Gigabyte graphic cards - TIM gel SLIPPAGE problem

[Deleted member 234478]

how these idiots didnt do pre release tests and why the hell are they using gel and not pads.

curious if gel is less money then pads. its less time consuming to fit for sure as pads have different sizes and thicknesses

 

[BoggledBeagle]

how these idiots didnt do pre release tests and why the hell are they using gel and not pads.

curious if gel is less money then pads. its less time consuming to fit for sure as pads have different sizes and thicknesses

I think that one of the reasons is that they do not have to carefully match the shape of the cooler to the heights of the components which is necessary when they can only use pads which come only with certain thicknesses. They have much higher freedom to use any components they want at the moment, because the gel can compensate for the component height differences.

I have noticed that Alphacool does not offer any water blocks for Gigabyte cards, I think that one of the reasons is that they refuse to maintain certain components heights.

I was already complaining about the huge gap between the cooler and RAM packages on Gaming OC 5070 Ti (I believe that 5080 has the same PCB and cooler). I think that this gap is so huge because they simply did not care about gaps too much anymore because they thought that the gel will simply fill any gap they leave there.

The gel is applied with the robot in a few seconds, in mass production this is a huge advantage over manual fitting the pads. They may even automate the whole card assembly including the coolers.

So the gel has a lot of advantages for them. It probably can be done correctly and with correct material.

I wonder how many people mount their cards vertically. Is it 10-20%?

How many cards are in danger of the gel leaving them due to gel material, application or design problems (gap widths)? How and when have they solved (or will they solve) these problems?

Can they really pretend that nothing is happening and fix only the leaked out cards???

 

[remekra]

Over a week since I sent a card to service, at least full one week when they have it and no update at all. Yeah, seems like good old Gigabyte to me.

 

[Folterknecht]

Here is a technical writeup by Igor regarding the Problem

Gigabyte’s so-called “Server-Grade Thermal Conductive Gel” and a degrading thermal paste on the Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC | igor´sLAB

Today’s article is dedicated to a topic that has attracted a lot of attention in recent days: the so-called “Thermal Conductive Gel” that Gigabyte uses on its current graphics card models and the…

www.igorslab.de

 

[BoggledBeagle]

Here is a technical writeup by Igor regarding the Problem

Gigabyte’s so-called “Server-Grade Thermal Conductive Gel” and a degrading thermal paste on the Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC | igor´sLAB

Today’s article is dedicated to a topic that has attracted a lot of attention in recent days: the so-called “Thermal Conductive Gel” that Gigabyte uses on its current graphics card models and the…

www.igorslab.de

Interesting, he notes that the putty needed to be highly thinned to be able to pass through the dispensing nozzle, he also placed the gel on the paper and observed a lot of oil seeping out.

By chance I have a thermal putty on hand for possible future project of fitting a water block on a graphic card (beside thermal pads I bought some thermal putty too -TG Putty Advance), I just opened it to see how thick it is, and it really could not pass through a nozzle at all, it is very thick. BTW I was annoyed to see how small container of the putty I received was and now I found it is even half empty!!!

There is apparently a third kind of TIM material, beside normal pads and this runny "gel" - preformed putty pieces - the application of these probably would not be much cheaper that applying pads, they just would enable higher flexibily to fit in the gaps between the cooler and components, than pads have.

The problem with the paste on the GPU chip mentioned is really concerning.

 

[Reavheavy]

does this affect the 40 series, or only a 50 series problem

 

[BoggledBeagle]

does this affect the 40 series, or only a 50 series problem

No, see the teardown of GB 4090, it uses normal thermal pads.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC Review

With the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC, the company offers a reasonably priced alternative to the NVIDIA Founders Edition that still comes with a powerful VRM, RGB lighting, an excellent cooler and great out of the box performance.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Reavheavy]

No, see the teardown of GB 4090, it uses normal thermal pads.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC Review

With the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC, the company offers a reasonably priced alternative to the NVIDIA Founders Edition that still comes with a powerful VRM, RGB lighting, an excellent cooler and great out of the box performance.

www.techpowerup.com

Then Why did they use a newer thermal paste type if the pads worked fine

 

[sLowEnd]

Then Why did they use a newer thermal paste type if the pads worked fine

The new stuff is supposed to be better, but they likely didn't do enough QC to see if it was really fit for purpose.

 

[Reavheavy]

The new stuff is supposed to be better, but they likely didn't do enough QC to see if it was really fit for purpose.

Ahh, that makes sense

 

[BoggledBeagle]

The new stuff is supposed to be better, but they likely didn't do enough QC to see if it was really fit for purpose.

Better in what?

It is better for saving cost of manufacturing, for sure,

It may not have better heat transfer performance, it may impact long term realiability of the cards, it may make repairs more difficult.

BTW if this putty really needs to be thinned significantly for automated dispensing, why dont they use some evaporative thinning agent? They would just squirt the runny putty on the PCBs, let them sit for a while to allow the thinner to evaporate away and firm up the putty and then go on with the assembly. It is a complication (delay, storage of the waiting PCBs, dealing with thinner vapors), but overall even with this complication the manufacturing in mass scale may get cheaper than manually placing the pads on the cards and mounting the coolers.

I believe this still has a potencial for making the manufacturing cheaper (and possibly making them cheaper fo consumers to buy too?!) and it could be possible to make this work.


This is for sure sure an interesting discussion, but the question stands what is GB going to do with the existing cards which have the slippery stuff in them.

The problem is not only the orientation of the cards when they run. You may a have normally mounted card, with the oily and degraded gel, which still somehow managed to stay in place and perform adequately and the card works, but as soon you remove the card and for example ship it somewhere, it may sit for days in wrong orientation and the gel will just slip away.

 

[vermie22]

Consolidated posts from other thread regarding my RMA process thus far.

1. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...port-thermal-gel-slippage.336384/post-5515902
2. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...port-thermal-gel-slippage.336384/post-5516205
3. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...port-thermal-gel-slippage.336384/post-5516653

In summary.

1. They got my card, and a few days later when I contacted them for an update, they placed a priortity on my reqeust, which was appreciated.
2. The next day I got an email stating that they had completed the RMA with a tracking number and no other information.
3. When contacted again regarding what was done to rectify the issue, I got a response that they had cleaned and reapplied the thermal gel/paste and were sending the repaired card back to me.

I will post photos of the returned card in this thread, and I guess I will start monitoring for future issues.

So I got my GPU back a few days ago, and I am not impressed.

This is what they did.

1. They scrapped/cleaned away all the gel that had slipped down towards the PCIE connector and was no longer between the VRAM chip and the heat sink.
2. They did nothing else.

Here are the photos:

So I now have 2 ram chips that are about 50% covered, and it is the exact same gel as before. So my assumption is that in a few weeks, it too will slide down and I will have 0% coverage.

 

[Dragokar]

So I got my GPU back a few days ago, and I am not impressed.

This is what they did.

1. They scrapped/cleaned away all the gel that had slipped down towards the PCIE connector and was no longer between the VRAM chip and the heat sink.
2. They did nothing else.

Here are the photos:

View attachment 400088View attachment 400089

So I now have 2 ram chips that are about 50% covered, and it is the exact same gel as before. So my assumption is that in a few weeks, it too will slide down and I will have 0% coverage.

Send it in immediately and cause the public trouble via VCZ, GN, Igorslab. Thanks for the insight HERE and please share that as often as possible^^

 

[vermie22]

Send it in immediately and cause the public trouble via VCZ, GN, Igorslab. Thanks for the insight HERE and please share that as often as possible^^

Anyone know the best way to reach out to a channel like GN?

 

[Folterknecht]

This is what they did.

1. The scrapped/cleaned away all the gel that had slipped down towards the PCIE connector and was no longer between the VRAM chip and the heat sink.
2. They did nothing else.

my condolences

Anyone know the best way to reach out to a channel like GN?

tips@gamersnexus.net.
Igor you can PM from this forum thread regarding the article he wrote covering this topic - his english is good

Gigabytes sogenanntes „Server-Grade Thermal Conductive Gel“ und eine degradierende Wärmeleitpaste auf der RX 9070 Gaming OC | Testlabor

Das mysteriöse „Gel“ auf Gigabytes neuen Grafikkarten – Analyse statt Alarmismus Der heutige Artikel widmet sich einem Thema, das in den letzten Tagen für einiges an Aufmerksamkeit gesorgt hat: dem sogenannten „Thermal Conductive Gel“, das Gigabyte auf seinen aktuellen Grafikkartenmodellen...

www.igorslab.de

 

[BoggledBeagle]

So I got my GPU back a few days ago, and I am not impressed.

This is what they did.

1. They scrapped/cleaned away all the gel that had slipped down towards the PCIE connector and was no longer between the VRAM chip and the heat sink.
2. They did nothing else.

Here are the photos:

View attachment 400088View attachment 400089

So I now have 2 ram chips that are about 50% covered, and it is the exact same gel as before. So my assumption is that in a few weeks, it too will slide down and I will have 0% coverage.

Who are they? What service company is that? Name them. This may be only their fault, not Gigabyte fault. Gigabyte still may have done everything correctly, send out correct service instructions, materials, etc. I somehow doubt it, but they still have a chance.

What happened is worse than I expected. I expected that the worst thing that can happen is that they will just remove the gel without disassembling the card and just squirt a ton of gel in the gap. I expected that the result could be functional but not look nice.

 

[vermie22]

Who are they? What service company is that? Name them. This may be only their fault, not Gigabyte fault. Gigabyte still may have done everything correctly, send out correct service instructions, materials, etc. I somehow doubt it, but they still have a chance.

What happened is worse than I expected. I expected that the worst thing that can happen is that they will just remove the gel without disassembling the card and just squirt a ton of gel in the gap. I expected that the result could be functional but not look nice.

They are Gigabyte Canada, all I have is the address I shipped the card to for RMA service in Toronto.

 

[remekra]

So I got my GPU back a few days ago, and I am not impressed.

This is what they did.

1. They scrapped/cleaned away all the gel that had slipped down towards the PCIE connector and was no longer between the VRAM chip and the heat sink.
2. They did nothing else.

Here are the photos:

View attachment 400088View attachment 400089

So I now have 2 ram chips that are about 50% covered, and it is the exact same gel as before. So my assumption is that in a few weeks, it too will slide down and I will have 0% coverage.

Oh you've got to be kidding me. I didn't expect much from them but this? Time to send those photos everywhere you can. This level of incompetence is disgusting. I would do everything you can to go for a refund.

Who are they? What service company is that? Name them. This may be only their fault, not Gigabyte fault. Gigabyte still may have done everything correctly, send out correct service instructions, materials, etc. I somehow doubt it, but they still have a chance.

What happened is worse than I expected. I expected that the worst thing that can happen is that they will just remove the gel without disassembling the card and just squirt a ton of gel in the gap. I expected that the result could be functional but not look nice.

If it's Gigabyte authorized service then it's Gigabyte fault.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

They are Gigabyte Canada, all I have is the address I shipped the card to for RMA service in Toronto.

Well, no excuses then. Wow. They probably still have not acknowledged that this problem exists and they still pretend that it is just some extra gel squeezing out that does not need to be there.

 

[Solaris17]

Here is a technical writeup by Igor regarding the Problem

Gigabyte’s so-called “Server-Grade Thermal Conductive Gel” and a degrading thermal paste on the Radeon RX 9070 Gaming OC | igor´sLAB

Today’s article is dedicated to a topic that has attracted a lot of attention in recent days: the so-called “Thermal Conductive Gel” that Gigabyte uses on its current graphics card models and the…

www.igorslab.de

lol man this cracks me up. They prey on gamers and people that don’t really explore outside there circle.

I have worked on tons of servers in my professional career and none of them even the gigabyte servers use gel as thermal anything anywhere.

 

[remekra]

I wrote to retailer where I raised an RMA and asked about how long it will take for Gigabyte service to finish whatever they are doing. And they got max 30 days but usually they are done in 14. If after 14-30 days of not having my card I will receive just scrapped off thermal gel I will lose my shit.

 

[phanbuey]

When i used to buy gb graphics cards I would always end up having to replace the fans or the cooler. Seems not much has changed.

 

[Sithaer]

I've had some Gigabyte cards in the past and they were fine so I've also checked them out recently since I'm close to buying a new GPU but after reading about these issues yeah I wont even consider this serie since the card I was looking at also had this 'server grade thermal gel' mentioned under its specs so yeah no thanks.
Even if its mainly an issue with vertical mounting I still don't want that kind of a mess inside the card if I have to open it up one day..

 

[synthound]

There is now a report on Reddit of someone's Gigabyte Windforce 5070ti in horizontal orientation leaking. It was manufactured in March 2025. It seems like if gravity is enough to make it leak vertically, fan pressure (from either GPU fan or case fan) could similarly cause leak horizontally, just might take longer.

 

[remekra]

I'll just update that I still got no update from Gigabyte service, 2 weeks now almost.

EDIT

Back when it started their PR rep reached out to me here in DM, but now no response for couple of days when I asked for update on the case. There is also a ticket in their esupport portal and same story. They vanished. Great service 10/10.