Hey guys,
I wanted to check if i had to replace the thermal paste on my new EVGA 3070 XC3 Ultra Gaming, didn't found any pictures or video of this card yet on the net (probably because it's hard to get your hands on one right now, got lucky with this one) so i thought i'd share my work here ;)
Disclamer: dont try this with your card if you dont know how to properly do it. Incorrect dissasembly (ripping with screwdriver, excessive force on pcb, ...) could damage your card and would void your warranty.
As the EVGA FAQ says, it's allowed to do it but that doesn't mean they'll replace it if you kill it by mistake :)
(Note: i've hidden my card serial numbers with black squares for confidentiality)
So here we go, Need to remove the backplate screws starting with the 4 ones that are not the center GPU screws:
Ok all backplate screws removed but it won't come off... Bad start! Oh wait what's this evga sticker?
Sneaky sneaky EVGA, hidding last screw behind a sticker so you have to remove it to remove the backplate. I guess that's because even if removing this wont void your warranty, if you send back your card one day at least they'll know you dissasembled it at least once so they have to check if you didn't damage anything more closely. Fair enough! Removing the sticker without scratching anything was difficult thought, i had to be very careful because the adhesive is strong:
Alright sticker is removed and cleaned, no mark, like it was never here, we can continue:
Black case removed using a torx screwdriver, needed to disconnect the RGB header from the card PCB. After this was removed i removed the last 4 GPU screws but the heatsink wouldn't come off the PCB easily. I've checked 10 times that i didn't miss a screw but nothing. So i started to shake the pcb from the heatsink very, very gently and it finally came off after a few times. It was just the thermal pads that were keeping them together.
Finally we can access the GPU die!
Closer picture of the heatsink alone:
Remains of the stock thermal paste (probably a thermal pad) on the heatsink:
A closer look to the stock thermal pad used. You can't see it very well on the picture but it was completely dry, so not very good for heat transfer:
A little isopropyl magic and voila, a clean GA104-300-A1!
Also cleaned the heatsink best i could:
Used noctua NT-H1 thermal paste i had left from my CPU cooler (this is not an ad for noctua, there are better thermal paste out there but this one is good enough ^^):
Freshly repasted GPU die:
After putting back the heatsink and the PCB together, shaking them a bit so that the GPU die and the heatsink surface thermal paste would join correctly then checking if we had a contact spot on the heatsink:
Success!
Putting everything back together properly:
Checking if everything is OK topside:
Same frontside:
And backside:
Done!
Went from 68°C / 154°F to 61°C / 141°F in full load after changing the thermal paste and the GPU clock is boosting a little bit higher thanks to running a bit cooler so it was worth it :)
See you around for another EVGA hardware adventure
post edited by Neutro - 2021/04/02 05:49:44