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.