 Thermal compound or thermal interface material is the stuff that goes between a heat generating component and the cooler whose job it is to remove the aforementioned heat from the aforementioned component. Now today's video will cover how to replace the factory applied thermal compound on your graphics card with an aftermarket one to reduce the operating temperature of this sensitive electronic component potentially improving its lifespan and in some cases even its performance thanks to GPU boost technology. Or another way to leverage it would be to have it actually run quieter making the fans not spin as fast but then have it run at the same temperature if that's your thing. Which if it is by the way stay tuned because our review of the CM Silencio 652S is coming very soon. Cooler Master's case mod world series is your opportunity to show off your modding skills and win great prizes. Entries close February 7th 2015 click now to learn more. Now our test today focuses on a particular model of graphics card a GeForce GTX 960 Super Super Clock that was graciously provided by EVGA, but this principle applies to lots of different types of electronic do-dattery. In a desktop computer the CPU motherboard or really any type of expansion card might have a cooler with a with lame duck thermal goop on it and on a laptop the same can also be true. One thing to be really careful of though is warranty coverage. Some manufacturers don't want you poking and prodding at their product or they will invalidate your warranty. Fortunately EVGA is cool with that as long as you return the card and then you can get a warranty. Fortunately EVGA is cool with that as long as you return the card to at least as far as outward appearances go the factory configuration before sending it in for an RMA. They'll even let you replace the cooler outright with something else if you want to. But we won't be doing that because A EVGA's ACX 2.0 plus cooler with its dual double ball bearing 92mm fan design quad heat pipes and fanless operating mode is already pretty darn good and B because that would introduce an additional variable that would make it impossible for us to know if our goop replacement made a difference. So we're just going to take it off and put it right back on again when we're done. After we overclock it. After all if you're not going to push your hardware to the limits mods like this are certainly a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon but not exactly necessary. So the settings I dialed in were 110% power target plus 0.25 millivolts on the GPU and plus 144 megahertz to boost with the fan speed locked at 17% or around 580 RPM and all of this was in a room with an ambient temperature of about 21 degrees Celsius. This yielded temperatures of 67 degrees using EVGA's OC scanning utility 1 million particle plasma stress test running at 2560 by 1440 resolution in windowed mode. The boost clock I observed with these settings was 1586 megahertz. Although it should be noted these settings were not verified in actual games and these stress test programs often allow higher clock speeds than you can achieve in the real world. Anyway let's get to business. First gather all the materials you'll need. The card itself, isopropyl alcohol and a lint free wipe, a screwdriver and replacement thermal compound. I'll be using IC diamond because it's among the best on the market. Start with the four screws positioned around the processor itself usually near the middle of the card and tensioned by springs. Loosen them in a cross pattern then remove them fully. For our card this was actually enough to completely free the cooler but on some other cards you may need to remove the rest of the screws on the back and even others on the top bottom sides or even rear I.O. You can test if you've got everything by giving the cooler a wiggle then once you're sure all the screws are removed you can gently pull it free. Never force it and be mindful of your fan power plug. You don't want to accidentally yank on it since those connectors are often very fragile. Now you can see from this footage I took when I did my initial swap that EVGA is using like a pre-done exactly square thermal paste patch rather than relying on manual application and that it seems to be working for them. The base plate of the cooler is making very even contact with the GPU core through only a thin layer of material. This is very desirable. You need thermal compound on your GPU or it'll overheat but a thick layer here can actually insulate the GPU causing it to run hotter. Speaking of which some graphics cards will have what are called thermal pads. They're a little bit thicker on components like voltage regulator modules or memory chips. Leave these on and reuse those pads unless you have replacement pads of the exact same thickness. Replacing pads with a thick application of paste can cause poor contact between your cooler and your graphics card. With the cooler off it's time to clean both the GPU itself and the base of the cooler with 99% isopropyl alcohol. 70% is fine too by the way. I recommend starting with a couple slow high pressure passes on the cooler base with your cleaning cloth to remove the bulk of the goop from the surface. Then fold that away and find a fresh part of your cloth and use a buffing motion to take off the rest. Do the same for the GPU itself. Just as an FYI the compound on there won't damage your card if it gets on the chip package or even on the board PCB. But that's not a license to be sloppy. Try to remove as much as you can. With the compound removed I usually do a final pass with a fresh cloth to remove any lint or residue. Applying thermal compound isn't rocket science and remember less is more. You want enough for it to spread out and cover the whole GPU but not so much that it gets mushed out on the sides and gets all over the place. I use the line method but a dot in the center also works. Just don't waste your time spreading it out. It's messy, unnecessary and can actually trap air bubbles in the compound in some cases. Although normally those would be squeezed out by the same pressure that spreads the thermal compound with the other techniques once you tighten the mounting screws. On that note now it's time to tighten the mounting screws. Again in a cross pattern. Throw this baby on the test bench and find out if it worked. BOOM! Low temperatures using the exact same testing parameters of 64 degrees. About a 3 degree improvement. WOOOOO! Yeah alright. So it's not exactly earthshaking. So if you're sitting there wondering what exactly was the point of doing all this to a brand new piece of hardware that's obviously working just fine. I don't blame you. But I was ready for that question. So here are some other situations where it might make more sense. While EVGA didn't do this, some manufacturers use really low performance thermal material either to save a buck or for reasons that are unlikely to even occur to most consumers. Things like stability over time or at extreme temperatures during storage. So there's that. And even the most well intentioned manufacturer who chooses the highest quality thermal compound can have a sloppy application once in a while. So if your component is running hotter than you're expecting or not turboing as high as you'd like, you can follow this guide to try a thermal compound replacement since it doesn't cost very much. And finally, this might actually come in handy if you're trying to breathe new life into an older piece of hardware too. Thermal pastes, particularly the lower quality ones, don't stay potent forever and may need to be refreshed every once in a while. Speaking of things to refresh once in a while, your monitor! And Massdrop is currently giving you the opportunity to refresh to one of the sexiest monitors on the market. For a limited time, they have the LG 34UC87B, the sort of very near cousin of the current love of my monitor life, LG's 34UC97, for about $350 off of its retail price at their lowest drop. At this point, you should probably be familiar with Massdrop because of their awesome deals on great tech products like this one, but if not, I guess I'll give you a little rundown. They're a site that facilitates group buys, ensuring that you can get great deals on basically everything you need in your day to day life, like tools, clothes, tea, entertainment items like this LG Curve display, and even board games and stuff like that. Items are selected by the Massdrop community through polls, and the most popular items are sourced by Massdrop. They work directly with manufacturers and distributors to find a starting price, a lowest price, and a bunch of prices in between. And the more people agree to buy, the more the price goes down, it's awesome. So there's a referral link in the video description that leads to the drop for this awesome monitor, like 3440x1440 resolution IPS display. It's curved, it's freaking awesome. The only real difference between it and the 97 is that it has a height adjustable stand, which is like even better. So you can head down to that link to get full details on pricing and the duration of the drop if you're interested in a curved display but have been scared off by the price. So this might be a great opportunity to take care of that. Anyway, speaking of great opportunities to take care of things, there's a link in the video description. You can buy a cool t-shirt like this one. You can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code. You can give us a monthly contribution directly if you like our videos. And that was my opportunity to do my outro. Now is my opportunity to say, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. Peace!