Random Hardware topics

[Kaamos_Llama]

Repasting/Repadding my RTX 2060 - Part 1

So, Amazon just told me that my pads won't be here until March 6th or earlier due to a delivery issue. It may or may not be here today, but I had everything ready to go and all I had to do was wait for them to arrive, so I'm a little bummed. I decided to run some benchmarks instead.

Here, I'm running Furmark 2 back-to-back three times in a row. The first capture is after the second test, the second is capture is the third and final test. I did this knowing it's pushing the card to its absolute limits because I wanted to see how hot the card could really get. Not exactly a real-world test, but I want to recreate this test after I do the maintenance to see just how much it has improved.

Spoiler

Test 2/3

Test 3/3

The GPU Hotspot reached a maximum of 93C, recommended max is rated at 83C. Again, not an accurate representation of when I'm playing games, but I have seen it reach up to about 88C in the hotspot.

Once I'm able to actually work on my computer, clean everything up very nicely, I'll perform this same test.

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

The GPU die has several sensors on it, and the GPU temp is the average of them all.

If thats not the case, Ive been cooking my GPUs for the last 5 years. Before that GPUs didnt have a hotspot reading at all.

 

[neogunhero]

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

The GPU die has several sensors on it, and the GPU temp is the average of them all.

If thats not the case, Ive been cooking my GPUs for the last 5 years. Before that GPUs didnt have a hotspot reading at all.

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

 

[ZedClampet]

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

Just borrow a credit card from your wife and buy a new GPU. If she notices, just keep insisting that she agreed to it in exchange for "sexy times" and start taking your clothes off. Dancing while you do this is optional but recommended.

 

[Colif]

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

which one?

I seem to have too much info

Guess I could use the Adrenailne overlay

hwinfo and adrenaline see my GPU using vastly different amounts of memory. HWINFO sees me using 16gb, Adrenaline... 2gb

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

Fair enough, I usually repaste my cards when I get them because you can usually improve things. With the card I have now though it still never goes over 75 with the fans set to the standard profile so I didnt bother this time. The coolers are so over engineered these days because of all the 300W plus cards, I think it must have trickled down to lower TDPs.

At one point AMD/Nvidia would recognize Furmark as it ran and downclock to prevent it reaching full power limit, not sure if thats still the case. But it might be why you get higher temps while gaming. Looks like your hitting fuill tdp from your screenshot so not sure.

which one?

I seem to have too much info

Guess I could use the Adrenailne overlay

hwinfo and adrenaline see my GPU using vastly different amounts of memory. HWINFO sees me using 16gb, Adrenaline... 2gb

The overlay has all the relevant ones for someone who just wants to monitor the basics. HWINFO has so much info it takes a minute to parse whats actually important for CPU and GPU. Its nice to keep an overview of everything though.

 

[Colif]

That is just the short version of hwinfo
I took the long version out before as its a little silly

Spoiler

I expect the Nvidia cards are just as bad.

I don't use either screen, I don't monitor temps in games much and I have the GPU temp showing on my taskbar at all times anyway
Second Blue 40 = GPU

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Weirdly I just noticed that my HWInfo doesnt display any GPU info, its not even disabled under settings just not there.

Most of the time I only check temps when I get a new game, Ive been really surprised and happy how quiet and well the cooler on my latest card works.

 

[Colif]

I don't think I have ever heard the fans on my GPU. Even when I had an AIO. Its not overly loud and is drowned out by the other fans while playing games... no hope now I am on air cooling, its not exactly subtle when temps rise.

Deepcool Assassin 4 in Silent mode since its cooler outside now. So if I were to hear them at all it would be now.

I use MSI Afterburner to run the fans on it constantly as the extra air flow was useful to keep nvme cool. On my first AIO, the nvme used to hit 55c so extra cooling helped. I never changed it for the 2nd AIO either.
It might not be necessary now I swapped intake fans, turning the GPU fans off doesn't make any difference to noise level or the nvme's temps.. but gpu stops being only 40c. I can live with that.

I know gpu fans are spinning as last time I repositioned the GPU stand inside the PC it accidentally was placed in such a way its blade hit a fan blade and I felt the vibrations. I fixed that

red part = "blade"

Once summer ends I might disable the fan plan on MSI Afterburner. I don't think I will need it in the cooler months.

 

[Colif]

Its only the GPU part that worries him about future, everything else seems okay.
And only as he hitting on the 600watt PSU power curve thing Nvidia are going to have to deal with next gen.

If the 6090 needs over 600watts, I want a break out box with its own fire extinguisher attached. Need different cables as well. Maybe I power it by a mini nuclear reactor.

People might have to accept that features are the future... I will resist as long as I can by not chasing dragons and not caring about having best card. And mainly playing games that don't need any of the new features to work... not written to use UE5.

 

[neogunhero]

So I was able to clean my entire PC and reapply thermal paste and pads to my GPU and also repasted the CPU. I haven’t posted results because… uh…

I think I put too much thermal paste…

The temps didn’t go down very much. I know that paste and pads aren’t necessarily going to be the factor that drives down temps, but I also did some research and found out too much could have a negative effect due to being too much of a gap between the chip die and heat sink.

The Arctic MX-6 is THICK, extremely viscous. It doesn’t spread well at all when trying to spread manually. I put kind of a lot because I was afraid it may not spread out nicely once pressure from the GPU backplate/CPU cooler was applied. I more than likely over did it.

As for the thermal pads, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I did have a slight issue with cutting them as it’s got the texture of chewed and dried gum, so some of the new pieces may be a bit larger than the original ones. However the thickness is the same and it covered all the same components so that’s good.

I also believe I have my fans incorrectly positioned. My top case fan directly above my CPU should be blowing air out, not in.

I need to redo this. A bit disappointed but I should have been smarter lol.

 

[neogunhero]

Gosh. How dumb of me. In addition to having too much thermal paste, I put the top case fan and CPU heatsink fan backwards. On my lunch break, I decided to check out my PC real quick. I'm going to be a bit busy tonight before we can play Split Fiction, so I want to get this done quickly so we can start gaming as soon as we're able to. For reference, last night on Pirate Yakuza my hotspot temp hit 93c, highest core temp hit about 78. Too hot for a not very demanding game IMO.

I pried apart the GPU and repasted it. Thermal pads looked good. Decided to clean off the components they touch with the cleaning wipe Arctic provided, just in case they had some dust interfering with the pads. I then repasted the CPU as well, which had a fairly uneven distribution of the paste. Of course it will shift around as I remove the heatsink, but it still looked like it could be better. Fairly thick coating of it too. Put a more moderate amount of paste of both the graphics card and processor.

When I originally did this Monday night, I had to remove the CPU heatsink fan and top case fan so I can remove and reinstall the heatsink. It's very tall and leaves almost no room from the top of it to the top of the case, maybe about an inch gap up there. Since I had to remove both fans from their mounts, I mistakenly put them in incorrect positions. The top fan was blowing onto the heatsink, and the heatsink fan was blowing away towards the front of the case. The heatsink fan needs to be pushing air through the heatsink fins, and the top case needs to be exhausting hot air out the top, so I installed them backwards.

I wasn't able to fully finish it all, but maybe 10-15 minutes after work and I will have it done. Hardest part is putting the heatsink fan back on, it's held by these two tiny little metal arms that clamp onto the fan and the heatsink. Kind of a pain to get on, I may need to remove the top fan again just to give myself enough clearance... just annoying lol. I hope after I get this all done that I can start to see some real difference. I was pretty upset when I first did all of this and noticed Furmark was actually running HOTTER. I knew something had to be up.