siryork :
Hi, I opened up my gtx 275 and cleaned it out and reapplied thermal paste with arctic silver 5, at first the temps dropped to 35c idle and 68c max load, however the next day after it had been off all night the temps idled at 53c and maxxed out near 80c, I reapplied the thermal paste again but the problem persists, anyone have any idea what the problem could be?
AS5 is probably the worst thermal compound for that situation, as first of all it requires an extremely long cure in time, that's why most don't use it anymore.
Secondly it requires a layer so it can cure into a thermal layer, actually defeating getting the thinnest possible layer between the 2 mating surfaces, all thermal compound is supposed to do is fill the microscopic imperfections between the 2 mating surfaces and that's all!
A thick thermal layer insulates instead of conducting heat, it's the same as not having anything but air between the 2 mating surfaces, it becomes a poor heat conductor, as thermal compound has no active cooling capabilities, it is only a conductor of the heat.
Artic Cooling MX-4 is a thinner thermal compound perfect for GPU application it will thin under pressure to almost nothing and that's what you want under that GPU cooler!
Additionally you're really not supposed to reuse the thermal padding over the memory chips and the cards voltage regulators, even though their temperatures are not reported as GPU temperature, reusing the old thermal pads and they not making proper contact can be card deadly!
Regarding the GPU thermal footprint when you remove the heat sink, you want to see thin even coverage all the way across the DIE or Heat Spreader, you do not want to see it squishing out all around the edges that's bad!
And using AS5 that's probably exactly what you have?
AS5 is also electrically conductive, and MX-4 is not.
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