forImagine being the owner of a Gigabyte RTX 3070. Now, imagine having the card’s temperature spiking, hitting temperatures of 80°C on the GPU core and hotspots at 105°C. That’s what one Redditor experienced with their GPU for five years.
The Forgotten “Protector”
According to buczi94, the following situation prompted them to disassemble the RTX 3070’s cooler and give it a clean and perhaps a new splooge of thermal paste. Lo and behold, upon opening the card up, they found the problem: the factory protective film still covering the VRM thermal pads.
DIY PC builders may have seen this sort of protective film before, albeit on less intricate components; if you’ve ever purchased a CPU cooler — air or AIO — you’ll either see a concave plastic cover on top of the contact point that protects the pre-applied thermal paste on it from touching anything else, or a thin piece of plastic adhering to the naked metal. The latter is more or less the same protective film used during assembly. Oh, and if it wasn’t already obvious, this wasn’t an issue that occurred in Malaysia.
With the issue identified, buczi94 said that they removed the film, applied fresh thermal paste, and saw a marked difference in the performance of their Gigabyte RTX 3070. Peak GPU temperature dropped by 15°C, while hotspot temperature also reduced by 30°C. It then completed three hours of FurMark and OCCT testing without any error, save for a black screen that appeared once during a cold boot, but nothing major beyond that.
Gigabyte: Warranty Says No…
buczi94 says that they did contact Gigabyte about the “factory assembly issue”, asking if the brand would be able to provide some form of compensation or an equivalent replacement. Sadly, two factors were working against them.
Firstly, they already “fixed” the issue and also pried open the card by themselves. Because of this, Gigabyte staunchly indicated that they would not help him, as the RTX 3070 wasn’t opened up by their technicians.
Factory protective film on thermal pads on my Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC rev 2.0
byu/buczi94 inpcmasterrace
And second, the warranty of the card has clearly lapsed well beyond Gigabyte’s usual 3-year warranty period. Be that as it may, though, it can be argued that the fault technically lies in Gigabyte’s hands, as the card did leave the factory assembly line with a defect, and as such, would warrant a kind of compensation. Still, expecting a free replacement GPU in this current economy is a stretch.
Also, could be worse. buczi94 could’ve opened up their GPU and found the components awash in a sea of thermal paste.
(Source: Reddit)
