According to Wallossek, several of his readers have complained that they observed degraded cooling performance of their GPUs after just a few months. Thermal paste and pads don’t last forever, obviously, but they shouldn’t be withering in such a short period of time. Such claims are obviously concerning, so he decided to do some testing.
“I can only advise every manufacturer to settle the reported damage in their own interest and to send the known paste offender to hell with a vengeance. This is simply no way to treat the customers,” Wallossek says.
“It is sad that no one has noticed this so far, although the number of cases has increased significantly and many buyers are certainly not even aware of the ticking time bombs they have in their computers. The paste used has been designed solely to achieve the highest possible test values as cheaply as possible for short periods of time,” Wallossek adds.
If you’re seeing higher temps than expected, cleaning off the stock paste and applying a fresh coat of reputable paste might be the salve you need. Just be sure to do your research first, as swapping out the paste on a GPU can be a little trickier than doing the same on a CPU, depending on the specific make and model of your card (and the cooling shroud).
Top Image Source: Igor’s Lab