Po3-620 RTX 3070 Thermals

Sherring92

Hello everybody,

I installed the 3070 in another PC and I was wondering if changing the thermal pads and the gpu paste would be a nice thing to do.

What do you think? And how tall are the pads, 1.0 or 1.5mm?

Thanks in advance

GotBanned

Argh! Of course ticked! That was a massive brainfart. My bad. Wrote that before my 1st coffee of the day.

And about the temps, they can always be better. ^^

GotBanned

Hi there again!


Thanks for the bench and measurement. There's some difference between our temps, but is it worth to open the card and re-do things? That's something only you can decide.

In my opinion, your Hot Spot is pretty good. Remember, mine was hitting 100 and over. There must have been some problem with the pads and/or paste and by redoing them the problem went away.

If you open the card for a repaste, you'll see this.

 
As you can see from the pic, originally my thermal pads had almost no pressure markings on them. When I reapplied paste (MX-5) and put the card back together, I made sure that things were tight. I applied new paste, rebuild the card and opened it again. Why? To make sure that the paste was evenly spread. Then I reapplied paste again and the rest is history.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the backplate and back side. But I replaced the original pads on the backside with 1.5mm Arctic pads.

If you undervolt your card and oc memory (seen people do 800 - 1000) I think your temps would be as low as mine or even lower.

GotBanned

What are your temps now? You can check them with HWinfo64 program. There's tons of information under "Sensors" tab, but pay attention to "GPU Temps" and "GPU Hot Spot Temperature." Been a while since I did this, but if I remember correctly my Hot Spot temp was way over 90C while gaming recent games at 4K resolution.

I repasted the TIM and replaced the backplate thermal pads with 1.5mm Arctic pads and the Hot Spot temp dropped around 20 degrees if I remember correctly. But it was not all because of repaste and pads.

Go to Youtube and watch few videos about "overclocking and undervolting GPU". For this you'll need to use MSI Afterburner program. Basically you lower your GPU's voltage, which lowers GPU temps, but you can also overclock the VRAM at the same time. So there's hardly no performance loss! I'm currently running my VRAM +800MHz and the GPU is running cooler at the same time. As an added bonus, MSI Afterburner will let you make your own fan profile as well. So it is a win-win-win situation.

Sherring92

GotBanned said:

What are your temps now? You can check them with HWinfo64 program. There's tons of information under "Sensors" tab, but pay attention to "GPU Temps" and "GPU Hot Spot Temperature." Been a while since I did this, but if I remember correctly my Hot Spot temp was way over 90C while gaming recent games at 4K resolution.

I repasted the TIM and replaced the backplate thermal pads with 1.5mm Arctic pads and the Hot Spot temp dropped around 20 degrees if I remember correctly. But it was not all because of repaste and pads.

Go to Youtube and watch few videos about "overclocking and undervolting GPU". For this you'll need to use MSI Afterburner program. Basically you lower your GPU's voltage, which lowers GPU temps, but you can also overclock the VRAM at the same time. So there's hardly no performance loss! I'm currently running my VRAM +800MHz and the GPU is running cooler at the same time. As an added bonus, MSI Afterburner will let you make your own fan profile as well. So it is a win-win-win situation.

Hello, actually the temps are at 40-45°c in idle, mounted in vertical position with a pci-e riser. Before flashing the Zotac bios (to enable r-bar) my temps where at 80-85°c when gaming; now I can't see them rise above 75-78°

Actually, it seems I can't modify the voltage using Afterburner, the slider remains greyish.

GotBanned

Your temps seem to be pretty good already. How's that Zotac BIOS? Is it working well for you?

You wrote:
"[...]Actually, it seems I can't modify the voltage using Afterburner, the slider remains greyish.[...]"

I think you don't need to if you are trying to undervolt. But the reason why the slider is grey because you haven't unticked "Unlock voltage control" and "Unlock voltage monitoring" in Settings' General tab. You may need to restart the PC after deselecting them.

Here's my current settings. You may try different voltage curve, maybe something like 1000mv, but I'm using 850mv as the "tipping point". I also made it so that the profile runs automatically when Windows starts.



Here's my curve for reference.

Sherring92

Yeah, my temps are looking good, but can they be better?

The Zotac Bios seems fine to me, I just flashed it yesterday so I have to test it a little more. It seems that boosted some FPS with WoW:Shadowlands, I have to test it with some other games.

Shouldn't "Unlock voltage control" and "Unlock voltage monitoring" be ticked? I need to check it because I'm sure they was ticked (coming from an AMD rx590 card).

Thanks!

GotBanned

Argh! Of course ticked! That was a massive brainfart. My bad. Wrote that before my 1st coffee of the day.

And about the temps, they can always be better. ^^

Sherring92

Once back home I'll check again, or just reinstall the application.

Thanks!

GotBanned

The temps you mentioned earlier, are they for the GPU or Hot Spot? If for GPU, then you still have space for improvement.

Just to give you a reference point, I looped Unigine Heaven benchmark for 15 minutes. Keep in mind that my GPU is not stock. This is what HWinfo64 reported. Ambient temp in the room is now 29C or so.



Before undervolting the Hot Spot was close to 100C! This made me to repaste and repad the card.

Since I also have a custom fan curve, our temps are not comparable. During the test fans spun at 64% at max, most of the time at 56%. If I cranked them manually to 80 - 90, the temps would lower considerably.

If you are like me, a lowly 60Hz peasant, go to nVidia control panel and cap your maximum FPS to 60 or few frames lower. I do this because my 4K LG OLED TV can do 60Hz, so there's no need for the GPU to render more than that => GPU works less and stays cooler. But for this test I removed the FPS cap as the result pic shows. I have no idea if that result is supposed to be good or bad, though.



I'd suggest you to run the same bench at stock and take note of the temps. Then undervolt the card and do the same. If the temps are a lot worse, then repasting and repadding might be a good thing to do.

Sherring92

Thanks for the info, I'll redo all the checks with HWinfo (I use NZXT Cam for the overlay) and I'll post the outcome!

Sherring92

I'm back. These are the result with everything "stock" (no afterburner on)

I tried to do these test in the same exact way you did.

GotBanned

Hi there again!


Thanks for the bench and measurement. There's some difference between our temps, but is it worth to open the card and re-do things? That's something only you can decide.

In my opinion, your Hot Spot is pretty good. Remember, mine was hitting 100 and over. There must have been some problem with the pads and/or paste and by redoing them the problem went away.

If you open the card for a repaste, you'll see this.

 
As you can see from the pic, originally my thermal pads had almost no pressure markings on them. When I reapplied paste (MX-5) and put the card back together, I made sure that things were tight. I applied new paste, rebuild the card and opened it again. Why? To make sure that the paste was evenly spread. Then I reapplied paste again and the rest is history.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the backplate and back side. But I replaced the original pads on the backside with 1.5mm Arctic pads.

If you undervolt your card and oc memory (seen people do 800 - 1000) I think your temps would be as low as mine or even lower.

Sherring92

Thanks a lot! do you confirm that the thermal pad on both sides are 1.5mm? (Memory and backplate).

Anyway I'll think about opening the card, runs pretty OK.

Can you share your Afterburner profile?

GotBanned

On the back it is 1.5mm, but those on memory chips are thicker. Maybe 2 or 2.5mm, it's hard to say without measuring them... which I didn't.

I tried to find the profiles (one +800 and other +1050MHz) but strangely didn't find them. You don't really don't need them, though. Just watch one of the many video tutorials online.

Maybe later I'll try to see the actual limits for this card and up the voltage a bit, but first I must wait until the weather gets cooler. This summer has been surprisingly hot hot hot for Finland! And there's no end in sight.