My EVGA GTX 1080 TI FTW3 has been through a lot. It initially ran in a machine learning rig with 5 other GTX 1080 cards for about a year or so. I was able to acquire it from work when that project ended. And I used it for crypto mining for about a year. Now for the last few years it's been my primary gaming GPU for older MMOs and games. 

While it's been plugging away nicely at Elder Scrolls Online and Skyrim. It did start screaming when I decided to fire up World of Warcraft. While it played the game fine, it was running at 80c. So I decided I would take a stab at reapplying the thermal paste.

It was not that hard to remove the heatsink. My big fear was how bad the thermal pads would be and if I could still reuse them. I didn't want to mess with trying to replace those if I could avoid it. Thankfully the thermal pads were intact. I cleaned up the system board and fans, reapplied the thermal paste with some Arctic MX6 I had on hand. And put it back together. 

Definitely worth the effort. GPU temps drop about 15C and a slight boost in performance. This will tide me over a bit longer.

I'm an alien that has found himself stuck here on this rock with a bunch of primates for the past 40 something years now. During this time I've grown a passion for Mexican food, technology, gaming, and weird things the primates do.

What I'm doing with this website, not even I know yet. So stay tuned. 

Peace!