Hi guys, Been struggling all through an NZ summer with my crossfired Giga 290 Windforce's with temps sitting around the mid to high 80's (With settings detuned to keep temps down..) After watching Tech Yes City's cleaning tips vid I decided to give it a crack on my cards. pulled them apart, cleaned up the TP that has looked like it has mostly fallen off the side of the chips and reapplied with some Z5. To my absolutely delight - this dropped the temps by........ 20c!!!! Since doing so I've been able to run a healthy OC of 1100 core 1400 mem with power limiter pumped up to 50% - an hour of Heaven netted a max temp 79c. UNREAL. I recommend to those especially with the AMD R9 series to consider the application of paste - especially the reference design ones. I was blown away by the result - and the last 6 months of struggle and disappointment with what was are still great cards has been lifted. I was hanging desperately for a decent AMD replacement (Due really only to the fact I have a 144hz 1440p freesync monitor...) Been able to buy myself at least another 6 to 12 months of decent gaming performance on my current setup through doing it. Really easy to do highly recommend considering it!
Since I was baking my card, I had to reapply thermal paste after the bake. I also saw differences from 5-15C.
Yeah I replaced thermalpaste on my 290x gaming. Instant 20 celsius drop in temps. But later I decided to go aftermarket cooler.
I also did replace paste on my 280X. Was cleaning it so i though why not. 2-5c difference at best but still nice.
I had to redo my paste on my G73JH (5870M) which netted me -23C temps, and my whole expose on it on notebookreview caused Gary Key at Asus to get the company to stop using the generic thermal paste they were using and moved to an Arctic Silver clone. Personally I prefer IC Diamond myself. Used it when I was working at Asus corporate fixing overheating notebooks.
I redid my thermal paste...great results. Then I just recently took it a step further, I raided my partners PC and took my old Seidron 120 and modded it to my top R9 290x with it and OMFG. He does not actually use the computer and recently got a laptop due to a promotion at work. Now I am looking for another for 2nd card.
