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Very, VERY few reviewers take the time to do such thorough testing. Bravo 👏 and thank you.

Dude this is awesome - thank you for not just stopping at which one performed best - seeing the core temps rise due to the increased sinking heat from the memory was something I had never considered

Dude your vids are super comprehensive and well researched. Definitely an interesting outcome with the core absorbing more of that transferred heat. Thermal dynamics has come a long way since the old "hotter air goes upwards" days. Great vid man. 🎃

This kind of information is worth gold. Thank you for doing this (and it makes me feel better about getting the Gelid's in the first place). Comprehensive, easy to understand and to the point. Also worth to note, using thicker pads means the contact pressure between the cold plate and GPU core is less, which usually translates into a few C increase on the GPU core. It's a tradeoff, cooler RAM means hotter core.

For a non native english , your video is a must. You speack clearly with calm and I UNDERSTAND every word. Tank YOU. Great video and great speacker

Great job. Some of my favorite videos are ones by guys like you and Seb who put in a lot of hours like this to produce a single video. It does not go unnoticed, my friend. Adding all the graphs and numbers gave this one a real Gamer's Nexus feel and I know you must take any comparison to them as a high compliment. You deserve it. As for others who may read this, I've used a generic Amazon pad similar to the one TekShinji does in this test. The kind you can get in the big 200mm x 200mm sheets which is HUGE (you can change many card's pads with one of those). They got the job done for me at a low price. They won't win you any bragging rights if that's what you're in to, but my Gigabyte 3080's been happily hashing away for 5 months with no loss in performance or degradation (knock on wood). My VRAM temps stay at 90C with 80% fan speed with pads replaced on both sides of the PCB. Nothing additional added to the metal backplate. No special fans directing additional air for supplemental cooling. Just one card inside a gaming PC case with the side panel off.

Unbelievably comprehensive, informative video. I do need to repad my graphics card, but I'm a lot less worried about squeezing every degree of cooling out of it. You raised a good point about increasing core temps, I've never heard anyone else point that out before. Kudos

Brilliant work guys. You also conducted a fantastic analysis of the end-results instead of just posting stock temp data. Love it.

Thermalright pads are NOT measured on the OO scale. (Sc) means they were measured using a shore C durometer which gives a very very different hardness rating. Although that rating can give you an idea of its hardness, it can not be compared directly with the others. The hardness of the Thermalright pads is noticeable higher than the others which is part of the reason they appear to give the most inconsistent results between users. They can not compress anywhere near as much as the other pads so they struggle to fill the gaps between the cold plate and memory modules. The main reason pads are used on memory modules is because their heights from the pcb are inconsistent due to the production line's soldering process.

I think a contributing factor to the increased GPU core temp with certain pads, is that they are reducing the pressure applied to the core, leaving a thicker paste layer. I expect some temp increase with better VRAM cooling, but not 20c+ Would be interesting to see a high end thermal putty in comparison, since it allows for optimal core contact / pressure.

I just take a university class or what. Was so compact and informative yet still easy to digest. Takes me a while to find peeps I can comfortably listen to but I think I just found one. Thx for all the knowledge!!

you solved the Mistry that was bugging me. i was confused of the gpu core temp raising after replacing the thermal pads. and your take on that makes perfect sense. thank you.

This video was excellent. You managed to answer every question I've ever had about thermal pads in less than 20 minutes, thank you. Fun fact, I just picked up a MSI Ventus 3x OC 3090 from Best Buy and it has the grizzly thermal pads on the rear from the factory.

Funny. I was coincidently recommending Gelid Extreme pads to a friend with many 3090's exactly 3 days ago lol. I personally use Fugipoly but I don't think it's always worth it to invest so much in 17w/mk pads for the so little difference it can "potentially" give. From personal experience, Gelid always been the ones that gave me the best overall results. Nice video by the way!

Hi, very nice and complete testing, however I can bring my results which defer a lot from yours .. both me and a friend got a 3080Ti FE. Both suffering from very high stock VRAM temps. (throttle 108-110° during heavy mining, fan immediately to 100%). We both did a repad at almost a similar time (end of August). I went for the Minus Pad 8 , he went for the Thermal Odyssey, both 1.5mm front and back (i tried 2mm first, that did not work, not enough Core contact). We had roughly the exact same temps during mining afterwards during gaming or mining (tried ETH, RVN, ERG), within the same 2°, both excellent, easily down to the 80° with about 60% fan. BUT, more recently I noticed that my temps were getting really bad again, to the point of being back to the 104-108°, at the same or even higher fan speeds (I was mining constantly since then). I took it apart again and ... it's like the Minus 8 pads "leaked", and had water under them now sitting between the ram module and the pad. (I have some pics). Cleaned up everything, and went for the same Thermalright Odyssey this time around. Back to the amazing 70°ish for gaming, 80°ish mining. So yeah, durability and ability to withstand during time is actually super important as well. Short sum up from my side : Minus 8 Pad and Thermalright Odyssey perf is similar (approx -24° VRAM same conditions), but Minus 8 Pad degraded within 2 full months of constant mining. Let's see about the Odyssey

It´s good to add, that you should always measure your old thermal pads and add new of the same height. Otherwise, you might encounter issues, like higher GPU core and/or VRM thermals, when using thicker pads. Or higher memory/VRM temperatures, when using thinner thermal pads. Another necessary point is, each card can have multiple sizes of pads on various places, so you need to have a supply of multiple sizes of pads.

I can't thank you enough for making this video I was really struggling with deciding on a thermal pad brand. Before watching your video I was honestly going to just dish out for the Fujipoly but thanks to your video i ended up with GELID. 1070ti is now sitting at Now: 30.5MH/S @ 60c, 105W, Fan 60%, 290~300kH/W Before: 30.5MH/s @70~75c but with maybe 200~250kH/W Overall (thank to your video) I've noticed a SIGNIFICANT increase in CONSISTENCY. The 1070ti (Founders Edition) required .5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, and 2.0mm thermal pads. I measured each and every pad to ensure they remained the same thickness. I do have to warn though that the GELID thermal pads are very tough to reuse as they are like a clay substance that sorta crumbles after taking off / putting back on.

Really impressive, professional video. Heck, it’s better than professional. Very thorough breakdown of the stats in an easy to understand way for the lay person. I love the narrator’s calm, relaxing voice too!

you are absolutely correct in your analysis: evacuate the heat from the heatsink as well to avoid increased core temps. I would like to see a full copper sheet used vs the more local "raspberry pi" heatsinks.

Try Gelid Extreme instead. They're much softer compared to the Gelid Ultimate. One possible flaw with this test is the harder pads do not compress as much, therefore leading to insufficient core mounting pressure. Another idea is to try thermal putty (TG-PP10). They don't have any hardness, so they can potentially allow the heatsink to be closer to the modules/core allowing for higher clamping and thermal transfer.

I've repadded a lot of 3090 FE , I've had no problems with the thermalright extreme odyssey , they measure as 1.5mm as advertised using a micrometer . My benchmarking involves running the card at 105C max on the hotspot .On a stock 3090 this usually involves underclocking the ram significantly and usually gets something like 80Mhash . With the thermaltakes and a repaste I'll get 120Mhash with a very high overclock and temps will usually stay at 98 or below with fan sitting at 60% ( which means the card can be pretty much silent when mining). I've used Gelids as a comparison and found zero difference in performance. I use gelid and thermaltake on Zotac and Msi and not noticed much difference between the two . Only difference being going for 0.5mm thicker on the gelids vs stock pads due to softness . I generally prefer to use the thermalright and take care to precisely measure the pads with a micrometer ( its all 1.5mm on the 3090 FE) on most 3080 and 3090 other than FE you only need to replace the memory pads front and back , the other components are usually fine with the stock pads whihc is just as well as they often use odd thicknesses like 1.3 and 1.7mm ( its totally fine to sandwich pads together to get the thickness required by the way)

Wow, I love how comprehensive this is. I really appreciate all the work you put into this video. It's hard to wade through all the threads on Thermal Grizzly Minus, Gelid and Fujipoly, having a video to reference cost vs effectiveness is awesome! I think I'd go with the Gelid pads, seems like the perfect middle ground. Do you have any experience with the TG-PP-10 putty? The EVGA 3080/90/Ti stock cooler uses custom sized pads and their own putty, trying to find a good alternative to bring down VRAM/Junction temps.

It is a GREAT vídeo, bringing light in an issue people talk too little about, and It's about time you guys do a follow-up one! I've been researching the subject in those past few weeks because I'm about to do the first clean-up and repasting of my new PC, so far everything is still stock. It is running great and I'm not having any problems, but I like to do the first repaste after one year and then just doing it again when necessary. Some suggestions: 1 can we replace thermal pad with a very thick layer of thermal paste? I think we can't because we would trade conduction for convection, and that's bad, but thermal paste, after it has curated, may end up behaving more like a solid, so, test it I say. 2 if we put thermal paste WITH thermal pads, what happens? I suggest doing it in 3 configurations, paste in both sides of the pad, paste in the dissipator side of the pad only and paste in the die side of the pad only, with 3 specs, matching the thermal conductivity of both the paste and the pad, with the paste being weaker, and with the pad being weaker. 3 is there a way to make it work? if we improve the heat dissipation to a degree heat gets blasted away before returning to the die?

This is a MUST SEEN video. Thanks very much folks for doing this. This is awesome. Clear, straight to the point and conclusion is perfect. Very pragmatic!

GeLid is the best!

Good vid...though a little misleading. I run 2 3090 FE's in one of my mining rigs and use Thermalright. They sit at 74 and 78 degrees (virtual memory temp) at my house. You have to get the thickness perfect. I think there are more than just 1.5mm pads that get used in this GPU. I wasted the money and bought all sizes .5mm - 3.0mm and then just matched it to the compressed thickness of the stock pad that was used. I had to remount a couple times to figure it out, but now it's perfect. It seems obvious with that poor of a result on a quality product that there's an issue you may want to retest. Just some things to consider! You're definitely right about there being a lack of content, especially for the rare 3090fe. Thanks for making it.

This is a great video to reference now after my 3090 FE needs maintenance after 3 1/4 years. Although there is something odd about your results with the Thermalright Oddysey pads, as those were the pads I used, and I got the same sort of temperatures you got with the Gelid Ultimate pads. My 3090 had the memory junction temperature at 112 degrees when new, and I ended up replacing the pads just two months after I bought it, which was very annoying and stressful. I used the 1.5mm thickness everywhere and got the memory junction temperature down to only get as high as 86 degrees under load when 3D rendering, which is also heavy on memory usage. I don't mine, so can't say how well it did for that, but it seems to be anything that is heavy on memory usage makes for good testing. At the moment, my 3090 is running a lot warmer than it used to on the core, so the thermal paste needs redoing, but the memory juction temperature is still the same as when I did it back then. I found this video as I'm concerned that even though the pads work alright still, they could end up crumbling if I try to remove them, so I think it's going to be safer for me to have some new ones ready to put in, and if the Thermalright ones can be inconsistent, I'll go with the better Gelid ones this time around. Thank you for such a good video.

Oh man, what a good and great tested guide. The speaker has a calm voice and the Infos are very good. Gelid and nb are really the kings of the game. Great testing and overview. Thanks for the work. Just awesome 👌🏼👍🏼

I must say, well done! This is a great video with only the relevant information. Interesting about the raised core temps on the ones that lower the mem temps the most. Keep up the great content.

Thank you so much for this video, truly appreciated not many reviewers will take the time and effort for this knowledge and accuracy 👏 you are the best I subscribed and like a millions times .

I love the methodologically sound and accurate approach to presenting data. Keeping as many variables stable/unchanged was a moment I started nerding out, so good to see reviewers take a scientific approach fully and seriously!

That's weird, I would have thought that reducing memory temperatures and so reducing temperatures on the PCB and so neighbouring components would lead to decrease of the core temperatures, but it's opposite, weird... Note to self: Best choice pads are Gelid GP Ultimate 15W or same under diffrent branding NAB Cooling NB Supermax 15W

Great video thanks for taking the time to test I have just re padded my 3090fe was hitting 104c on memory just gaming re padded using 1.5mm odyssey pads with great results max v ram temp now 80c I was so so nervous doing this tho but it's worked core temp has stayed the same max 69c and hotspot max 82c

Thank you for reviewing all these. I went with a Gelid extremes for my 3090 FE, and future 3090 FE cards.

Very thorough and well done job. Thank you for taking a look at the systemic effects of changing the thermal pads on the memory and considering the system as a whole.

Have you changed Pads? What pads do you LIKE?

I've done 10ish thermal pad swaps on 3080/90 gpus. I haven't seen core temp increase unless the density of the pad was too much or the size of the thermal pad was to thick. On some gpus I even got a core temp reduction because the stock thermal paste was trash Edit. I'd love to see you test the gelid gp 12w extreme, it's what I've had the best results with personally.

The best video I’ve seen in a looong, long time on comparing thermal pads/paste/OCing etc. FANTASTIC. Please give us more content like this! Subscribed!!!

I refurbish gaming consoles and have been using Gelid for a while now. They are affordable and result in a huge noise reduction, especially on PS4 Pro. It's good to see some numbers backing up my experience with them. Thx for the in-depth video.

I almost always use thermal grizzly, but this time I used the one that you recommended and it ended up being worse thermals then the original thermal pads. I personally didn’t have a good experience with those and will stick with the ones I know.

Thanks for the video! Can I also suggest that maybe the core temps were higher, due to the better thermalpads being harder than the stock ones? Because hard pads would compress less, leading to less contact pressure between heatsink and gpu core, leading to higher gpu core temps.

Dude thanks you so much now I know which to choose when my thermal pads eventually become bad.

This was a really helpful video. Very well researched and good job on the video production as well. Keep up the good work.

Why dont i use shimis? why not use this pad? best place to let us know and FINDout WHAT ELSE we did in our discord! Tek Shinji Community Discord discord.gg/mjVHe2YMkR

This is the only video i was able to find on this topic. Thank you! I found Pullsar Ice Dragon Thermal Pad 17 W/m*k pads but cant find any comperison videos.

Dude is super Charismatic, love the opening, helped me pick the perfect thermal pad. Thank you. Information: 10/10 Looks:10/10 Charisma: 10/10 Great content thanks brother

Thank the lord you made this video. I've spent hundreds and hundreds buying thermal pads. Then I finally thought, "Do I need to keep buying these expensive pads from Amazon?" I then go to AliExpress and see literally the same pads you found. I then prayed I could find a video of someone testing this before I dropped money and time doing it myself haha! THANK YOU!

This was so thorough that I don't know what to do now 🤣🤣

I know it's gonna sound crazy, but an ultra thin layer of thermal compound on each pad before making contact gave me INCREDIBLE results versus just thermal pads direct to the surface.I mean the smallest amt of paste you can use, super spread out thin with no extra to squeeze out, just enough to make it tacky.

Thanks for this. Need thermal pads for some boards that are worth less than some of these pads, consoles, and laptops. Nice to see reviews that break the one soze fits all mold.

Thanks a lot. really great video. I'd like to see a test concerning 18:25 after being repadded

Such an awesome test to go through! 👍🏼 you literally blow me away mate! ☺️ thanks for the tests! Very grateful for this. 🤘🏼

Thank you for all the hard work. Excellent & informative content !

For my Rtx 3090 FE I used Thermalright Thermal Pads 1.5mm 12.8 W/mK and saw -35c (never gets above 75c now with 22c ambient) on the Memory T junction temps under memory intensive workloads and only a rise of +2c on the die core temps with 50% fan speed. Mx-4 was used on the Gpu die. Notes: i did use a lot of mounting/screw pressure when putting everything back together. Almost 2 years now and still going strong with no reduction in improved thermals. Gpu core temps stay around 45-50c when gaming in 4k. Case is a LanCool 215.

Been waiting for someone to do this for a while now. Good job here.

This is exactly what I was looking, thanks for the thorough testing guy's. Nice job!

To give credit where it is due. I only just noticed the your way of cutting the pads is actualy quite good. I will try this. Thx

Thank you so much for this bro, it's hard to find Tp comparison video coz that takes a lot of time to make 🙏

great video my friend,s i'm from brazil and it's hard to find good content about that around, them I see that and it's perfect to understand even more than what I was looking for. congratulations

Perfect! Than, you for your extensive testing and findings. I will keep this sin mind as I look to possibly replace my 3080 thermal pads

This is awesome and it's like the only thermal pad around up video around

Those exact Thermalright pads work fantastic on my 3090FE!

Amazing job ! Thank you for explaining that you locked the fan speed of the card. Very few people explain what they do with fan curve, so their temps results are pretty much useless

No doubt, i saw four times this video, is the most interesting a fully of information in all youtube. Thanks a lot for a great job!!!!

Good comprehensive video. It must have taken a lot of time to do all the tests and I thank you for your time.

Perfect replacements for my stock NVMe heatsink pads.

First time viewer, this is a pretty damn great video - I think you've got yourself another subscriber! Personally I've used Thermalright pads on a couple of 3090 FE cards after fitting EK blocks. In both cases, the temperatures dropped around 10c under memory load compared to the pads EK supply which is about where they should be given the stated conductivity... Since I'm working with blocks, the results aren't directly comparable with yours obviously, and I use liquid metal on the die and the (free and softer) EK pads where heat transfer isn't needed, like on top of the chokes, which would likely mitigate any compression issues the pinned commenter brought up... or maybe the 1mm pads are just made to tighter tolerances or weren't stamped on at the amazon warehouse... (they did measure at 1.0mm).

I would love a follow up on this 👍

OK, saved into my Overclocking playlist.

Very thorough and learned something at the end that I wouldn't have expected, in regards to the impact of transferring more heat from the VRAM to the core. I wonder if active Water-cooling would make a significant impact here, looking forward to your follow-up video on this.

I've never been here before but GOT DAYUM your hair is majestic bro

thank you for your hard work, this was very helpful, concise and to the point.

thank you for this , you convinced me to buy gelid ultimate for my z690 chipset heat problem. , down 10-15 degress now:D

Thanks so much. Purchased NAB Cooling Super Max pad for my M.2 Heatsink.

very very useful video, the amount of work is flawless, ty so much guys for doing such a great job and show us the best.

Kudos! After viewing your video, I purchased quantity three of the mod/smart Fujipoly Ultra Extreme XR-m. I will mod my ASUS RTX3070-8G-EK, my RTX 3090 FE liquid cooled by both the EK-Quantum Vector FE RTX 3090 D-RGB BLK SE and the EK-Quantum Vector FE RTX 3090 D-RGB Active Backplate BLK SE, and my RTX 3070 Ti FE. Armed with your research, I discovered that the thermal pads supplied by EKWB are rated for thermal transferability of 3.5W/mK. Keep up the good energy!

This is all very great info. I'm not changing pads, but it seems to be a reoccurring topic as of late. very interesting to see the results on core temp. i would love to see a follow up regarding different heat sinks.

Good works, the redundancy is appreciated.

The thermal power transfer from the memory to the cooler is constant, namely at equilibrium it is simply the power usage of the modules. The reason why there is a anti-correlation between memory and gpu temperature is likely that the cooler mounting pressure shifts from the gpu die to the memory modules.

Been waiting for this video! Thank you TekShinji! Curious to see if you can compare the Gelid Extreme vs Gelid Ultimate pads.

I really wish this reviews can come earlier, I got the thermalalright pad 2 weeks ago, they just barely improved my 3080FE mem temp for about 2 degree C over the stock pad. Thank you for reviewing them, I know what not to wast my money on next time.

Interesting result for the Thermalright pads, I have just redone all of my pads on a FE RTX 3090 withn those same 1.5mm pads and contact is perfect, my memory temps dropped from 100c max down to 80c max.

Thank you. Thank you for doing sooo much work. I know it was tedious. I can save money now, and have little worries for installing some nab on nvme m.2 drives in a pcie enclosure. THANK YOU.

Meaning, all I gotta do is install a couple of miniature heatsinks at the back of the backplate and it’ll probably fix it!

nice! Gelid is the brand to always pop to mind

Fantastic video. One of the best ones out there.

HOW did I miss this video for a year?! Great work! I have used the NAB cooling pads and the generic blue 6 W/M K pads. Glad to know they actually WORK. * If you ever decide to revisit this and review some more pads: Owl Tree makes Blue 6 W/M K and Grey 12.8 W/M K pads. They come in a 4-pack of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0mm thickness, 100x100mm in size. Arctic makes Pink and Blue pads, TP-1, TP-2, TP-3 and TP-4, in various thicknesses and sizes, up to 200x100mm. XPC and Kritikal make a Black thermal pad (carbon?) claiming 20 W/M K but it was hard to find in 1.5mm thickness.

Awesome! I have 3 cards (one which is a 3090 FE) I want to replace pads on and this is invaluable! I was going to go with Gelid, but may consider NAB based on this video. Thanks for doing this!

I had the same exact issue I repadded my RTX 3080 MSI Ventus GPU using Gelids effectively lowering VRAM temps from 108 to 76 HOWEVER that raised the GPU’s CPU temps from 46 to 56 so I am glad you explained here that this is a basic heat transfer I thought I did something wrong. Thank you this is very informative video I am going to repad another MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X that is hitting 108 degrees right now. Also will have to repad a Zoltax RTX 3080 lhr that is hitting 108 also

some serious testing, real content value, thanks!

I bought thermalright extreme odyssey and as you state it in fact comes thinner than the specified thickness. 1mm came with 0.8 to 0.9 on the edges. I lost a considerable amount of thermal pad and contact pressure.

Gelid it is, thank you! Really bravo

Thanks I'm using this for my old PS2 slim PS2s use thermal pads

Helpful video thank you.

Im so grateful... Now I understand better

Hi, absolutely fantastic video and flawless testing methodology with precise yet concise conclusions, thank you 😊. It would be awesome if you could redo the test with a few more brands included - Kritical Thermal Pads, MX-5, Alphacool Eisschicht Ultra Soft, Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut, Thermal Putty (TG-PP10).

The increase in the core temp is due to the fact that the fan curve is lowered with better thermal pads on the memory

Thank you very much for this video, the best comparative of thermal pads

gn wishes it could present data this clearly and concisely without nonsense words