September 04, 2024

Update: Carbice Pad at two years in NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super GPU with stable and reliable high thermal conductivity performance

Reliable, cost-effective, sustainable cooling. 

As promised, we are providing you with an update on our RTX 4080 Super thermal cycling testing. We are using Furmark for benchmark testing of the RTX GPU. Furmark is a stress test that is able to consistently and steadily pull and use the max power from the GPU. To ensure steady state, Furmark is run for 15 minutes (with 100% fan power) before 3 minutes of on and off cycling begins (we estimate that 8 on/off cycles equals an average day's use and an average user has 5 equivalent days of use per week, but this will vary greatly based on user behavior). The 100% fan power increases the significance of the TIM in the thermal stack and enables more clarity when comparing TIM performance. As illustrated, the Carbice Pad is holding strong without any noticeable performance degradation.


 

As we continue to analyze the long-lasting effectiveness of the Carbice Pad, it’s important to underscore that the thermal paste reportedly being used in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, has an apparent failure event at around six months with the temperature spiking well above the recommended range up to 100ºC. Although six months is a far shorter lifespan than advertised by many of the leading thermal paste products on the market (which boast a 1–2-year lifespan), a paste failure can lead to overheating of the GPU or CPU. CPUs under a heavy workload should remain at around 80ºC – 85ºC, while GPUs can typically operate at slightly higher temperatures under heavy workloads of up to 90ºC – 95ºC.

While thermal pastes dry out and lose effectiveness, Carbice Pad offers a reliable and consistent temperature. It also performs better over time as its conductive material continues to conform to fill any gaps or voids between the heat source and the heat sink. 

While thermal pastes dry out and lose effectiveness, Carbice Pad offers a reliable and consistent temperature.

Knowing that conventional thermal paste lifespans vary greatly depending on the quality of the paste, the paste application process, and the intensity of work applied to them means that you’ll be constantly monitoring the temperatures and re-applying paste to your GPU or CPUs in order to preemptively avoid damage and loss of performance. This can be particularly frustrating for gamers or data center technicians working with processors doing highly demanding tasks over long periods of time. Carbice Pad is a cost-effective solution to eliminate the task of reapplying thermal interface materials and can drastically reduce the need for constantly monitoring equipment for extreme temperature fluctuations. With Carbice, systems can be managed with predictability.

Increasing GPU/CPU reliability, sustainably 

Carbice Pads are sustainably manufactured using recycled aluminum and waste carbon gas in a circular production model. Carbice is the only thermal interface material option that can scale to 100s of billions of square inches of use across many industries without a significant environmental and supply chain burden.


Carbice Pad extends the lifespan of GPUs and CPUs as a result of the unmatched reliability of performance over time and cycles, compared to other TIMs. This allows for easy reuse and re-work at the end-of-life to increase the percentage of electronic components that can be disassembled and recycled cost-effectively.

Carbice Pad extends the lifespan of GPUs and CPUs as a result of the unmatched reliability of performance over time and cycles, compared to other TIMs.


See the original blogpost regarding the testing of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super GPU here.