Is graphics card cooling getting worse? Inferior thermal paste is accused of being the culprit

According to news from this site on July 21, Igor's Lab recently conducted in-depth tests on a variety of graphics cards and their thermal paste and found that the culprit of the graphics card's temperature spike after long-term use turned out to be inferior thermal paste.

Many users have reported that the running temperature of their RTX 40 series graphics cards exceeds 80℃, and the core hotspot temperature even exceeds 100℃. Although insufficient chassis cooling is part of the problem, what's even more confusing is that the problem often doesn't appear until weeks or months of use.

This site noticed that Igor discovered this problem after testing a brand new Manli GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Gallardo and Asus RTX 4080 TUF Gaming graphics card. He pointed out that a similar situation exists with almost all graphics cards, regardless of the card brand. After disassembly and analysis, he found that the culprit was thermal paste. Gallardo graphics cards performed great when shipped from the factory, but over time the thermal conductive properties of the thermal paste decreased dramatically, causing the card's hotspot temperatures to exceed 100°C.

Tests show that this thermal paste is very thin when it is first applied, and its performance is even comparable to some high-end products. However, its stability is extremely poor, and droplets will appear in a short period of time. This phenomenon is not common in other thermal pastes. The thermal conductivity of thermal pastes drops sharply as the thickness increases.

Microscopic observation found that the thermal paste contains an oily liquid that evaporates quickly. The problem is that this liquid is not inside the thermal paste, but floating between the giant aluminum oxide particles in the thermal paste that are up to 16 microns in diameter. Although these aluminum oxide particles play a role in increasing the initial thermal conductivity, the volatilization of the oily liquid causes the thermal paste to gradually fail, forming a similar thermal insulation layer.

The reason why many graphics card manufacturers use this thermal paste is mainly because of its low cost. However, users have to pay the price. Although replacing the thermal paste can solve the problem, it requires disassembly of the graphics card and may void the warranty. To make matters worse, some manufacturers refuse to provide after-sales service for graphics cards with hotspot temperatures exceeding 100°C.

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