SOS to Tom. Gigabyte.

[AlienALX]

Hi Tom. I know you have a contact @ Gigabyte. I wouldn't ask, but I am desperate for help.

I bought a 2080Ti Aorus Xtreme with a water block attached. It came with the original cooler, but because the pads Gigabyte use are the paraffin wax variety they fell apart and the guy threw them in the bin. I refer to this pic, as this is what it would have looked like.

Obviously I can not measure what I do not have, so I tried 1mm pads on the memory and VRM and 1.5 on the taller components that seemed to have a larger gap when the card was assembled (I did a dry run). The card booted up fine and idled at 45c. All good so far. Then I ran Unigene Superposition and the fans immediately went to 100% and the core hit 85c and the memory 96. I am sure that the pads I used were probably too thick, but I have heard that a GPU can have several pad thicknesses. Given these pads are £12 a sheet for each thickness this could turn into a very expensive crap shoot. I spent ages Googling around, and all I managed to come up with was this.

Which is kinda pathetic. That said, to my surprise it seems Asus were also playing the same game, by claiming theirs were "confidential".

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/20/asus_thermal_pad_thickness/

I really don't want to be stuck with a very expensive doorstop, so could you please talk to someone at Gigabyte that has some common sense and ask them to tell me what pads to use?

 

[Warchild]

Pretty sure the Memory IC pads are 0.5mm.

Thats what EK always supplied.

0.5 for memory
1.0 for Mosfet and coils.

https://www.ekwb.com/shop/accessories/thermal-interface-materials/thermal-pads

 

[AlienALX]

Ampere use 1mm. Nearly every card is different

I already found this.

But I know that WBs can be a red herring. For example the Barrow block I removed? had 1mm pads for the VRAM and 0.5 for the mosfets. So it just depends how they have machined the block. Remember, if an air cooler has 4 different thicknesses and uses that paraffin wax crap? they will likely machine the block differently to make it easier for them.

However.

In this instance I removed all of the pads, cleaned up the die and dry assembled the card. I then made a feeler gauge out of plastic sheet that verniers 0.45mm. I felt drag on the VRAM. Meaning yes, I think this cooler uses 0.5mm pads on that. I then cut strips of the 1mm, and placed those over every other cold plate area. I then dry assembled it again, and tried to move the pads with a plastic pick. They wouldn't budge.

Problem is, like I say, that GB use that paraffin crap.

The stuff that loves to fall off, and then fall apart and disintegrate. It also dries out over time. Why they make this information "classified" is just beyond a joke. Who do they think they are? Apple?

The irony is that Gigabyte have always pretty much said you can remove your cooler etc without losing your warranty. Yet they won't tell you how to perform maintenance on your £1400 GPU. Which, at least once during its ownership, will need the TP changing. At which point it is very likely you will wreck or disform those crap paraffin pads and need to replace them. At which point they tell you the information is classified lmao.

 

[Excalabur50]

Have a look at the Ifixit website as they have guides and stuff on there and maybe they might have the info you're looking for.