NVIDIA Has No Comment on GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 Thermal Pad Issues

Tsing

The FPS Review
Staff member
Joined
May 6, 2019
Messages
12,222
Points
113
nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-key-art-1024x576.jpg
Image: NVIDIA



Over the past few months, an increasing number of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 owners have alleged that these pricey graphics cards leverage poor-quality thermal pads that are incapable of properly cooling their GDDR6X memory modules during use. The first and most obvious solution for this is to swap out these pads for better, aftermarket ones, but there is some lingering concern over whether doing so officially voids the warranty or not for NVIDIA’s Founders Edition cards. Green team’s customer service seems adamant that it does based on a support log shared on r/NVIDIA last month, but now, Hardware BBQ has reported that the company would prefer not to comment on the issue.



They really are, anyone who has an RTX 3080 FE or RTX 3090 FE should look at replacing the stock NVIDIA thermal pads, many are dropping 20-30c on GDDR6X temps by...
Click to expand...

Continue reading...


 
I've been following this story off and on for about a month or two now. The stance seems to change depending on who answers from NV. I've seen the one in this article where they say it voids, I saw another that said it didn't but that one was missing enough info I couldn't confirm it. We also reached out for comment but never heard anything back. It's definitely all over the map at this point.

edit: I've also seen reviews on BB, and Reddit from owners who claim swapping the pads is essential.
 
Riccochet said:
It's not just miners. GN did a piece on it. Replacing the pads reduced thermal throttling while gaming as well.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've heard it can be around 10c. To be fair, I reported on an experiment that Igor's lab did with an FE and achieved roughly the same back in September. People have known about this for a while, it's just now gaining traction because of the response(s) from NVIDIA.
 
My Aorus 3090 memory runs at 94C when gaming at 21C room temp, I cant imagine what temp it would be if pushed hard and when Summer arrives!
I'm collecting info atm to do my own pad change.
 
AntiQuark said:
My Aorus 3090 memory runs at 94C when gaming at 21C room temp, I cant imagine what temp it would be if pushed hard and when Summer arrives!
I'm collecting info atm to do my own pad change.
Click to expand...
My Strix 3090 is a bit to handle. If I use the silent mode in Tweak II it behaves nicely around 60-70C but when I overclock(usually 1900+MHz to a little over 2000MHz) in gaming it's takes everyfan in the case to keep it in check and tops around 75c, not sure what the vram temps are at that point. However, I'm waiting for EKWB to release it's custom active backplate for it. They announced one for the FE models a couple of weeks ago, and they already have a front one for the Strix 3090. I reached out to EKWB and they said they'll being doing an active backplate for it as well. When that all happens I'll do the cooling pads while I'm there.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
My Strix 3090 is a bit to handle. If I use the silent mode in Tweak II it behaves nicely around 60-70C but when I overclock(usually 1900+MHz to a little over 2000MHz) in gaming it's takes everyfan in the case to keep it in check and tops around 75c, not sure what the vram temps are at that point. However, I'm waiting for EKWB to release it's custom active backplate for it. They announced one for the FE models a couple of weeks ago, and they already have a front one for the Strix 3090. I reached out to EKWB and they said they'll being doing an active backplate for it as well. When that all happens I'll do the cooling pads while I'm there.
Click to expand...
I'm blowing a fan at my backplate for now, there are no such better options in my case because my card (Aorus Xtreme) has very little custom support, I think they sold 3 ;)
A 20 to 30C drop from a pad change will please me immensely!
 
AntiQuark said:
I'm blowing a fan at my backplate for now, there are no such better options in my case because my card (Aorus Xtreme) has very little custom support, I think they sold 3 ;)
A 20 to 30C drop from a pad change will please me immensely!
Click to expand...
If it's that extreme it might be worth it to change the paste to but I'm sure you were already thinking the same. I've read stories where doing both on a GPU can get 10+ off temps. I don't know about 20-30 though. I don't really have experience with such things, yet, but I recommend watching Igor's video on it, and reading the English translation on the site. Pretty informative for things to look out for.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
If it's that extreme it might be worth it to change the paste to but I'm sure you were already thinking the same. I've read stories where doing both on a GPU can get 10+ off temps. I don't know about 20-30 though. I don't really have experience with such things, yet, but I recommend watching Igor's video on it, and reading the English translation on the site. Pretty informative for things to look out for.
Click to expand...
Yep, its part of my plan. I change paste on my cards going back over 10 years, it really helps.
A 10C drop in core temp is pretty normal, though it might be aided by overtightening the heatsink a little.

The 20 to 30C drop is GDDR6x temp when using better thermal pads.
 
AntiQuark said:
Yep, its part of my plan. I change paste on my cards going back over 10 years, it really helps.
A 10C drop in core temp is pretty normal, though it might be aided by overtightening the heatsink a little.

The 20 to 30C drop is GDDR6x temp when using better thermal pads.
Click to expand...
That's awesome! It's one of those things the media doesn't cover very much and you normally have to dig through forums to hear real-world experiences about.
 
The article makes mention of wondering whether or not changing these voids the warranty on the FE cards. The answer is "NO." According to the Moss Magnuson Warranty Act and recent cease and desist letters sent out by the FCC, companies cannot deny you warranty service for a product that's been modified unless they can prove the modification was the cause of the failure rather than a defect in the product itself. For other countries, I can't say. Although, in places like the U.K., they tend to have stronger consumer protection laws so I don't know if they could "void" your warranty there.

Legally, NVIDIA can't pull that **** in the U.S.. Change those pads at your leisure. I put a waterblock on my FE card so my pads have already been changed.
 
It's not like we haven't seen the likes of Asus denying warranty claims based on damage that the service center did to the card just to avoid having to replace it. There were threads on [H] about people taking pics of their cards before sending them in. Getting back the same card, minus some resistors/capacitors and Asus claiming the card was damaged by the end user.

So, even though you can modify your cards, and they can't deny you warranty for that, they sure as hell can get away with damaging your card and sending it back to you with no warranty on it at all.

And in the current climate of card shortages I wouldn't put it past them to do just that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Become a Patron!
Back
Top