPU, it works only for a short time, leaving them as a kind of big spacer for the oily liquid to run through and out, resulting in the 'self-dissolution' of the thermal paste.

The reason why most AIBs are going with this paste is due to its cost-effectiveness, which helps the AIBs cut the cost significantly in bulk GPU production. Fortunately, the problem can be fixed by replacing the thermal paste with a better one but that would require a lot of users to tear their GPU apart, voiding their warranty eventually. Furthermore, it is reported that many AIBs simply refuse to accept RMA even when GPUs are reaching past 100C on the hotspot temperatures. So, it's a bad situation for many users since not everyone has the tools or skills to safely disassemble their GPU without voiding the warranty.

News Source: Igor's Lab