I have 12 R9 290s and a couple of them run a full 10-15 degrees hotter than the others. Would I be correct in assuming that the thermal paste was likely applied poorly at the factory on those cards? I moved them around to make sure it wasn't a positional/airflow issue.
Do any of you with large amounts of cards regularly take the problem card apart to reapply the thermal paste thus dropping temperatures by 10 degrees or more?
Just curious if this is something I should pursue, I've built hundreds of PCs but I've never taken a gpu cooling system off.
Yes I do, I got 3 r9 280x cards from newegg recently, one card ran way hotter than the others. I could have sent it in for warranty, but there were no more cards available. I chose to void warranty and repaste chip. Took 15 minutes and gpu ran cool like the others afterwards.