Holy colossal glop of TIM Batman!

[Nebulous]

As many of you know I made a little upgrade from a 290 to a 390 not too long ago. Anyways I played my games as normal at stock (yes STOCK!) speeds and I seem to have a "slight" temp problem and the occasional reboot/bsod. I recheck all my settings in bios, nothing out of the ordinary, and reboot desktop. Start my gaming session (FarCry 4) and after about an hour I get the reboot again, but this time I noticed the air coming from the top of my rad quite hotter than usual

I take the side panel off and restart my gaming session. I pause the game and put my hand on the backplate of my 390 and holy jeebus that sucker is HOT!! Checked temps and they were close to 80C! Check to see if my fans are spinning, and ye sure are, but not really at high speed like they're supposed to

So as a temp solution and decide to create a fan curve in MSI to be higher and resumed my gaming session. Well this helped quite a bit as when I touched the backplate it was warm, but not hot like it was before and my reboots stopped. Figured I would have to check the factory TIM application on the card to see if that was an issue.

Sure enough when I took the heatsink off today, there was this ungodly large glop of that factory crap TIM I mean who the hell puts on that much? Not to mention it was that dried out shat. I spent the better part of of an hour cleaning and scrubbing that cursed substance off the core and surrounding areas.

Applied a 1/2 a pea sized dollop of HT-N1 and reassembled the card. Happy to report card's loaded temps while gaming now are not reaching 50C and the backplate is just tepid warm

Pics of the unholy glob:

 

[Witchdoctor]

Not surprising and not only Power Color. I have noticed this across the board and even when they get it right it is of terrible quality.

Standard operating procedure for me when using factory cooling solution is to load drivers make sure it works and immediately remove the factory goo

even if temps are decent I just automatically replace it and it is done. Never had a situation where temps were better prior to replacing that junk.

Hope the 390 is treating you right, one day may need to look at replacing my vid cards

 

[RollingThunder]

Just proves that you can't drink and TIM at the same time.

 

[caddi daddi]

looks like one of my first builds!!!!!

 

[Nebulous]

You guyz are funny!

I normally do what you mention witchy, but this time around I thought it was fine as the games I played didn't stress the card enough and the temps were in check. It was after playing FarCry 4 that my card was really pushed and that's when I noticed the temps.

Maybe I should just put this sucka under water. Time to start saving pennies for a block and another rad.

 

[Tokae]

My MSI 290x had a glob like that on it. I think a lot of em do.

 

[EarthDog]

Wouldn't be the first or 10th time I have seen this from the factory.

 

[Johan45]

Same here it's almost always a mess and just plain terrible TIM

 

[Witchdoctor]

Lets be real, you know they probably buy this garbage in 55 gallon drums ............

 

[Mandrake4565]

Wouldn't be the first or 10th time I have seen this from the factory.

Same here it's almost always a mess and just plain terrible TIM

I concur, I've yet to see a Gpu without TIM from the factory looking like your picture. As a side note, using a soft tooth brush and Alcohol makes quick work of removing the TIM from the surrounding area around the Die.

Lets be real, you know they probably buy this garbage in 55 gallon drums and use a spatula to put it on ............

Fixed that for ya Witchy!

 

[Witchdoctor]

No doubt ......

 

[Johan45]

Nice one Manny

 

[Blaylock]

Jesus, they put TIM on that die like my wife puts cream cheese on her bagels.

 

[wingman99]

I wonder why the OEM does that it is a automated process?

 

[EarthDog]

Humor me people....

So long as there is 100% coverage, it shouldn't matter if its glopping out the side, right? Right. Is it sloppy, no doubt. But is it really harmful to temperatures? Here is why I ask... Think about the TIM sandwich core/TIM/heatsink... When you tighten down the heatsink, any excess squishes out. So how is 'too much' TIM a problem when any excess is mashed out when you tighten down the heatsink? Most(all?) GPU heatsinks have 'hard stops' on them so only so much pressure can be applied. Does some NOT leak out, the TIM becomes more 'dense' in some spots and that is what does it?

Any thoughts?

 

[Witchdoctor]

I think when you are spending so much for these cards it gives us an expectations that they actually give a sh1t

then there is the quality of the goo itself, the stuff is garbage , I have seen at minimum 4C decrease in temps replacing with Gelid Extreme

More times than not it exceeds 5C. Especially some of the older 200 series cards back in the day.

As horrible as this is to say, today TIM is actually better than it used to be inn quality and application

 

[Joe88]

linus just released a video on this today
its the cpu, but too much made no difference

 

[EarthDog]

I figured it wouldn't be much different... the worst part is when the TIM runeth over on the CPU and socket.

 

[wingman99]

I have done that test before and had TIM all over my edge of my socket with a air cooler lol. I found the same results after doing the test 5 times in the same day I could not see much difference.

The only thing I worry about now is just coverage.

 

[EarthDog]

There was a youtube video showing the best method. They tested the line, "x", pre-spread method, etc... they tested it with pressing down a glass block. Pretty neat vid. In the end, they said the small rice grain or tiny pea method worked the best as the others introduce air bubbles underneath... let me see if I can dig that up.................

Found it... was done in 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXLu1Ms-q4

and with MX-2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffK7L0Qj13Q