I recently got a used Gigabyte Windforce 3060ti from eBay. I thought I’d take a look under the cooler and see if the thermal paste had dried up.
Thermal Pad Results So Far
0.5mm Gelids are too thin but the 1mm pads are too thick.
This has turned into a work in progress! Currently (27th November) the card is working fine with 0.5mm Extreme 0.5mm pads but these are not perfect…
27th October – 0.5mm pads *slightly* too thin as only partially make contact with the VRAM.
6th Nov – I decided I wasn’t happy with the above so decided to save money I just double up the existing 0.5mm pads rather than pay again for 1mm pads- so 2x 0.5mm should equal 1mm.
This went very badly, 1mmm was TOO thick meaning the GPU was no longer having a good contact with the cooler. As soon as it went to full the load the fans would ramp up to 100% and the GPU temp reached a max of 106 C.
10th November – doubled up 1mm pads removed and replaced with 0.5mm Gelid again but this time using the “Extreme” rather than “Ultimate”.
Consensus online is that the Extremes are squashier material but I couldn’t notice much difference. Both have similar consistency to blu-tak.
Currently (27th Nov) 0.5mm Gelid Extremes fitted, GPU temp well under control and card runs fine. I think best solution is to find 1mm thick pads but they need to be softer than with of the Gelid products (Ultimate or Extreme)
I removed the cooler easily (it’s just 8 screws) and decided to renew the thermal paste with some Arctic Cooling MX2 I’ve had for years.
But in removing the cooler the thermal pads on the VRAM tore so I’ve decided to replace them with some new thermal pads.
I found some information online that suggested the Eagle model of 3060ti from Gigabyte needed 1mm thick thermal pads. But I decided after looking at the old pads that 0.5mm thickness would be more appropriate.
0.5mm Pad – too thin (slightly)
After fitting the new 0.5mm thick pads I was concerned as it looked like the heat sink was not making contact with the VRAM…
I removed the cooler and checked. Fortunately you can see the slight indentation and text embossed in the new pads showing they are making contact except maybe on the left hand edge.
But compared to the old pads they are definitely thinner and I think 1mm pads would have been more appropriate.
Currently (October 27th) I’m weighing up getting some 1mm thick pads instead. However the GPU temp is lower than before and “hot spot” is never more than 15oC above this. In normal use and with a slight under-volt to 0.9v the max temps are usually 70 C or lower on the GPU and 86oC maximum recorded hot-spot.
