Nvidia may have over-engineered its GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics cards as tests show that a regular thermal paste can do the job just fine. Owners will still benefit from the original liquid metal application, but not as much as some may think.
According to TechPowerUp’s testing, Arctic MX-6 thermal paste – found for around £6 – delivers very close results to the factory-applied liquid-metal thermal interface inside RTX 5090 Founders Edition. The GPU temperature increased by a mere 1.8°C after swapping to a regular compound. While the difference between pastes is generally small, one would expect a larger gap against the famous liquid metal. Heck, even Sony chose it for its PlayStation 5 consoles, as do many laptop manufacturers.
The test took about six minutes for the GB202 GPU to heat up the vapour chamber and flowthrough cooling fins. After this, the maximum temperature hit 77.6°C using liquid metal and 79.4°C using Arctic MX-6. Such a small difference that it can easily be caused by a dusty machine or the summer season. As you’d expect, the testing procedure was identical to keep everything consistent, including fan speed.
The tested performance was identical to the out-of-box state, and the GPU didn’t suffer from any thermal throttling. RTX 5090 has a higher thermal limit than RTX 4090, raising from 83°C to a whopping 90°C. Thus, the GPU was at a safe distance from overheating, even including the hotspot temperature, which Nvidia doesn’t expose to users.
These results show that users can re-paste their graphics cards without missing anything. Let’s say in a couple of years if the GPU starts getting hotter, or after installing a liquid cooling block. Some may also feel safer using regular paste due to its non-conductive nature, unlike liquid metal.
Now you may ask, why has Nvidia even bothered with liquid metal knowing its potential dangers? The most reasonable answer is maximum performance. As explained during its Founders Edition development video, Nvidia aims to deliver the best thermal performance in a dual-slot format. We can say that the team has achieved that seeing how this 575W monster chip remains under 80°C.
