belgradar
I am actually having a similar issue the heat can be managed a bit by adjusting the fans to run all the time at set speed to keep it cool and no thermal throttle in most games.  however, I saw over at gamers nexus that EVGA decided to stack up to 9mm of thermal pads on the memory chips for me its mostly just the insane nose the cards have to reach that drives me nuts.  Does evga have a solution for getting something to deal with the insane size of thermal pads they choose to use rather than a heat transfer plate to save on a few bucks of cash. I am basically stuck with the card I guess at this point.  I am looking for solutions on what I could do to increase that thermal transfer.  I do now downclocking the memory pretty much solves the problem but seems a bit dumb to pay for something that just thermal throttles constantly.

DeadlyMercury
Do you understand that "huge thermal tape" is on VRAM, not on GPU, while you are talking about GPU temperature?

DeadlyMercury
That doesn't work that way ;)
 
In terms of "heat" gpu is too far away from memory chips to actually get hotter from their heat, also memory doesn't produce significant amount of heat. Yes, that thermal pads are really questionable (I think that memory cooling should be better without them), but they can lead only to memory overheat which will be resulted in errors and artifacts - but not higher gpu temp.
 
Ambient temp is not "heating gpu" but making heat transfer from radiator to air much harded, same goes to luqid cooling: the lesser difference between water and air - less heat can be transfered from water to air. For example, if water temperature is 35C and ambient temp is 24C - I need full 1600rpm to transfer 500w of heat from water to air. But if water temperature is 57C and air temperature same 24C - I need only 700 rpm to transfer all 500w of heat from water to air.
 
 
Anyway you are talking about gpu temp - not memory temp or memory errors caused by overheat. Checking if gpu working better in open stand is first thing to try: maybe it just not enough air inside case. Another thing to check is thermal interface between gpu die and radiator: application could be bad from factory or you can use better TIM. And last thing that could be is that these particular radiator is bad designed for that gpu and amount of heat it should handle. So it is not about placing thick thermal pads on memory - but that this radiator is too small or doesn't have enough heatpipes to work on this gpu with this amount of heat its generates. But in that case every reviewer would mention that after tests - and they did not.
So it is not that every 1660 with that radiator is overheating - but your particular card is overheating. And that leads only to two options: bad airflow inside case (not enough air intake) or bad TIM (or bad application). And with thermal throttling at 80C if it really occurs - I think you should check 2nd.

Hillguy

belgradar
I am actually having a similar issue the "heat can be managed" a bit by adjusting the fans to run "all the time at set speed" to keep it cool and no thermal throttle in most games. 

It appears to me that your goal is to have a silent computer .. yes ?  Sorry but tower style computers and silent just don't go together.    If you are Gaming and you know the card is going to get hot why not have the fans ramp up at a lower temp to avoid the heat that you know is coming ? 
 
Letting it get HOT and then complaining that it won't cool down has nothing to do with the thermal pads on the Ram of the video card.  By that logic if I turn off my cpu cooler until the chip is really hot and then turn the cooling back on but the chip is thermal throttling , it's the poor heat sink on my Ram Modules that causing the problem ?
 
I recommend you go buy a laptop they are very quiet.

Hillguy
Fanboy ? ... that's funny    For the record I could care less what Brand you have or use or buy , your premise is wrong but you don't / won't / can't get it.  
 
That's fine enjoy !