The igor'sLAB researcher disassembled and tested several NVIDIA RTX 40-series graphics cards and found that most manufacturers use cheap and low-quality thermal paste, which causes the devices to quickly lose performance.
The author points out that it doesn't matter if it's a card from Asus, Manli, PNY, Palit, or other manufacturers, because it always leads to the same thermal paste suppliers.
After a few months of intensive use, the cooling efficiency of video cards deteriorates significantly, and the paste hardens quickly. During the study, the new RTX 4080 was disassembled and it was found that the thermal paste was applied in a very thin layer.
A large amount of cheap silicone grease was found in the paste, as well as a zinc oxide filler. The thermoplastic also contained a lot of ground aluminum oxide (the material that provides the actual heat transfer), but it was quite coarse, which can lead to delamination of the paste from the surface.
After removing the factory-installed paste from another RTX 4080 graphics card, the researcher applied a more appropriate amount of high-quality paste and found that the card then reduced its hot spot temperature by almost 30°C.
But it's not just about hot spots. Cheap, poorly applied thermal paste will eventually lead to a degradation in graphics card performance as GPUs lower their clock speeds when they reach their thermal limits.
Computer enthusiasts probably have no trouble replacing their CPU thermal paste on a regular basis, but with video cards, the process is not so easy.