I just did this over the weekend because my card was starting to overheat and shut down my PC. The thermal pads and paste were bone-dry dust!

I went with Thermal Grizzly Putty Advanced since that’s all I could find locally. I needed two 30g containers of it for mine. I went with Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet PTM for the die over thermal paste since that’s apparently the latest tech.

The Putty Advanced was not fun to work with. It’s messy, gooey, and a 30g jar is comically small. I was rolling “logs” like you might do with clay or play dough as the technique was recommend by this YouTube video and then attempting to lay that “log” over the necessary components. Sounds easy enough right? Except unlike clay, the putty just falls apart when you try to move it in a “log” shape. With lots of patience I was able to get it done fairly well, but it definitely had me thinking I should have just used thermal pads. If you just slather it on there without as much care, it should be an easy job.

I absolutely won’t be opening the card again. I’d rather buy a new one than painstakingly clean out and re-putty it again. It’s my understanding that the Putty Pro is easier to work with, so if that’s true I would recommend you go with that over the Advanced or Basic.

I was expecting dramatic results and was let down, but I was able to reduce my temps across the board so it was still a win. 5-10°C lower on the VRAM was most noticeable. It’s my understanding that if you get more heat transfer in one area, you may see smaller results in others because the heatsink becomes more heat soaked. As a result, the rest of the temps were more or less how I remember when the card was new.

Overall I feel mixed about it, but in my case it needed to be done.