ordimans

edgeofsanity

CBSloth
Hey, I'm just wondering what version 3090 ftw3u you had. I'm currently waiting for a replacement 3090 ftw3u due to an unbalanced power delivery on the early version card(nov 2020) I'm rmaing which had me pulling 85+W through my mobo pcie slot. With the 500W xoc bios I was only able to reach 448W max board power draw.

Did you go through the rma process for one of the newer revisions of the card or did you purchase a 3090 more recently?

 
This is an RMA card, I think I did it back in February of this year. I also had a Nov 2020 card for my original. Fan controller broke on the original right before my block came. Serial on the new one starts with 2114.
 

ordimans

edgeofsanity
I picked up where the OP left off on this today. I had an Optimus block on my ftw3 3090 and needed to return it to stock today. I have a strix that is a much better overclocker that is replacing it now that I have another Optimus block.

Anyways, I've repadded several 3080s/3090s already and I use calipers to measure factory pads before replacing. Memory is 1.9mm-2.1mm with an average of 2mm. This includes backside, no difference. Always measuring the thickest part of each pad. Vrms are 2-2.3mm with an average of 2.2mm for the thickest parts. I suspect the vrms were the OPs problem.

I use thermalright oddessy 12.6wmk pads, these work great but are stiff and don't like to squish so you cannot use measurements for squishy pads.

For my repad I used 2mm on the front and back mem, 2mm on the vrms, and 1mm on the mosfets. For the VRMs you MUST use a bead of thermal paste or even better if you have thermal putty. You will not get good vrm contact if you don't do this. I used arctic mx4 for this. A 2.5mm pad is too thick. The paste fills the tiniest gap you'll have. This also let's the mosfets make contact with the pad unlike the OP where they have a gap. Core was pasted with TG kryonaut.

I'm still testing but results are great so far. Looping heaven in my open air testbench with the xc3 bios and power sliders maxed(~520w)core temps top out at 70c, mem junction 78c. Hottest vrm reading is 69c. Mining eth tops out mem junction at 92c. I can easily drop this 10c by pointing a fan at the backplate.

Hello bro
 
Can you share a picture ?


I put thermal putty from TT Global on VRM
ANd i used gelid extreme for others, but i am at 108C during mining (with hybrid kit)....
 
On the backplate, should i use thermal putty too ?

Sure. I didn't use putty on the backplate or anywhere else. Just the 2mm and 1mm thermalright pads and that bead of arctic MX4 over the VRM pads.
 

 
Not the best pic but there isn't much squish on that VRM pad. 

 
One of my mining rigs, GPU #3 is this one. 90F ambient, fan blowing directly at the backplate. GPU 1 an 2 are stock, GPU 0 was a repad that needs to get redone. Mem temps are good but core contact isn't great so its 10C hotter than the others. 
 

Wahoo
 
No pad no putty on backplate ?
 
But you have airflow
Maybe i should test to put air back, than hybrid kit.

2mm pads on the back memory, thats it.

why the fck did i just spend 500 on thermal pads for 3 cards? 
 
i'm using fujipoly 1.5 and 1.0, 1.5 on everything did not work obviously because of the dimensions mentioned before so i'm going to stack 1.0 and 1.5 on everything. 

I only add a heat sink to the backplane.
Run 2077 Game VRAM Junction temperature 85°C



 

Just repasted/repadded my 3090 FTW3 Ultra according to the info in edgeofsanity's post. I appreciate you actually using calipers and reporting actual temperatures from mining (along with power consumption) - too many posts here are just "I put new pads on and now my temps are better/worse lol good luck finding out what I did." In case I can save someone else some hassle in replacing the thermal pads on their EVGA 3090 FTW3 Ultra, here's all my info from the process:

I got 1mm and 2mm Thermalright Odyssey 12.8 W/mK pads. Replaced all mem pads (front and back) with 2mm, both VRM pads with 2mm + thermal paste (also Arctic MX4 but that's just because I have like 10 tubes from CPU coolers), and both MOSFET pads with 1mm pads. I also previously had a couple aluminum heat sinks just sitting on the backplate with no thermal pads or any TIM, 4x 20x20x11 and one big 150x70x10 (rough dimensions, can't remember the exact numbers) - those are staying on, because they did make about a 4 or 6C difference in memory temperatures.

Unfortunately I didn't control for ambient temperature and took haphazard data, expecting to get the same results as you, and I was only concerned with memory temperature to begin with. But here are my results: Before repadding, in a 28-30C room while mining ETH, 125 MH/s @ 350W and 100% fans, the GPU temp stayed around 61C, hotspot 68-75C, and memory junction would hit 102-106C. When ambient temperature peaked (probably above 30C), the memory would bounce off the thermal limit at 110C but generally MH/s would stay above 115. With the air conditioning running and the room at around 74F/23C, memory would sit around 96-102C. When I replaced the pads, putty, and GPU paste, I was excited because the stock paste was thoroughly dried out (even though I ordered and received this 3090 directly from EVGA, new, only about a week ago). Normally you have to "wipe" thermal paste off; this stuff was coming off in chunks. I literally took the GPU PCB and held it upside down over a trash can to knock off some small chunks of dried thermal paste that had stuck to the board from chipping it off.

Anyway, repadding didn't work. My temps are significantly higher now. In a very cold room 72F/22C, my GPU temp is 56C (probably about what it would've been at this ambient temp). Hotspot is 70C - that might actually be higher than what it was before under air conditioning, because it was around this temperature when the ambient was more than 5C higher. And when I started mining, the VRAM quickly shot up to 108/110C and thermal throttled. Now averaging about 115 MH/s @ 320W - 10 MH/s and 30W lower than it should be under this low of ambient temp, with memory temperature 12C higher stock. What a pain. But, I want this stuff to work correctly because I'm sick of having to run my fans at 100% to mine when my PC is 3 feet from my bed. This is what I plan to try:

1) Right now, re-seating the GPU. Make sure everything is lined up correctly, visually check that the pads have impressions from the VRAM/MOSFETS/VRM (well, check that the thermal paste on top of the VRMs was making contact with the heat sink)
2) If re-seating doesn't work, I just ordered a 0.5mm Thermalright Odyssey 12.8 W/mK pad. Once it arrives, I'll cut out pads to add on top of the existing VRAM pads for a total of 2.5mm pad height (2mm installed now + 0.5mm added).

If adding the 0.5mm pads to the memory works out, I'll be curious to know how you were able to get such good temperature reductions. I used the same pads as you, have the same card, installed them the same way, ran at the same MH/s and same wattage, and got wildly different results. Not 4 or 5C difference; more than 20. Guessing this is just user error on my part during the pad replacement, but I'm also putting down all my thoughts for the small handful of people like me, wanting to repad their cards. I'll post an update once I figure out what's going on.

I too question the loose tolerances. I only messed with changing the back vram pads. I mine overnight when not gaming/working, so I wanted to not burn this up early. Also, I don't like running fans that high. Its just too loud in the living room. 
Temps prior to messing with things.
Mining Eth +200 mem clock gave me 104-108C Junction temps at 85-100% fan.
New World queue screen was at 85-90C Junction.
 
Tried Gelid GP-Extreme 2mm first, but temps were way worse. The pads compressed a bit too much and didn't rebound, so contact wasn't great. I had to underclock ram to -200 to keep it from staying at 100% fan and throttling. Mining Junction would stay at 106-108C with peaks to 110C.  New World was ~90 -95C at the queue.
 
Switched to Thermalright Extreme Odyssey 2mm. Those pads didn't compress as much, but contact STILL didn't look right. Temps improved over the Gelid, but didn't get back to what stock was. I was able to mine with no overclock again, but fans just stayed above 90% all night.
 
Move to Thermalright 2.5mm. Now I've got contact again (and an ever so slight bulge on the backplate) and temps were back to what they were prior at the start of this whole thing. 
 
Taking what I learned, I decided to just go ahead and buy one of those large heatsinks from Amazon for $20 (a pair of them actually), and just lay it on the back. While mining, temps went down immediately 4-6C, and the fans dropped to ~50%... Absolutely amazing to be honest. I added some pads between the backplate and the new heatsink to help out (since the backplate isn't completely level)
 
I now have a Noctua fan just resting on the massive heatsink. Temps are completely in check. I was able to push the mem clocks to +1500... yes.. 1500. Gained +15gh/s over what I had before (peak I was comfortable with was 124.8gh/s)   Temps are 98-104C with fans at 50-70%... Much cooler, much quieter, and as a side effect I didn't think I'd see... less power draw by 20w at exact same power/clock settings. 
 
In the end, this makes complete sense since there's no active cooling on the backplate. Original pads probably would have been just fine, but w/o some place for that head to escape, it just soaks into the plate and stays there. Just changing the pads on the back will yield you no gains. You NEED to add some extra cooling help. 

I'm getting so many mixed opinions. Some people say it is not worth it to change out pads. But others say they saw massive temp decrease.
 
For the EVGA 3090 FTW3, is it worth it to replace the thermal pads?

homestyle
I'm getting so many mixed opinions. Some people say it is not worth it to change out pads. But others say they saw massive temp decrease.
 
For the EVGA 3090 FTW3, is it worth it to replace the thermal pads?

DefconCharlie
 

homestyle
I'm getting so many mixed opinions. Some people say it is not worth it to change out pads. But others say they saw massive temp decrease.
 
For the EVGA 3090 FTW3, is it worth it to replace the thermal pads?

Im also finding mixed results. I have a FTW3 and mine overnight as well and would like to get the temps down as Im over 110C constantly and dont want to add the extra wear and tear. From the sounds of it from WollinglyWool and rippleeffect, doesnt look like they would recommend anything other than active cooling or a heatsink as the pads dont make that much of a difference on their own. 

Quoting both of you just so EVGA notifies you of a reply, if that's how these forums work. After further research, I would NOT recommend Thermalright Odyssey pads. I'm going to try Gelid Extreme (not Ultimate) pads next most likely. From what I've read, Thermalright Odyssey pads are among the hardest/least compressible, followed by Gelid Ultimate, and finally Gelid Extremes which can compress 40% (ie 3mm Extreme pads can compress to 1.8mm) - that was from an Amazon listing though so take the exact compression amount with a grain of salt. What is consistent, however, is that every source I've seen says the Gelid Extreme pads are the most compressible of the three and therefore the most forgiving for EVGA's demonstrated sloppy tolerances *and* the absolutely nonsensical pad thickness of 2.25mm. Literally every other board manufacturer uses 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm, 2.5mm, or 3mm. All of them. Every single one. Then EVGA, for some reason, decides to use custom sizes, making replacement or improvement a significantly greater challenge, while having worse stock memory cooling performance than many other manufacturers to begin with. Absolute nonsense.
 
Previously I put 2mm Thermalright Odyssey pads on the VRAM, and they barely made contact with the heat sink - significantly worse performance than stock pads. I then added 0.5mm Odyssey pads on top for 2.5mm total, thinking they'd be able to compress to the ~2.25mm gap that EVGA has officially stated for the front VRAM. They absolutely cannot, at least not through the compression provided by the heat sink retention bracket. Maybe if you manually compressed the pads between two pieces of glass (or something) first, it could work, but I'm irritated enough that I'm not going to try. With 2.5mm total thickness using Odyssey pads, the heat sink did not make contact with the GPU die at all. After powering on, the video output would shut down within a few seconds and the fans would go full blast; the 3090 core was hitting the thermal limit in seconds and shutting off. Thank god for firmware/hardware failsafes, otherwise I would've cooked a more than $2,000 GPU instantly.
 
2mm pads on the backplate seem to work fine, even with the Odyssey pads. The backplate bulges slightly but it doesn't seem to cause any problems. I added two large aluminum heat sinks (120x69x27, about $15 each on Amazon)  on the backplate, just resting them on top, plus a 92mm fan directly on top of them, blowing into the heat sinks. I still have the 2mm Odyssey pads on the front VRAM. With all of this in ~75F ambient, the memory temperature stays around 100C with fans at 100% while mining at 125MH/s and 350W. This would be "acceptable" if this weren't the GPU in my primary computer, which is also in my room. Fans at 100% on the FTW3 is very noisy, and it's just *barely* keeping the memory cool enough in an already pretty cool room. Like I said, I'll be trying the Gelid Extreme pads next for the front VRAM. Unfortunately they don't come in 2.5mm thickness, so I'll be trying 3mm and either manually compressing them before putting them on the VRAM or just giving the heat sink a good squeeze against the 3090 board and hope that's enough to compress them properly and make good contact with the GPU. If 3mm pads don't work, the last option is using stacked 2mm + 0.5mm pads, but 0.5mm pads in general are hard to work with because they're so thin and rip easily.
 
Someone could make a killing selling custom pads of the exact correct thickness, pre-cut for the FTW3 models. An absolute killing. If it weren't for the risk of getting banned, I would be using much more colorful language to describe how unbelievably irritating this whole process has been. 2.25mm pads, EVGA. 2.25. Are you serious?
 
I respect EVGA a great deal, but their cooler design for the FTW3 3090s (and I believe the 3080s as well) is just pure nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Had you just, you know, designed the cooler to use standard thicknesses, replacing the pads (if a user decides to do so) would be an extremely simply one-and-done thing. 45 minute process at most. Instead, I've been dealing with this garbage and researching for weeks, trawling through useless posts on the EVGA forums, on reddit, and tech review sites to find SOMETHING that actually works. Please, *please*, in your next series of cards, use standard sizes. There is no reason not to. I know you can add or subtract 0.25mm to the gap on the heat sinks. I know you can do it, EVGA. I'm begging you.
 
EDIT: I remembered incorrectly. I have 2.5mm pads on the back plate VRAM now, hence the back plate bulging. I stacked Thermalright Odyssey 2mm + 0.5mm for 2.5mm total. The temperatures are actually slightly worse than with only 2mm pads on the back. Fortunately I recorded temperatures + ambient this time.
With 2mm pads on front VRAM + 2mm pads on back: Ambient 73F/22.7C, GPU 50C, Hotspot 64C, VRAM 96C
With 2mm pads on front VRAM + 2.5mm pads (stacked 2mm + 0.5mm) pads on back: Ambient 74.6F/23.8C, GPU 50.4C, Hotspot 63.8C, VRAM 98C
Yes the ambient temperatures were slightly different (1.1 delta C), but even accounting for that difference, temps with 2.5mm pads on back were about 1C worse on average across all the temperature sensors on the 3090. So, stick with 2mm pads on the back plate for the 3090 FTW3. It's within the margin of error, so even if temperatures aren't actually worse than 2mm pads, you gain nothing by using 2.5mm pads except for your back plate bulging and more hassle of needing to cut a 2mm AND a 0.5mm pad, then stacking them.
 
"What about the front side?" you might ask. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out.

What brand of pads did you end up using to get those Temps to drop? I'm about to install the Hybrid Aio Cooler on my 3090 FTW3 ULTRA, so if I'm gonna have this thing completely apart I'd like to get reduced Temps on all areas of the card. So much mixed info on this topic I prefer to take advice from someone who has had actual improvements on lowering their Temps. Personally I think the mixing of pads like 2mm + 0.5nm to obtain proper thickness/contact is probably causing the temp increase issues, however I've been wrong before. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

ONEGREATFIRE
What brand of pads did you end up using to get those Temps to drop? I'm about to install the Hybrid Aio Cooler on my 3090 FTW3 ULTRA, so if I'm gonna have this thing completely apart I'd like to get reduced Temps on all areas of the card. So much mixed info on this topic I prefer to take advice from someone who has had actual improvements on lowering their Temps. Personally I think the mixing of pads like 2mm + 0.5nm to obtain proper thickness/contact is probably causing the temp increase issues, however I've been wrong before. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Good luck on getting reduced vram temps with the Hybrid. It is generally worse than the stock air cooler. About the best you can do is mount it with premium pads to get close to the stock air cooler temp.

No problem, let me know the results of the change in pads. I only spend $15 so I am curious what the difference in the quality are.

So i am another lucky one who got in the 3090 pad club. Lol. Anyways after reading a bunch on this subject I decided to change pads. after trying a few different pads and getting worse temps I did this. I got the gelid extreme 2.5 pads, the putty that is recommended and used the putty on the memory pads first. Just a thin layer over all memory pads and then uses those 2.5mm gelid pads. I also used notura cpu paste on the gpu itself along with replacing the putty for pads in the vrm. But i also did a light cover of putty on them too. Used a 1mm over those and used a 2.0m and a 1.0m on the other thin pad. Got my temps in a decent warm room to 90c and i found if i put a cpu cooler with fan in the back side of card i can drop the temps another 8c to 12c. Amazing. Ive ordered a big heatsink for the back and have fans for that. Just wanted to share my journey with it. Oh my old readings were 96c in a room with the window open and a fan on it.

There is a website that sells precut thermals pads. Though I have no experience or affiliation with them yet (If I need pads, I will go through them.) I have only heard positive things about their pads, though these positive things did come from internet strangers.
Their kits include the right sizes and thicknesses for if I remember correctly for most EVGA cards and sku's. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, but it seems like it would take a lot of the guess work out and be more convenient. 
 
https://kriticalpads.com/Custom-GPU-sets_c_11.html

Just ordered a set and I'll report back once they arrive and I get them installed. Thanks! 

Kingofroam
There is a website that sells precut thermals pads. Though I have no experience or affiliation with them yet (If I need pads, I will go through them.) I have only heard positive things about their pads, though these positive things did come from internet strangers.
Their kits include the right sizes and thicknesses for if I remember correctly for most EVGA cards and sku's. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, but it seems like it would take a lot of the guess work out and be more convenient. 
 

Anyone try this? I'm looking to cool my card and it seems promising

I'm a fan of these myself https://www.reddit.com/r/...0ti_copper_mod_ver_20/