How to Clean & Repaste a GPU + Replace Thermal Pads
While GPU prices seem to be on their way back down out of the stratosphere, many of us still can’t afford a new card, or would rather just extend the life of their existing card. Whether it’s your own card or one you’ve just picked up second hand, giving it a good clean is a great way to keep it performing like new. Personally, I have this RX 480 that’s both a little on the older side and has been in fairly constant use for a fair while so I think it’s time to get it cleaned out and replace the thermal paste and pads.
The first thing you’ll want to make sure is you have a clean workspace and ideally you’ll have an anti-static strap to protect your card from getting fried while it’s opened up. You’ll also need the smaller Philips screwdriver bits, isopropyl alcohol and some wipes, replacement thermal paste and the correct thickness thermal pads – 1mm in my case – and an hour or so.
When it comes to dismantling the card, on the back you’ll normally find two sizes of screws. There will be four in a square around the GPU die itself which hold the heatsink onto the core, then a collection of often larger screws that hold the cooler or shroud to the PCB. In the RX 480’s case you also have three small screws per side that holds the cooler’s shroud on, as well as two screws on the rear I/O plate, then you can carefully pull everything apart.
Taking a look at the GPU die itself, you can see just how dried and crusty the stock paste was, I mean it’s literally flaking off it’s that dry, and the paste on the cooler really isn’t any better. The card itself isn’t all that dusty – the fan could do with a little cleaning but the card isn’t blocked full of grotty old dust and hairs so that’s good. Peeling the VRM cooling plate off reveals the dried and cracked thermal pads too – some of which were rather haphazardly thrown on from the factory, or seem to have been torn from-factory too.
The thermal paste is something you’ll want to crack out the isopropyl for to gently clean, both off of the heatsink and even more gently from the die itself. You’ll want this as clean as you can get it, without scratching or damaging the surfaces. This might take a little while, but your patience will be rewarded later so take your time and make sure it’s thoroughly cleaned.
Then the thermal pads can be carefully removed, then it’s a good idea to use that isopropyl to clean off the tops of the VRAM and VRM. Once everything is nice and clean you can get your new thermal pads ready. Unless you’ve bought a kit for your specific card, you’ll likely have a large pad like this Arctic APT2560 or APT2012 that you’ll need to cut to size. Make sure you use the same thickness as the original pads – in this case they were 1mm thick so I’ll be using the 1mm pad material. Then you can generally just eyeball how much material you’ll need and trim pieces off based on either the original pads if they are in good enough condition to use as a reference, or based on the components that need cooling.
Do your best to not contaminate these as you install them, although that can be a tricky task for sure. I also cut a few pads too large so I trimmed them down after seating them on the cooling plate. I then put the cooling plate back on the PCB and started installing some of the screws, making sure to apply even pressure in a star pattern to help the pads stay in one piece and compress evenly.
Next comes the new thermal paste. While you can do what the factory did and dump a load on, personally I prefer to apply enough paste to the die, then use a plastic spreader to even out the paste so every part of the die is evenly coated. That way when the heatsink drops back down onto the die it will have a nice even layer of thermal paste beneath it, rather than having to spread it and potentially oozing out or missing parts of the die.
Then you can stick the heatsink back on. It’s common to find the screws and backplate for the die to have springs on them – again you want to tighten the screws in a cross pattern to apply even pressure. Before putting everything back together don’t forget to clean out the fan and any dust or dirt in the heatsink, then reassemble and tighten all the screws down evenly.
Just to see if my repaste was a success, I ran FurMark before and after and had some interesting results. The average FPS was the same at 64 FPS both times, and at first glance the temperatures were slightly higher on the repasted card which doesn’t sound like good news… Happily, digging a little deeper shows the cause. The fan was running 200 RPM slower, the GPU die was drawing around 1W less but importantly the GPU clock was around 50MHz higher. Not bad!
Considering the only real offence this card committed was some crusty thermal paste, I’m pleasantly surprised by the slight improvements. I can only imagine what some of the nastier cards would be like before and after, so it’s certainly something I would recommend especially on older cards. It’s worth noting that if your card is still under warranty, many card makers – AMD included here – still use these ‘warranty void if removed’ stickers (which as far as I’m aware are illegal at least in the states) so it’s worth keeping that in mind if it is still within its warranty period. Although if a card needs cleaning within a year or two of it being new, I think you have some other problems…
