RTX3080 FE - Re-do thermal pads vs Warranty

[andybird123]

This thermal pad thing is a new mining craze, as the activity frys the cards memory. If gaming, an AIB card is totally fine if you have good airflow. Some water cool the card as well.

this isn't true, I don't mine on my 3080 but gaming it was hitting 105C which I don't really like the idea of so repadded (I usually watercool my main GPU but couldn't be bothered this time), now it sits around 85-90C when gaming, so to me this was well worthwhile for peace of mind

 

[Major774]

I just bought my 3080 FE from a UK retailer and had to RMA it immediately (this week).

I don’t mine at all, just gaming. The memory temps. are way too high for my liking. Playing RT games, the memory temps. run constantly in the 100C’s. Then the fans run at 2.6k+ RPM… basically sounding like my Dyson lol.

I didn’t want to change the pads, in case it voided the warranty.

 

[xPETEZx]

I just bought my 3080 FE from a UK retailer and had to RMA it immediately (this week).

I don’t mine at all, just gaming. The memory temps. are way too high for my liking. Playing RT games, the memory temps. run constantly in the 100C’s. Then the fans run at 2.6k+ RPM… basically sounding like my Dyson lol.

I didn’t want to change the pads, in case it voided the warranty.

Good luck, as from what I have seen ALL the FE cards are like that stock.
Mine both where. After a while gaming the VRAM hits 104c, and the fans go to jet-mode.

Id be surprised if you get a card back from RMA thats any different.

What did the retailer say when you opened the claim?

 

[Major774]

Good luck, as from what I have seen ALL the FE cards are like that stock.
Mine both where. After a while gaming the VRAM hits 104c, and the fans go to jet-mode.

Id be surprised if you get a card back from RMA thats any different.

What did the retailer say when you opened the claim?

Waiting for their response.

Mine would hit into the 100C’s within 5 minutes.

If I get the same card or a replacement card that does the same… I will repad it myself, as that appears the only good solution to bring temps. down. I wanted to try the warranty process first.

 

[xPETEZx]

Waiting for their response.

Mine would hit into the 100C’s within 5 minutes.

If I get the same card or a replacement card that does the same… I will repad it myself, as that appears the only good solution to bring temps. down. I wanted to try the warranty process first.

Depends on the game for me, but yea oddly some old games could get the VRAM hot real fast.

Good luck Keep us posted. You going through the retailer or nvidia?

 

[Major774]

Depends on the game for me, but yea oddly some old games could get the VRAM hot real fast.

Good luck Keep us posted. You going through the retailer or nvidia?

Slap on a RT game… these games hit the memory instantly.

Going through a UK retailer.

 

[Purgatory]

Waiting for their response.

Mine would hit into the 100C’s within 5 minutes.

If I get the same card or a replacement card that does the same… I will repad it myself, as that appears the only good solution to bring temps. down. I wanted to try the warranty process first.

Sadly you will get a reply saying it's normal and working within spec.

As others have said here FE cards 3080 and 3090 all hit high VRAM temps, anyone telling you they don't is either water cooling (now they even sell backplates that are water cooled) or lives in an igloo. The FE cards look great and better value than AIBS but they have problems too, like the terrible thermal pads, coil whine and high temps on the VRAM if placed in a case that is not a wind tunnel. We had over 28 3090s at work in NVLINK (dual 3090s) and all caused us some problem in time or right out of the box, they would whine so bad or have fan rattle or they would sound like hairdryers because of the temps and these were in highend workstation class cases with very good air flow (take that as cases with fans running faster than normal case and a lot of air flow, office is air conditioned too to keep the work area cool).

In the end we returned them and the ones they refused to accept as returnable we sold on ebay and purchased AIB blower cards and normal 3 fan AIBs that were a lot better and none have caused us any problems with temps or bad coil whine or noises of rattling fans or fans going 100% and sounding like a hairdryer, yes the systems are not silent and never will be how we use them but they are so much better now and none of the horrible nail scraching coil whine or fans rattling. Sadly the only good thing about the FE cards is their price, they look good and great for people to water cool if you end up with one that doesn't whine, if it whines and you water cool it you will find how much you wil hate the sound these cards make.

Then Nvidia sell a 3080Ti with a 3080 cooler a card that can use 400w . Just wait in time you will here all the people returning them for many reasons, from heat, whine to fans running really high rpm.

 

[xPETEZx]

Sadly you will get a reply saying it's normal and working within spec.

As others have said here FE cards 3080 and 3090 all hit high VRAM temps, anyone telling you they don't is either water cooling (now they even sell backplates that are water cooled) or lives in an igloo. The FE cards look great and better value than AIBS but they have problems too, like the terrible thermal pads, coil whine and high temps on the VRAM if placed in a case that is not a wind tunnel. We had over 28 3090s at work in NVLINK (dual 3090s) and all caused us some problem in time or right out of the box, they would whine so bad or have fan rattle or they would sound like hairdryers because of the temps and these were in highend workstation class cases with very good air flow (take that as cases with fans running faster than normal case and a lot of air flow, office is air conditioned too to keep the work area cool).

In the end we returned them and the ones they refused to accept as returnable we sold on ebay and purchased AIB blower cards and normal 3 fan AIBs that were a lot better and none have caused us any problems with temps or bad coil whine or noises of rattling fans or fans going 100% and sounding like a hairdryer, yes the systems are not silent and never will be how we use them but they are so much better now and none of the horrible nail scraching coil whine or fans rattling. Sadly the only good thing about the FE cards is their price, they look good and great for people to water cool if you end up with one that doesn't whine, if it whines and you water cool it you will find how much you wil hate the sound these cards make.

Then Nvidia sell a 3080Ti with a 3080 cooler a card that can use 400w . Just wait in time you will here all the people returning them for many reasons, from heat, whine to fans running really high rpm.

How did your work manage to net 28 3090FEs? :O Some kinda deal direct with nVidia?

And its as reassuring as it is frustrating to hear that they all whined. Kinda confirms my though that RMA'ing mine for whine is a waste of time.

Surprised to hear that replacing them with blower cards was an 'upgrade' though? Surely with a single fan they must sound even more like jets at take off?

 

[Benass]

What im scared the most: these gpus that reaching 400W power draw are not designed with longevity in mind. 2year warranty and reasonably good % of failure not long after for 1k item is not Progress. It pure Theft.

Items should be designed with 5-year life span as a Minimum. IMO.

 

[Purgatory]

How did your work manage to net 28 3090FEs? :O Some kinda deal direct with nVidia?

And its as reassuring as it is frustrating to hear that they all whined. Kinda confirms my though that RMA'ing mine for whine is a waste of time.

Surprised to hear that replacing them with blower cards was an 'upgrade' though? Surely with a single fan they must sound even more like jets at take off?

Business account and this was before they started limiting them to the general public, the general public could buy 2 x 3090 and another 30xx card before the limits got put in place.

The blower cards were actually much better than the FE cards because they were in DUAL 3090 setups with NVLINK and the air they suck in goes straight out of the case and didn't warm up the other components in the case much compared to the FE cards, the AIB 3 fan cards run a bit higher in the same cases and fan setup but again better than the FE cards but the other components temps go up a bit more than the blower cards but less than the FE cards.

Sadly Nvidia banned AIBS making the blower cards because people were using them for servers and workstations because they were the perfect card and now trying to force companies to buy the A6000 and such cards, this is why their pro cards are blower cards or have no fan and designed to go in a high flow server case, you know the ones that sound like jet planes all the time and need to be in a server room that is cooled.


My home workstation here showing how I had to tame the dual 3090s AIBs in a Fractal XL case (worked out really well in the end), I did try 2 3090s FE from work in the same case and temps were silly and why I purchased the AIB cards in the end:-

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34846430/

 

[Major774]

Sadly you will get a reply saying it's normal and working within spec.

As others have said here FE cards 3080 and 3090 all hit high VRAM temps, anyone telling you they don't is either water cooling (now they even sell backplates that are water cooled) or lives in an igloo. The FE cards look great and better value than AIBS but they have problems too, like the terrible thermal pads, coil whine and high temps on the VRAM if placed in a case that is not a wind tunnel. We had over 28 3090s at work in NVLINK (dual 3090s) and all caused us some problem in time or right out of the box, they would whine so bad or have fan rattle or they would sound like hairdryers because of the temps and these were in highend workstation class cases with very good air flow (take that as cases with fans running faster than normal case and a lot of air flow, office is air conditioned too to keep the work area cool).

In the end we returned them and the ones they refused to accept as returnable we sold on ebay and purchased AIB blower cards and normal 3 fan AIBs that were a lot better and none have caused us any problems with temps or bad coil whine or noises of rattling fans or fans going 100% and sounding like a hairdryer, yes the systems are not silent and never will be how we use them but they are so much better now and none of the horrible nail scraching coil whine or fans rattling. Sadly the only good thing about the FE cards is their price, they look good and great for people to water cool if you end up with one that doesn't whine, if it whines and you water cool it you will find how much you wil hate the sound these cards make.

Then Nvidia sell a 3080Ti with a 3080 cooler a card that can use 400w . Just wait in time you will here all the people returning them for many reasons, from heat, whine to fans running really high rpm.

From their initial response, it sounds like it is heading that way. Their engineer has tested and stress tested with various games with only a max GPU fan speed of 60%, so it’s working fine. They didn’t mention about the VRAM temps. but I think that matter will just lead to a dead end.

I have asked them to test some high res. RT games, as I found the RT games makes the GPU fans speed 2.6k+ RPM and holding.

I have got some Gelid thermal pads on the way so I am ready for the repad method which appears the best solution.

Oh yes, there is the coil whine thing as well but it gets drowned out by the all of the PWN fans during gaming. It’s quiet during normal use, so acceptable on my side.

 

[Purgatory]

From their initial response, it sounds like it is heading that way. Their engineer has tested and stress tested with various games with only a max GPU fan speed of 60%, so it’s working fine. They didn’t mention about the VRAM temps. but I think that matter will just lead to a dead end.

I have asked them to test some high res. RT games, as I found the RT games makes the GPU fans speed 2.6k+ RPM and holding.

I have got some Gelid thermal pads on the way so I am ready for the repad method which appears the best solution.

Oh yes, there is the coil whine thing as well but it gets drowned out by the all of the PWN fans during gaming. It’s quiet during normal use, so acceptable on my side.

Get yourself some good thermal paste too when you redo the thermal paste on the GPU as you will need to because the VRAM chips on a 3080 FE are on the same side as the GPU. Just go slow and careful not to loose the little rubber grommets and use some masking tape to take the plastic bits off to get to the screws they are basically held in place with magnets.

Was a pain to open a 3090 FE as we tried to stop the whine with some hot glue to the inductors and added some better thermal pads too and paste, but it made no difference to the whine and the temps were a bit better but still not great, so your mileage may vary. Some state 20c difference when redoing their cards but we came nowhere close to that, maybe 3-5c better at best on the 4 cards we tried (they were the ones refused a return and sold on ebay in the end, so decide if you want to loose your warranty as they do check), I know one member here got away with it as when he opened it he found a broken component that clearly was broken at the manufacturing stage and couldn't have been done by the customer, so if that was not the case I'm sure they would have refused it.

 

[Major774]

Get yourself some good thermal paste too when you redo the thermal paste on the GPU as you will need to because the VRAM chips on a 3080 FE are on the same side as the GPU. Just go slow and careful not to loose the little rubber grommets and use some masking tape to take the plastic bits off to get to the screws they are basically held in place with magnets.

Was a pain to open a 3090 FE as we tried to stop the whine with some hot glue to the inductors and added some better thermal pads too and paste, but it made no difference to the whine and the temps were a bit better but still not great, so your mileage may vary. Some state 20c difference when redoing their cards but we came nowhere close to that, maybe 3-5c better at best on the 4 cards we tried (they were the ones refused a return and sold on ebay in the end, so decide if you want to loose your warranty as they do check), I know one member here got away with it as when he opened it he found a broken component that clearly was broken at the manufacturing stage and couldn't have been done by the customer, so if that was not the case I'm sure they would have refused it.

Thanks for the tips. Luckily I like these jobs. Replaced a number of iPhone batteries, screens over the years for friends and family.

Definitely worth giving it a go.

 

[GR63]

Anyone got a link to that template for the pads for 3080 FE? @xPETEZx ??

Tried but can't find one

 

[Jay-G25]

Anyone got a link to that template for the pads for 3080 FE? @xPETEZx ??

Tried but can't find one

Many guides on Youtube , i just used on of those ... front is simple just copy what is there and rear pretty much gets packed out with thermal pads ... Changing pads from stock to Gelid GP Ultimate ( 1.5mm front / 2.0mm rear ) has dropped the memory junction temp a good 20 degrees , was previously around 98 to 102 mining Eth but now happily sits at 72 deg junction temp at 70% fan speed , if fans left on stock then they will go up to 35% max ( silent ) and junction temp will just sit at 94 deg . Perfect and well worth doing imo

 

[Major774]

Update:

High resolution (3440 x 1440) RT games was tested overnight and the GPU crashed out on them. So they are going to send a replacement GPU. If the replacement GPU is hitting high memory temps. then I got the some thermal pads on standby, for the repad route.

 

[xPETEZx]

Was a pain to open a 3090 FE as we tried to stop the whine with some hot glue to the inductors and added some better thermal pads too and paste, but it made no difference to the whine and the temps were a bit better but still not great, so your mileage may vary. Some state 20c difference when redoing their cards but we came nowhere close to that, maybe 3-5c better at best on the 4 cards we tried (they were the ones refused a return and sold on ebay in the end, so decide if you want to loose your warranty as they do check), I know one member here got away with it as when he opened it he found a broken component that clearly was broken at the manufacturing stage and couldn't have been done by the customer, so if that was not the case I'm sure they would have refused it.

To be clear though, you told them upfront you had opened and modified your cards. While it is possible nvidia check each RMA they get, I still struggle to believe it.
Your case is one of the many which gets rejected out of hand as the customer incriminates themselves before sending the card in.
Id argue you could probably still fight that, but its a hard position than if you hadnt admitted to anything. Firstly they would then need to check, and be able to prove it. (Yes I know the pads they use are a special kind of **** so should be easy to spot... but they still need to evidence that..., so far no confirmed case that they do.)

Update:

High resolution (3440 x 1440) RT games was tested overnight and the GPU crashed out on them. So they are going to send a replacement GPU. If the replacement GPU is hitting high memory temps. then I got the some thermal pads on standby, for the repad route.

Thats an interesting turn of events. Wouldn't have expected the card to crash out of games stock. Just whine and spin its fans to the max...
I wish you luck with the replacement!
This was all via the vendor right not nvidia direct?

 

[Major774]

Thats an interesting turn of events. Wouldn't have expected the card to crash out of games stock. Just whine and spin its fans to the max...
I wish you luck with the replacement!
This was all via the vendor right not nvidia direct?

That was what I was expecting them to report back to me, just the coil whine and the constant high fan speed, and say that it’s all within spec.

All managed via the UK retailer.

 

[xPETEZx]

That was what I was expecting them to report back to me, just the coil whine and the constant high fan speed, and say that it’s all within spec.

All managed via the UK retailer.

Good to hear they keep stock aside for RMA's.
Dealt with them for other RMA's before and been happy.

 

[Dave2150]

how will they tell if u replace thermal pads?

They are visible to the naked eye.