Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

[newtothis]

Well had 2 cards come in today for repair... First was a GTX 780 that was shorted to ground... Blatantly obvious where it had gone as had 3 vaporized ceramic caps and a very burnt and cracked inductor. Swapped them all an all working

Next was a HD 7970 that failed to display.. So off I go strip the card down ready to pull the GPU and reball and I find this :





Took me some time to clean that off I can tell you!


So anyone who needs to apply thermal compound and has never done it before... The above is NOT how you do it!

[eccerr0r]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

<sarcasm>MORE IS BETTER!</sarcasm>

BTW your picture's not showing up for me... I'm just guessing what the picture looks like...

[blasterboomer]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Image is dead, shows the missing image icon for me.

[newtothis]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Added link to post

[eccerr0r]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

:o

I suppose Zinc Oxide thermal compound was made for people who do this... (since it's not electrically conductive.)

[ddscentral]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

OMFG...

Did you fix that card ?

[Joe Black]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Wow, that's impressive at least.

[newtothis]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

Yes both working now.

Took some time and a lot of IPA to clean the card down though!

[newtothis]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Yes that must of been an entire LARGE tube of TIM!

GPU has been reballed and reworked onto the card = All working

[keeney123]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Well had 2 cards come in today for repair... First was a GTX 780 that was shorted to ground... Blatantly obvious where it had gone as had 3 vaporized ceramic caps and a very burnt and cracked inductor. Swapped them all an all working

Next was a HD 7970 that failed to display.. So off I go strip the card down ready to pull the GPU and reball and I find this :


http://imgur.com/1EgQEZV


Took me some time to clean that off I can tell you!


So anyone who needs to apply thermal compound and has never done it before... The above is NOT how you do it!

It would of been good if you also posted the pictures after you clean it up and re-pasted it correctly.

[newtothis]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

Still can do... I only apply cheap compound after a reball for testing then change it for mx-4 or 5 for final application.

So when I clean the cheap stuff off later I will take some pics

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

man wtf is this? thermal paste shaving cream? no surprises why the gpu failed there from too much thermal paste!!!

[newtothis]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

man wtf is this? thermal paste shaving cream? no surprises why the gpu failed there from too much thermal paste!!!

Non conductive, it was a BGA connection fault - Reball sorted it out.

I think it was more of a case of the owner thought it would fix it by changing the thermal compound (Seems a lot of people auto think that changing it will somehow bring the card back to life :S ) and had no idea what they were doing! I have moaned before when finding a mess under the heatsink but this took the biscuit! I ended up just dropping the entire card into a bowl of IPA and getting the toothbrush on it.. bloody messy job!

[stj]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

you say non-conductive, but it has a capacitance.
you cant use it on high voltage parts!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

no, im talking about the way how applying too much thermal paste acts as a thermal insulator instead. the ideal proper way to apply thermal paste is as thin a layer as possible. too thick of a layer just acts as an insulator instead of a conductor. that is the proper way!

[blasterboomer]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

holy fuck... That reminds me of my friends laptop that he used to bring to college, It would overheat and get really hot so that it would shut itself down. He told me he put a few new tubes paste in it. immediately i was like "a few tubes?!?!", so i took it home and opened it up and there was literally thermal paste spread over the entire motherboard and all over the casing, i dont know how it even managed to boot still, cleaned it with water and let it dry for a day infront of a fan, reapplied paste the correct way. The next day when i saw him i asked wtf he had done and how many tubes he put in and he said 12 tubes so then i had to teach him how thermal paste is meant to be applied. The laptop still works to this day since i cleaned it up

[clearchris]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

A little is good, a lot is better, right?

[momaka]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

WOW!
That is quite a bit of thermal compound on there.

I would have scooped it and saved it for non-critical re-use. There's enough to last you for a year worth of repairs with this!

[stj]

Re: For the love of god do not do this

I would have scooped it and saved it for non-critical re-use. There's enough to last you for a year worth of repairs with this!

i was waiting for someone to say that!

[TechGeek]

Re: Need to change thermal compound? How not to do it!

12 tubes!?!?!?!?!?!?!?