PLEASE HELP with Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1060 Thermals Replacement!

[NextWorldVR]

Hello! What a great resource this forum is! I recently discovered GPU-Z (after years of using CPU-Z), Thank You for a wonderful Tool,

I am the other half of a VR Dev team, I had hoped to be working on a 1080Ti by this stage in my projects, but they are still priced out of reach. So I'm going to try to squeeze as much performance out of my existing card as I can by swapping out and optimizing cooling...

My model info is:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 (GV-N1060AORUS-6G) (Rev. 2.0) O.C. Edition. (The kbe with 3 Fans) I THINK IT IS THE 9GBPS VERSION, IF ANYONE COULD HELP ME ANSWER THAT i'd be grateful.

It already overclocks amazi gly, I can get it to 1984GHz reliably and even 2,000GHz but the heat is a constant problem. It even idles high. Taking it apart, I noticed the Thermal Paste was VERY MESSY, Glopped on, over-flowing on the sides, 15% of the way across the surrounding 'moat' around the GPU. It was swimming in therm-paste!
I cleaned it away and replaced with a " 'correct' " amount of Artic Silver 5 and my idle temps went from 78 to 90! I did do a nice neat job, no overflow,. BUT it got HOTTER, . SO MY THINKING IS: This card clearly benefits from overflow of thermal paste into the wide 'moat' all around the Silver topped GPU chip. That wouldn't get any cooling otherwise ,. (See image) .. My question, in addition to pasting the GPU as normal, CAN I PUT SOME VISCOUS GEL around the GPU chip (in the surrounding square moat) or THERMAL PASTE, OR CUT AND SHAPE a Thermal Pad to Surround the GPU (with normal Viscous Gel on top kf pads and GPU Paste like normal?)

To try to optimize my next attempt, I bought:
Grizzly Cryonaut Thermal paste 1g
ARTIC Blue Thermal Pads (50mm x 50mm pads in both .5mm and 1.5mm)
And 30g of K5 Pro Viscous Thermal Conductive Gel

I also hope to place Thermal pads between ny circuit hoard and my Back Plate as i have heardvis another mod , any shorting danger doing this?

Any and All GPU cooling tips welcome. There seems to be no full face Water block for this so...

See in the center, there is a square green moat around the GPU, that is about 2-3mm lower. Can I Squirt N5 Pro in there?

 

[silkstone]

Hello! What a great resource this forum is! I recently discovered GPU-Z (after years of using CPU-Z), Thank You for a wonderful Tool,

I am the other half of a VR Dev team, I had hoped to be working on a 1080Ti by this stage in my projects, but they are still priced out of reach. So I'm going to try to squeeze as much performance out of my existing card as I can by swapping out and optimizing cooling...

My model info is:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 (GV-N1060AORUS-6G) (Rev. 2.0) O.C. Edition. (The kbe with 3 Fans) I THINK IT IS THE 9GBPS VERSION, IF ANYONE COULD HELP ME ANSWER THAT i'd be grateful.

It already overclocks amazi gly, I can get it to 1984GHz reliably and even 2,000GHz but the heat is a constant problem. It even idles high. Taking it apart, I noticed the Thermal Paste was VERY MESSY, Glopped on, over-flowing on the sides, 15% of the way across the surrounding 'moat' around the GPU. It was swimming in therm-paste!
I cleaned it away and replaced with a " 'correct' " amount of Artic Silver 5 and my idle temps went from 78 to 90! I did do a nice neat job, no overflow,. BUT it got HOTTER, . SO MY THINKING IS: This card clearly benefits from overflow of thermal paste into the wide 'moat' all around the Silver topped GPU chip. That wouldn't get any cooling otherwise ,. (See image) .. My question, in addition to pasting the GPU as normal, CAN I PUT SOME VISCOUS GEL around the GPU chip (in the surrounding square moat) or THERMAL PASTE, OR CUT AND SHAPE a Thermal Pad to Surround the GPU (with normal Viscous Gel on top kf pads and GPU Paste like normal?)

To try to optimize my next attempt, I bought:
Grizzly Cryonaut Thermal paste 1g
ARTIC Blue Thermal Pads (50mm x 50mm pads in both .5mm and 1.5mm)
And 30g of K5 Pro Viscous Thermal Conductive Gel

I also hope to place Thermal pads between ny circuit hoard and my Back Plate as i have heardvis another mod , any shorting danger doing this?

Any and All GPU cooling tips welcome. There seems to be no full face Water block for this so...

See in the center, there is a square green moat around the GPU, that is about 2-3mm lower. Can I Squirt N5 Pro in there?View attachment 100127

If your temps went up, then I'd hazard that the heatsink wasn't making proper contact. The main things that generate heat are the die itself and the VRMs. Allowing additional thermal contact with the green area cause minimal difference to the temps so you might want to double check everything before slathering your card in goop.

 

[jboydgolfer]

idle temps went from 78 to 90!

No offense, but thats human error, or a misalligned thermal pad. You could put tomato sauce in between that heat sink & the GPU die ,and it wouldnt be that much hotter. But seriously, I've used As5 on more powerful video cards than that little 1060 & it worked fine. I would recommend that you take it apart ,verify that everything is in place ,try again , because the difference in the super expensive fancy stuff ,and the cheapest thermal paste in the world is maybe 5°C (when properly applied). Something definitely went wrong ,it may not have been your application of thermal paste, it could've been the contacts between the VRM's ,or the ram chips & the heat sink . Just tried again & youll see

 

[MrGenius]

I dunno. I tend to believe it's true. Having already seen it work like that before. JayzTwoCents has a vid where he over-pastes the living shit out of a graphics card in a series of tests comparing different thermal compound application methods. Guess what method yielded the best temps? As my favorite YT techy(AvE) likes to say "it's a case of...the bigger the gob... the better the job". As opposed to "a little dab 'l do ya".

What surprises me more is that I knew this thread was about thermal paste just by reading the title. "Tgermals"?

BTW use the kryonaut. Nothing's going to beat that stuff.

EDIT: I've seen Buildzoid do the same thing for running cards under LN2. To help prevent cracking.

 

[W1zzard]

CAN I PUT SOME VISCOUS GEL around the GPU chip (in the surrounding square moat) or THERMAL PASTE, OR CUT AND SHAPE a Thermal Pad to Surround the GPU (with normal Viscous Gel on top kf pads and GPU Paste like normal?)

No, do not cover the green substrate area with anything. It doesn't get hot there anyway.

After removing the cooler check if the thermal paste looks like in the bittech screenshot you posted. ie think and almost translucent.

A photo would help us, too.

What temperatures are you seeing?

 

[NextWorldVR]

No, do not cover the green substrate area with anything. It doesn't get hot there anyway.

After removing the cooler check if the thermal paste looks like in the bittech screenshot you posted. ie think and almost translucent.

A photo would help us, too.

What temperatures are you seeing?

Hey, some actual advice w/ no talk of Typos,! THANKS.

Well, the original paste is long, long gone, lije I said ut was Messy as hell and Glopped on)

I hav since repasted 3 times,

1st, I spread it thinly like I have for 25 years, since DX2/66's, it was 85° @ idle.
2nd, I tried the universally 'reccomended' Pea Sized Dot in the center (upon reopening, this covered only 60% of the chip)

T
98°F with fan on 100% and IDLE.

 

[W1zzard]

1st, I spread it thinly like I have for 25 years, since DX2/66's, it was 85° @ idle.
2nd, I tried the universally 'reccomended' Pea Sized Dot in the center (upon reopening, this covered only 60% of the chip)

For bare silicon dies you do not use the pea method but spread the thermal paste thin across the whole surface.

Start with a nearly translucent layer on the GPU. Make sure to clean the heatsink base. Mount the heatsink, check temps, if not good enough, remove heatsink and observe whether the thermal paste got compressed everywhere, or if there are spot where contact was bad.

You are tightening the heatsink screws in an X pattern, right?

 

[silkstone]

"Its making poor contact" (Gee, You think?)

Hence the advice to double check everything. If you are sure that you've screwed it down right, then there isn't much that will help apart from extra compound on the die, but you will still see shitty temps. You can try to RMA, but if it's within thermal limits, then I'd be surprised if they accepted it.

 

[Durvelle27]

Did you also take into consideration AS5 has a burn in time

 

[eidairaman1]

Hello! What a great resource this forum is! I recently discovered GPU-Z (after years of using CPU-Z), Thank You for a wonderful Tool,

I am the other half of a VR Dev team, I had hoped to be working on a 1080Ti by this stage in my projects, but they are still priced out of reach. So I'm going to try to squeeze as much performance out of my existing card as I can by swapping out and optimizing cooling...

My model info is:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 (GV-N1060AORUS-6G) (Rev. 2.0) O.C. Edition. (The kbe with 3 Fans) I THINK IT IS THE 9GBPS VERSION, IF ANYONE COULD HELP ME ANSWER THAT i'd be grateful.

It already overclocks amazi gly, I can get it to 1984GHz reliably and even 2,000GHz but the heat is a constant problem. It even idles high. Taking it apart, I noticed the Thermal Paste was VERY MESSY, Glopped on, over-flowing on the sides, 15% of the way across the surrounding 'moat' around the GPU. It was swimming in therm-paste!
I cleaned it away and replaced with a " 'correct' " amount of Artic Silver 5 and my idle temps went from 78 to 90! I did do a nice neat job, no overflow,. BUT it got HOTTER, . SO MY THINKING IS: This card clearly benefits from overflow of thermal paste into the wide 'moat' all around the Silver topped GPU chip. That wouldn't get any cooling otherwise ,. (See image) .. My question, in addition to pasting the GPU as normal, CAN I PUT SOME VISCOUS GEL around the GPU chip (in the surrounding square moat) or THERMAL PASTE, OR CUT AND SHAPE a Thermal Pad to Surround the GPU (with normal Viscous Gel on top kf pads and GPU Paste like normal?)

To try to optimize my next attempt, I bought:
Grizzly Cryonaut Thermal paste 1g
ARTIC Blue Thermal Pads (50mm x 50mm pads in both .5mm and 1.5mm)
And 30g of K5 Pro Viscous Thermal Conductive Gel

I also hope to place Thermal pads between ny circuit hoard and my Back Plate as i have heardvis another mod , any shorting danger doing this?

Any and All GPU cooling tips welcome. There seems to be no full face Water block for this so...

See in the center, there is a square green moat around the GPU, that is about 2-3mm lower. Can I Squirt N5 Pro in there?View attachment 100127

Arctic Silver 5 has what is known as a bake in time, it just means over time it will get better and better. The only thing is and this applies to other thermal compounds as well is if the gap between the heatsink and die is considerable meaning you can see between the hestsink and die of gpu, thermal compounds won't work and a thermal pad will be needed. Also check heatsink seating on the card.

 

[newtekie1]

my idle temps went from 78 to 90!

I hope those are in °F and not °C...

I'm guessing the heatsink just doesn't make good contact with the GPU.

 

[Vayra86]

My thought on how the overdose of paste helped the temperatures, is that you are using a more direct transfer from the bare silicon to the heatsink across a large surface area of the heatsink. Every different material of contact area will increase thermal resistance. With just paste on the silicon itself, you only have that small surface to transfer to the heat sink.

The simplest solution to me would be, splash a big load on there again, only making sure you don't hit the PCB and squeeze that sink on once more.

 

[W1zzard]

I hope those are in °F and not °C...

are your temps in °F? 95F is perfectly fine for idle, and actually quite low

 

[jsfitz54]

Get some sheet Aluminum and cut a piece the exact size of the cpu die. (not the green area)
Put TIM on both sides.
Put the SHIM over top of the die with the burr side up in the direction of the heatsink.
Carefully reattach heatspreader.

What do I mean by burr? If you were using a utility knife to cut a square or rectangle, the side you are cutting from is the smooth side. As you cut through the piece the underside will slightly curl down to create a burr.
Burr = a rough edge or ridge left on an object (especially of metal) by the action of a tool or machine.

 

[newtekie1]

are your temps in °F? 95F is perfectly fine for idle, and actually quite low

My temps are read in °C, but not everyone's is. And while 78-90°F is fine, even 78°C idle is really high, and 90°C idle means there is something wrong other than just thermal paste. This is why i want to clarify. Are we dealing with a major issue with the card massively overheating when idle, or just an over concerned person?

Because, I'll tell you, if I had 1060 idling at 78°C, I'm sending it back not taking it apart trying to fix it myself, because something is defective.

 

[eidairaman1]

My temps are read in °C, but not everyone's is. And while 78-90°F is fine, even 78°C idle is really high, and 90°C idle means there is something wrong other than just thermal paste. This is why i want to clarify. Are we dealing with a major issue with the card massively overheating when idle, or just an over concerned person?

Hypochondriac, he used AS5 which has a bake in time

 

[newtekie1]

Hypochondriac, he used AS5 which has a bake in time

AS5 has a bake in time, but it isn't a massive difference. It doesn't go from terrible to amazing, it is like a 5°C drop over the first 200 hours.

 

[eidairaman1]

AS5 has a bake in time, but it isn't a massive difference. It doesn't go from terrible to amazing, it is like a 5°C drop over the first 200 hours.

Well it sounds like to me he has a bigger gap, i tried it on the nb chipset and m18 gpu of my xps Gen 1 laptop too large a gap, so i used on cpu and used akasa shinetsu pads, did the trick.

 

[Final_Fighter]

first make sure you are not reading the temps in Fahrenheit. next check if the bottom of the heatsink is flush and not somehow warped. after that make sure if there are any cooling pads for the vrams they are the correct size are sitting properly. for the sake of finding out if these are causing your issue just leave them off when you go to reassemble the card. if it fixes the issue then you need to order new pads that are the right height. you can run these cards without the thermal pads and it wont hurt them. ive run several cards in mining rigs that did not have thermal pads on the ram vrams and they worked good and still do.

 

[NextWorldVR]

first make sure you are not reading the temps in Fahrenheit. next check if the bottom of the heatsink is flush and not somehow warped. after that make sure if there are any cooling pads for the vrams they are the correct size are sitting properly. for the sake of finding out if these are causing your issue just leave them off when you go to reassemble the card. if it fixes the issue then you need to order new pads that are the right height. you can run these cards without the thermal pads and it wont hurt them. ive run several cards in mining rigs that did not have thermal pads on the ram vrams and they worked good and still do.

THANKS TO EVERYBODY for commenting,
UPDATE;
My K5 Pro came today, I re-opened the AORUS to 'test' the K5 Pro. I don't have new pads yet, so I 'painted' a thin layer of the K5 Pro on all the chip-facing sides of the pads (which had all stuck to the heatsink/fan piece revealing clean chips) - hoping I could 'recharge' the pads.
I had some Artic Silver 5 left, I got out my hairdryer and pre-heated up:
the Artic 5 tube,
the GPU
and the HEATSINK (heating that the most).
Then I quickly put a largish swipe of Artic Silver 5 down the middle of the Heatsink (Not the GPU) (1/4 inch wide, 1/8 inch tall and 1/2 inch long) then I carefully lined up the screw holes, lowering the heatsink in place and pressing evenly, I held it down with one hand while I cross screwed the screws, 5 turns then opposite screw, 5 turns, then other then other 2, then doing a couple more turns on each in that order until they were all Tight, but not Vice Grip Pressure Tight.

end result: 29 degrees celsius idle and no more than 33 when I ran my favorite system stress tester: Oculus Rift Aircar, flying around in a futuristic city...

after I have spread thermal goop for 20 years (On CPU's!) it never went as Easy and had such Good Dramatic Results as when I Simply Pre-warmed the chip, heatsink and tube of Thermal Paste with a blow dryer first. What a difference! It was so easy to control. I believe I will ( when my Grizzly Kryonaut and arctic Blue Ice Thermal Pads come), preheat not only the Kryonaur, but likely the K5 Pro as well. I'd love to be able to paint that on more easily, it was hard ti=o work with (I did that step before preheating,..)

THANKS AGAIN! I will probably follow up here after (and if) I do the Kryonaut and Artic Thermal Pads. The K5 Pro is definately amazing! I didn't even 'burn in' (the pre-heat should have taken care of some of that) do, if I get better results after those 200 hours newtekie1 mentioned, Wow, so much the better.! I kinda don't feel like I need to do any more!!! I might save my Artic Blue pads and Kryonaut for when I buy a h20 cool for my 1060. OC edition. (it is 9GBPS MODEL AFTER ALL.)