This was KILLING this cards performance!

This card gained a TON of performance by fixing this issue!
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[@huy1k995]

I was here when J did the gag with the 780 and he said "Where's the Ti!?" Seeing the reference 980 sure was a blast from the past.

[@MrJimmyPenguin]

It’s also still very nice seeing he’s maintained and kept so much weight off, I remember widdde J

[@chaosordeal294]

"Blast from the past." I was gaming on a 970 until a year ago. And, honestly, it played games just fine.

[@PTFuZi]

My 980 died a few weeks ago

[@Techademics]

Recently picked up a second hand RTX 2080 Ti with the same issues. I replaced the fans, replaced the thermal paste & pads, and cleaned it up. Now it works like its brand new 👌🏼

[@GregoryShtevensh]

Good card too. Probably better than a 3070

[@MikeSims1103]

What parts did you use/get to do it? My 2080 Ti is at best loud now and sounding not in great shape, and no clue about performance degradation. I have an i9-9900 and I do need to get a new computer soon(?) but throwing a 4070 or something in here at this point just seems silly.

[@rustler08]

​@@GregoryShtevenshKind of. The 3070 is a bit faster and doesn't have memory chiplets that kill themselves. But, a few more gigs is nice for the 2080 Ti. Honestly, I'd probably take a 3070. It's a newer card with better DLSS and everything.

[@GregoryShtevensh]

@rustler08 neither get dlss 3.0, and both can use DLSS 2.0, but I get you though. It's just the vram that's going to make the 2080ti a better card in some situations. HW unboxed showed this with 8gb cards in the past. Mind you, updates may have changed some of those issues

[@Torchedini]

@@GregoryShtevensh Updates can't fix memory, they'll just serve you low textures faster/more often.

[@mindblah]

That ending! LOL If he went from a happy to horrified expression it would have been a twitch emote for sure! LOL

[@Lurker-dk8jk]

Was going to say the same thing. His face got all stretchy.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

He turned into Sid from Ice Age.

[@denysak]

That gpu design is a piece of art

[@jolness1]

Besides the thermals, my 1080ti had the same cooler and it… got hot as fuck. Even when new. Does look good. The FE cards this gen are beautiful and the thermals are great.

[@bonanzabrandon6877]

@@jolness1 Yeah there's a reason that blower coolers went the way of the dodo. They don't have the cooling capacity needed for modern cards. I'm a stickler for noise in my PC. I was using a stock 3080 for a while, but during gaming the fan would spin up to max and I couldn't stand it so I slapped a waterblock on it and now I can game in blissful silence.

[@Beezzzzy_]

They’re so loud and the temps suck lol

[@user-ju3fp6gd8f]

The 700 series first used this design. My EVGA 780 was one of the loudest pieces of gear i've ever owned.@@Beezzzzy_

[@Fletchersketche_]

Another person of culture! I was just about to comment the same thing. I really want a 1080ti version just because it's the card I always wanted back in the day.

[@GonzoSD316]

I LOVE Phil’s laugh. The end got me 😂 💀 Great video as always!

[@Mr_Spock512]

I love the whole crew ... Phil is a talented editor. I've learned so much about computer hardware on this channel over the years, it's presented in a fun and entertaining fashion. Just love the occasional "goofyness". 😂

[@DethNade]

me to lol

[@AlphaMachina]

You mentioned the whole dead person being in the GPU thing. It reminded me of a story a coworker told me when I worked at a data center in Mexico about how a new NOC employee/intern got stuck/locked in one of the server racks during a holiday weekend, and he stayed trapped in there standing upright unable to sit down because there wasn't enough room to move for the 4 day break. Other people were in and out of the data center, but it was such a massive place and so loud, even though he could hear the doors (they make a loud beep when opened), they couldn't hear him screaming. But even worse, he knew the entire time that there was a fire suppression system test coming at the end of the holiday weekend, so he would have been panicking, because when the other employees got back they did a sweep of the data center to make sure it was empty of people, and then they activated a test of their argon fire suppression system while there was "no one left" in the data center. This system replaced all of the oxygen in the server farm with argon. The kid passed away in there, and they didn't find him until a couple days later when someone came to switch out the tape backups. The crazy thing? All the kid had to do was reach back and pull a little latch and it would have opened the rack door from the inside.. Freaking tragedy.

[@fullboostturbo1]

Dam that is a pretty sad story the poor bugger losing his life, if only he knew about the little latch for the problem that he actually found himself in. Hopefully his in a better place now God bless him and his family.

[@sodapopinksi667]

Damn, that's quite the story. Thx for sharing

[@vedinthorn]

What? Bro I would have just started unplugging things and making a mess. Someone will come check when the entire server goes offline.

[@thestig007]

That's nuts. Definitely learn how server racks work before you climb in...

[@thestig007]

@@vedinthorn Exactly lol. Make an outage so someone comes and checks on the rack... EZ.

[@watercannonscollaboration2281]

Probably should’ve taken the cooler apart too, the shroud around the heat sink means there can actually be a lot of dust that gets accumulated on the heat sink itself that’s not that easy to blow out. A great video nonetheless, repasting does so much for anything pre-2021 when manufacturers moved on to using phase change material

[@Bangulo]

I thought the same especially with that crappy blower he used. Honestly the video felt half assed to me.

[@LedNe0nDevil]

@@BanguloHello, it went from 84º with no fan speed. To 64º with fan at 100%. All they showed was no fan vs fan speed at max. You think these whales move?.

[@dangingerich2559]

I have an old 980Ti and an old 750Ti I cleaned up and repasted about two years ago. That really helped the performance a lot on both of them.

[@asiatravel2010]

There is something about Phil being happy in your videos that gives me so much joy to listen to.

[@mikeclardy5689]

Hey Jay, you seem to be looking and feeling better. I hope it all stays that way. Just wishing you well man. Thanks for all the cool vids 👍

[@Porco1984]

I just redid paste and pads on my 2080ti this week, the memory pads were hard and crumbly as dry clay! Temps obviously came down by a significant amount, it's absolutely worth doing.

[@TheTechBasement]

Tks for the reminder of old paste drying out. Have a person who is having issues with an older card that needs to be replaced and cannot afford it right now. This might give it a little more life until that new graphic card can be purchased.

[@devonefoster105]

These old cards can still live with the correct maintenance and still keep its performance good.

[@scythelord]

Except memory wise. They're very lacking for anything modern.

[@kivulifenrir]

@@scythelord I think it was Tom's Hardware that recently did the Titan test and it failed horribly at modern stuff.

[@daghostds]

And at worse find a new home in someone server for AI related task (Home assistant voice AI, content generation, etc.), video transcoding, video out, but personally I went for a pair of Tesla p4 instead.

[@DedlyAidan]

it really depends on the card, older high end cards (most XX80 tier cards, for example), sure, but I was stuck on a 1050 Ti for 4 years until recently, and I would not wish that on anybody, the amount of games that were either straight unplayable or had to be smeared in Vaseline was really high

[@raresmacovei8382]

​@@kivulifenrirThat's only because Kepler has aged like dogshit, probably Nvidia's worst uArch to age past GeForce 5 FX.

[@m4nc1n1]

It is so nice to see 4M! Congrats!! Still got my 1080 and just did this about 9 months ago.

[@zoan2013]

From TechPowerUp: The GeForce GTX 980 was a high-end graphics card by NVIDIA, launched on September 19th, 2014. So almost 10 years old. Nice to see that they can still work for some.

[@Dovahkiin27]

I was not ready to hear a card only 1 generation older than mine referred to as "old school".

[@jolness1]

10 series is 7yrs old now. It’s pretty old. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad card. I loved mine and only upgraded because I need a 4k monitor for coding and the poor 1080ti couldn’t run the games I play at a good frame rate at 4k. Otherwise… I’d keep using it.

[@user-hr4hu8xb5f]

RTX 20 released on 2018, It was almost 6 years ago and GTX 10 released on 2016, It was almost 8 years ago. They are old AF.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

@@user-hr4hu8xb5f And, unironically, more then enough for most things to this day. Even old 3060 is considered as a medium card that can somewhat do anything there is, and decently.

[@helenHTID]

10 years is a long time, More so in tech... That's a 10-year-old child becoming 20! In perspective. So yeah your card is old ass lol

[@ffwast]

The 900 series is the last with Windows XP drivers. It's not just old it's retro computing now.

[@unixtool]

Love that your still passionate about what made you to all of us. Your still “king” brother. How about an update on you? I feel like after so many years of watching you, and using you knowledge to improve my builds, ....your family an I hope your doing better. Love ya bro.

[@Smokey_MR2]

I needed this today, Jay's humor and Phil's laugh always makes me laugh.

[@Adam-fz6sj]

So excited, exactly what I am like when describing any kind of tech to anyone I know and them looking at me like I have 3 heads.

[@supersteele2434]

Love this video. Like the throw back to the early years

[@chrisamon5762]

I wonder if Jay has ever told a joke that Phil didn't bust a gut at?! Lmao😂

[@lifespanofafry1534]

No. The guy is obnoxious.

[@HebuTheLoneWolf]

1:18 man, if they had one that was fresh out from the box never used. it would also be good to see how much the performance has decarded over the years

[@cosminmilitaru9920]

Linus tested GTX 480 new vs 10 years old used, difference was 2%, basically no degrade.

[@SiliconS32]

Performance doesn't degrade, it either works or doesn't

[@marcosdimitrio]

Always love the goofy stuff you guys come up with 😂 Keep it up!

[@tomaskolarik6114]

Loving videos about optimizing and tweaking old hardware

[@edwardsteinshouer2694]

Just picked up one of the Mats from your store, thanks again

[@rafzonrhode7090]

These little goofy videos are my favorites. I like the more informative videos as well, but these videos are just fun to watch.

[@kalkennedy8039]

Amazing video Jay! I dropped 16C and was able to crank my clocks way up on my 1080 thanks to these tips!

[@l0.0kcryoxoc35]

This is the stuff i like! I love videos on old hardware

[@markmanderson]

same cooler as the 1080ti the front screws remove the perpex plate allowing you to air duster it. i did this when i last dfismantled it and applied kryonaut to the cooler, made sucha difference to its boost clocks back in the day.

[@michaelbuzbee]

I love these types of videos from you guys

[@barrycompton8972]

I really enjoyed this content. Thanks for a great video.

[@joog79]

I love these kind of vids. Keep em up!

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

Ha, ha! Jay knows what dust is REALLY made of... PEOPLE!

[@ffwast]

In a house it is! Mostly skin.

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

@@ffwast So is Soylent Green.🍽️ Yum.😈

[@ffwast]

Fun fact: the 900 series is the last with Windows XP drivers, officially up to the 960 but with a little tweak they all work.

[@equinoxe3d]

I still have a reference 980 in my HTPC and was wondering it if was worth repasting it, that video was on point. My temps are still a lot better than that though so I'm still not sure if I'll do it

[@SJHD]

Phil busts out laughing every morning when Jay says hi. This guy would laugh at his own funeral

[@DerDieSkaSkie]

45fps in battlefield is kinda awesome for such an old card

[@Blackraven6]

Just sharing my experience with 440GT - it's cooler was so old, that it wasn't cooling the card at all. I've checked if it spins - and it was! But after I decided to repaste it I've noticed that the blade was basically rigid. So not only it managed to spin masking the issue of low cooling performance - it was most likely heating it up even more just because of spin resistance.

[@postmortemvox]

i did this same thing to my 980ti a couple months ago. Brough my temps down between 15-20*C depending on the game. Brought some life back to my card for a few more years probably!

[@kamild_]

I did some maintenance on my used 3070 Ti - not *that* old of a card, and yet dropped 15 C thanks to new Gelid GP-Extreme pads and Gelid GC-Extreme paste. Still hits 105 C on the hotspot sometimes... but at least doesn't drop the clocks that hard.

[@RalphUnger]

I use compressed air to clean my computer, but I stop the fans from moving with a toothpick or something when I blast them with air. With some multi-fan case setups, I can see a fan over revving just from too much positive airflow from other fans, so I think most fans now have diodes in them to stop current flow being generated. At least for the well made ones.

[@itsdeonlol]

Thanks Jay!

[@coke4274]

I just picked up some MX-6 and some performance thermal pads for my 3080 which is getting into the 80 degree range and hot spots hitting 97+. Will be my first time taking apart a GPU to do some maintenance. Thanks for the video

[@Jdmorris143]

That outro, though! It was epic.

[@procrastinatingnerd]

I just had my amd rx 480 start hard resetting my computer the second I started furmark, so it was not a temp issue. It's old, I figured what do I have to lose so I took it apart to clean it and look the board over. It wasn't as bad as the card in this video, but it was dirty. I cleaned it and put it back together and now it works again. I think a piece of conductive dust was shorting something important. Bonus is since I thoroughly cleaned and repasted it, it dropped the temps by almost 20 degrees. I gained a few hundred points in furmark and now the fans are off when it's idle again.

[@grzybki]

Just started watching and love it already.

[@1sonyzz]

That gpu cooler reminded me of Jay's videos back in 2014-2015 time

[@discostoo]

An all time classic card, beautiful!

[@FuryanZ]

Great video! My i7 6700k with a 980Ti still runs great in 1440p. No problem running OW2, D4, POE, LE... good maintenance does miracles.

[@imperfect_cliche]

Its funny that i saw this just now. I usually do a good dusting on my whole pc which also includes cleaning the fans. I was just thinking today "dang, my gpu is still a bit dusty, maybe i should do a detailed clean and re-paste." Great stuff. Jay always putting out very useful and inspiring videos!

[@Echo4Yankee]

I use KPX thermal paste too. It is a very good paste.

[@Mazazamba]

I have that exact same card in my computer. It's overdue for a cleaning and re-pasting, but that cooler's a pain to clean.

[@stevenstemmler7573]

Wow Jay! Thanks for this... I'm running a 2080ti that started giving me some issues a bit ago... maybe it just needs a little TLC to get the performance back.

[@Dave-kh6tx]

it'd be worth a shot giving it some new paste and some thermal putty to get a head of possible vram issues, especially if you have micron. i recommend ptm7950 for the die and some upsiren ux pro or cx h1300 thermal putty for everything else.

[@TheHasazin]

I still run a 980 strix and just ordered a new build less then a month ago. Never re-pasted but I clean it a few time a year.

[@Squilliam-Fancyson]

I undusted my MBA rx 6800 yesterday that hashes rvn since it was released and bought back in 2020.(since it does not need thermal paste replacement). But it was so clogged up with dust and cat hair, I straight got 10 degrees better temps after cleaning was finished.

[@tomferguson9250]

Too many people, especially the so-called 'gurus' forget that the simplest changes can have huge impacts. Thanks for the solid content & testing, including any collabs with GN & der8auer. You all make tech FUN & easy to understand/relate to.

[@stankonya]

i have a 1050ti that was black screening and flickering without load. I re-paste it and its perfectly fine again. so yes i agree heavily that a re-paste could do wonders! i was so close to just throwing away a good card. (ps i did upgrade to a 3060ti now and i love it)

[@erikrobertson4885]

I had 2 of the gtx980's in SLI, glad to see one opened up and cleaned. I upgraded to the RTX 3060 because of power draw and the heat that my system was getting in general. I still have the GTX 980's for relics sake. One is being used till this day on my dads living room PC for theatre purposes.

[@tofuguru941]

Good old founders edition. I still have a 1080ti fe. Shes still kickin in one of my guest PC's in my game room. Its always run hot... But I may give her an overhaul now that you've motivated me. Even if it drops 1c 😅

[@pyrotechdude167]

Thanks for doing this i have a gtx 960 that was kindly given to me and it been through alot. So im doing this asap.

[@Malthus]

Thank you for motivating me to do this on my old 1080 TI, it runs much cooler now. It has no backplate but a tripe fan + rgb shroud design nightmares are made of...no wonder it had never been taken apart before. It's a Gigabyte Aorus 1080TI Gaming OC for those who are curious...also one of my fans was dead(the one closest to gpu of course) so I just swapped it for one of the non dead ones (had no PWM signal on my OS but I do now since the one I swapped it for in the daisy chain had no PWM connector for some reason). Even with one dead fan out of 3 it still runs much cooler now. I looked on amazon to replace them but you have to buy the entire daisy chain...eh wait till it gets too hot this summer before I go through that ordeal again.^^'

[@echtsilver]

I bought a used Msi RTX 3070 Suprim X and the fans regularly flew at 100% even though I had my own curve set. The temperatures looked good except for the Hot spot, which went over 80 degrees Celsius. After replacing the old cooling paste, with the MX-6 paste is like new. The hot spot does not go above 75 degrees, and gpu temperatures go down about 10 degree. The fan curve in the MSI burner holds.

[@WardyLion]

My wife got me one of the retro gaming mats for Christmas and I love it! Even the box it came in is cool AF.

[@_sekr]

YEEEEEEES THATS THE KINDA VIDEO I LIIIIKE BRO

[@eddiec1961]

This was a fun one thanks.

[@ejakeway]

This came out at a perfect time. I just built an old parts computer for my future step son to play Lethal company. The card I put in was a old GTX 770 my partner had left over. Runs the game just fine but reaches almost 80c with fan at full speed. Gonna pull it apart and clean it all out and reapply thermal paste.

[@exe16]

Cleaning makes a lot of difference on those blower cards. Back on the last mining craze days od 2020, I built a rig with some used blower Vega 56 and I had to open and clean them every month, it made a lot of difference in its cooling.

[@Karonar]

10:02 That looks like mine, even after repasting... GPUs usually have a better pressure and dont need that much paste between the die and the cooler to fill the gaps.

[@ShiftSticklerz]

My dad recommended this channel to me and I am glad he did. You just earned a sub! 😃

[@burrfoottopknot]

Finally someone holds the fan when dusting it, been on about this for eons and I always got told nothing bad will occur.. Thanks @Jay zTwoCentsfor showing ppl this can and is an issue

[@slayerdwarfify]

That was absolutely horrifying!

[@faealiciadotsys]

A few years ago, before I bought my 6700 XT, I was still using an old R9 290x. I replaced the thermal paste on it a year or so before I retired it and the difference was night and day. The idle temps went down by 20C, and while performance didn't increase using stock settings, the fans didn't have to run nearly as hard. With AMD known for having bad coil whine, you better believe that was such a relief to the ears.

[@spiketamara2007]

i actually gave someone this card a year or two ago for a upgrade for them. they were still using a gtx 760

[@peksn]

That must have been huge for them, thank you for being a nice friend!!

[@spiketamara2007]

@@peksn it was heck it was a nice big upgrade for me when i bought it off a buddy that was using it since day 1 for super cheap so i figured pass on the good deed they did by selling it cheap to me by giving it away since it now was many years old the person i gave it to still uses it to this day and streams using it. im shocked it still has the horsepower to pull it all off.

[@peksn]

@@spiketamara2007 Yeah I feel like the jumps in rasterized performance in between gens are not as big anymore as they used to be going from the 600 700 900 and 1000 series, like now it's like meh

[@dakbassett]

Awesome video!

[@michaelflynn285]

Love it! So safe to say an old 1080 gtx i gave to a friend could most likely see some improvements 😅

[@kikflip9872]

Wish I could get one of the retro gaming mats!!! Always sold out when I check !!

[@lucapistellato3498]

With those design up to 1000th gen you can (almost) easily remove the front plastic cover and really clean the hestsink, so that could have helped also

[@felixkremer7773]

The 980 came out in the time I really started getting into pc gaming. Always gamed on pc since I was young but around 2014 I wanted my own pc. I would binge watch multiple build views from different channels and that’s how I learned how to build a PC. Eventually bought my cousins old rig very cheap in 2019 and the only parts left from that pc are the cpu, ram and motherboard. All the rest either broke or got replaced.

[@daghostds]

I had dried paste on a used Asus TUF 3090.. They really cheapen out on paste sometime and put stickers on the worse spot too.

[@endlosschleife]

I bought a 970 in 2021 and since I had been out of the topic for almost a decade it took me a few weeks to figure out that the thing was thermal throttling all the time. Tbf playing Doom 2016 on 1080p back then didn't give much of a hint. I didn't have new pads at hand but I repasted the die and I was actually quite happy with it until I finally got my 30 series.

[@tucoramirez8397]

Look for small gunsmithing tools and brushes. A scope brush worked very well for me on fans.

[@mortoopz]

Great video concept! I run old cards (anything CUDA is useful for my little render farm)... Kinda hoping that cleaning them is useless.... because I don't want to clean them....... all!

[@mortoopz]

Arse! I'm still not going to clean them.... but it sucks knowing I should.

[@RAM_845]

Jay, next test it inside the case and see the difference...coz its an open air test bench you get awesome results.

[@carlestrada]

the 980/980 ti reference (when they weren't called FE yet) were such good looking cards. I remember when Linus painted his 980 TI orange back in the day

[@JikoMuskato]

I replaced the thermal paste on my Palit GTX 1070 Jetstream after five years... but the original one was still looking good and the temperature difference was not really noticable that much - like a degree or two.

[@john-paultolczyk2434]

nice one phil and jay you two are funny at the end with your face like that yes you are yep LOL. 😁😆😲🤯

[@BrockGrimes]

I repasted a heavily used 7900xtx with Kryonaut extreme and idle temp dropped 10*, the stock paste had started to get hard. So I highly recommend doing this especially if you're on your computer hours everyday.

[@johannesdatblue4164]

Any issues with thermal pads or is it easy to replace the paste without damaginf them?

[@TheForce_Productions]

​@@johannesdatblue4164Better replace everything.

[@rustler08]

@@johannesdatblue4164I'd replace them while you're in there. Buy some Gelid extremes of the same size, or use thermal putty

[@bradhaines3142]

the level of used means very little, crap to begin with is the real problem. my asrock 6950 is known to be crap out the factory and easy to get 20c improvement out of. these are more of an age issue

[@bradhaines3142]

@@johannesdatblue4164 you can never be sure the pads dont get ruined on disassembly, and theres no real way to prevent it. just depends how they stick. theyre cheap enough you should go ahead and order the CORRECT thicknesses before you tear it down so you can replace them. even if they dont get ruined, that resets the clock when you need to do it again, plus the oem pads are likely shite

[@riomisterio6665]

Hey Jay! Can you make a full CLC build in tt tower 300, please? Its the smallest case with 420 mm rad support afaik.

[@ZZstaff]

Thank you.

[@bealight5141]

My 2080ti OC edition Strix card came with the tiniest dried booger of thermal paste on the die. Thermal throttling out of the box but wouldnt have known without HWMonitor (thanks J) because the hotspot was gpu memory, and core temp was normal. All the programs that only show the core temp (like my AIO cooler software) were useless.

[@Elkarlo77]

Have done 3 RX 580 8GB for Kids PC this X-mas Season. Thermal Paste and cleaning brought them back to stock clocks, one went from 1350 down to 1150. After Repasting the Card i tested went up to 1300 in Furmark after 30 Minutes in a Case at 84/85°. All three Cards were Dual Cards, i did a Fan Swap, now the hot one is running 78° stable at 1350 boost. I got a RTX 2070 with the same Problem, is running in thermal limiter and the Fans seems to be shot. All the Cards have in common: Dual Fan Models. Longer Tripple Fan Models don't seem to have this aging Problem, i got several older tripple fan models which still run fine.

[@TheRealHeavyG]

My first 3 way SLI aystem was with these 980 reference cards.

[@maxchristianpota779]

Just this weekend I sold my 1080ti and I remounted the stock nvidia cooler, which is the same as on the 980 in principle. I did a quick test with furmark, to check if I messed up. And I noticed how quiet these cards where. 79°C and so quiet, compared the 7900 XTX 310 Merc I have now.

[@phydeux]

Hey Jay, don't you have a ultrasonic machine you could throw that card into? It would clean it up lickety split.

[@CMDR-V-UncleJ]

Me over here with a 970 lol 3minths ago i did a deep clean and repast... first time for that card

[@Enju23]

I still have my GTX 1080Ti, i used to use it under water cooling, so i can't remember exactly where my blower cooler is for it, but it's fun seeing if i didn't have it watercooled what i could've done to improve it. As of now I'm running an RTX 3080 watercooled, at first i didn't truly need that boost in performance, but now i have a 2560x1440p@240hz monitor, and this rtx 3080 on most games can run up to that fps mark which is nice

[@TigTex]

KPX also suffers from pump out. As a repair technician, I've tried almost all known brands but the only paste that seems to old years at the highest temperature deltas is PTM7950

[@evileyeball]

In 2014 I saw a massive uplift in the performance of my HD radeon 4870 X 2 when I reposted it and blew out all the dust it had been running pretty much almost constantly since 2008 it ran after that until 2020 when I finally retired it in January of 2020

[@HD7970]

I really liked that design because of how easy the cards come apart. You can remove the entire fan and shroud without disturbing the heat sink.

[@michaelrobinson3127]

I'm currently using a 980Ti MSI variant. I'll give this a try.

[@pjpleiss]

I ran into almost the exact same situation with a Dell RX 580 two days ago. Brand new system, and as soon as I put the GPU in, it acted unstable. I pull the card and decide to repaste it. I have never seen scorched thermal paste, but this had it. It also had a big old discolored patch on the heat sink that wouldn't clean off. Spent 10 minutes cleaning it with IPA and put some MX-6 on it. Poof. steady as a rock.