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RX 6800/XT backplate, if you add thermal pads lowers temps a couple celsius - but at what thickness thermal pad?

Space Lynx

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Steve at GamersNexus did a teardown of the 6800/XT, the backplate doesn't touch anything and have a decent sized gap. He added thermal pads, said it lowers temps a couple Celsius. My question is simple, what thickness of thermal pad do I need? I see it is sold in 0.5mm, 1mm, and 1.5mm... I am just going to place them in same spots he has on his video.

It's rather cheap, and super easy to remove the backplate, I won't be removing anything else. So I see no reason to not do this.

@Durvelle27 just a heads up since I know you got one too ^^
 
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Space Lynx

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Why not ask Steve?


I don't know how to contact him, also he can't really read all the comments, his fan base is to large. So I probably would just be lost in the nether.

Sidenote - my 6800 just shipped, arrives saturday, wooo
 
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I don't know how to contact him, also he can't really read all the comments, his fan base is to large. So I probably would just be lost in the nether.

Sidenote - my 6800 just shipped, arrives saturday, wooo

Seems the obvious avenue if he is the only one to do it. Anyone else is just guessing no?
 

Space Lynx

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Seems the obvious avenue if he is the only one to do it. Anyone else is just guessing no?


well @W1zzard could remove his backplate on his review sample and tell me... but I don't really want to burden him, but yes I suppose other than those two you are correct lol
 
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Steve at GamersNexus did a teardown of the 6800/XT, the backplate doesn't touch anything and have a decent sized gap. He added thermal pads, said it lowers temps a couple Celsius. My question is simple, what thickness of thermal pad do I need? I see it is sold in 0.5mm, 1mm, and 1.5mm... I am just going to place them in same spots he has on his video.

It's rather cheap, and super easy to remove the backplate, I won't be removing anything else. So I see no reason to not do this.

@Durvelle27 just a heads up since I know you got one too ^^

Get a gauge, pull off back plate and measure the interior height to the bottom lip of the back plate. You can also use the beige fujipoly pads on amazon which squish down a lot. The white pads do not squish at all so you'd need to be closer in measurement.
 

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Just for you.. took off the backplate and measured .. you need 2 mm thermal pads if you want to touch the PCB, 1 mm if you want to touch the caps on the back
 

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Just for you.. took off the backplate and measured .. you need 2 mm thermal pads if you want to touch the PCB, 1 mm if you want to touch the caps on the back

thank you so much! I can order it off Prime now, and get it all done before I install it. should arrive same day as card. :rockout:
 
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I actually replaced all the Thermal pads on my Gigabyte Gaming OC Vega 64 with some 2mm from Amazon. With a fan blowing into the card the highest clock I saw in 3d Mark was 1745 MHZ.
 

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Taking the backplate off is trivial, a bunch of screws nothing else, 30 seconds or so


Got it in mail today, got the thermal pads all done! Worked out perfect, had 0 issues. Pictures below! Cheers everyone, and thanks again W1zzard! Hope I did a good job! Wasn't sure where to post it all, the 1mm was obvious, so I referenced steve gamersnexus teardown video of the 6800 xt, and he just put a bunch of giant slaps of the stuff everywhere on the back of the PCB, so meh I should be fine regardless lol





Also, apparently my monitor is a 12 bit IPS panel? Just noticed it in AMD control settings, so I picked it, has, 6, 8, 10, 12 to pick from... lol not bad for $160 monitor. It does look great compared to most cheaper panels I have seen.



boxes put away! :D

 
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What was your difference in thermals from before and after the mod? @lynx29
 

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What was your difference in thermals from before and after the mod? @lynx29


I didn't test before and had no intention of testing, I know gamersnexus said 2-3 celsius improvement. that's all I expect I will get to. I just am super bored honestly and wanted to do it lol
 
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Rei

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Just out of curiosity, why would you replace the thermal pads? To my knowledge, you would only need to replace the pads/paste if you are having thermal issue or if somehow your heatsink became a bit loose or it's just your hobby or something.
 
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Dude, you probably don't want to go crazy like that because that will mean that heat will be trapped there which will probably not be great for the surrounding components. Not everything needs to be cooled like that.
 

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Just out of curiosity, why would you replace the thermal pads? To my knowledge, you would only need to replace the pads/paste if you are having thermal issue or if somehow your heatsink became a bit loose or it's just your hobby or something.

Dude, you probably don't want to go crazy like that because that will mean that heat will be trapped there which will probably not be great for the surrounding components. Not everything needs to be cooled like that.


lol... this is for the backplate... steve for gamers nexus said it dropped temps because AMD left to big a gap between backplate and PCB. i didnt touch anything else.
 
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lol... this is for the backplate... steve for gamers nexus said it dropped temps because AMD left to big a gap between backplate and PCB. i didnt touch anything else.

NO ONE slaps that much pad on the backplate. Go look up what EK does, it's only for the backside of the vrms not 75% of the board. You will create a heatsoak situation. And technically speaking Steve's probably full of shit. Take the EK example, they have a pad that puts pressure on the backside of the gpu silicon itself, this actually helps to wick a lil bit of heat away. Thus throwing pads on the vrms would not effect the gpu core temp unless the vrm heat was sooo bad it caused heatsoaking thru the board itself.
 
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you sure about that?


Exactly, lmao! This is the idiot who was pressing down on the 6800 fan to make it grind on the heatsink and then he proceeds to warn ya that this could be an RMA issue. You don't say as you press on the fans how they're not supposed to ever be handled??

Read the EK manual on it, you'll see its only vrms and core itself which ya can't do on the stock backplate cuz of the cut out.

 

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are you seriously telling me I wasted 15 bucks on thermal pads...

i only single layer, no double.

@thesmokingman I read the EK link, it doesn't really give any warnings not to add a little extra. its not conductive so I don't see what it could hurt.
 
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are you seriously telling me I wasted 15 bucks on thermal pads...

i only single layer, no double.

@thesmokingman I read the EK link, it doesn't really give any warnings not to add a little extra. its not conductive so I don't see what it could hurt.

I'll say it again, NOT everything needs a thermal pad. If this was so great why has EK not instructed us over the last decade to do so? Also, what are the downsides of creating that much heatsoak? Thinka bout it in terms of all those chips that don't create much heat and are now covered by a pad that is doing nothing but trapping heat. What's gonna happen long term?
 

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I'll say it again, NOT everything needs a thermal pad. If this was so great why has EK not instructed us over the last decade to do so? Also, what are the downsides of creating that much heatsoak? Thinka bout it in terms of all those chips that don't create much heat and are now covered by a pad that is doing nothing but trapping heat. What's gonna happen long term?

I don't know what you mean by trapping heat I guess, I have a fan blowing on the backplate as well. its taking heat from pcb, getting it to backplate, but majority of heat is still being dissipated by front pcb and 3 fans/heatsink
 
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I don't know what you mean by trapping heat I guess, I have a fan blowing on the backplate as well. its taking heat from pcb, getting it to backplate, but majority of heat is still being dissipated by front pcb and 3 fans/heatsink

Laying down big sheets of pad which will likely leave a lot of real estate doing nothing because of the variances in chip height. Pads are supposed to be used to transfer heat in a focused manner, ie. only the vrm or memory not for whole swaths of pcb. And again a lot of those lil chips don't need cooling cuz they don't get hot.
 
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