so you can think of each shader as "using" 100.0% of your CUDA cores, even the very simplest shader, but it might only use it for a tiny fraction of a second, if it's an easy one

I see

well It has been working for 6 hours, I think it is safe to say my GPU works again

must have been the thermal paste

is thermal paste conductive?

@Vader conductive of what? thermal paste has to be (by design) extremely heat conductive, but it may or may not be electrically conductive

the latter one

in nature, when you think about it, most natural substances are either both electrically conductive and heat conductive, or neither

stuff like rubber -- conducts neither. steel -- conducts both

copper conducts both

thermal pastes are a bit different since they don't necessarily conduct electricity all that well

@Vader Depends. Some are, some aren't.

but probably better than say, rubber

They generally lean towards non-electrically-conductive these days.

I have the AS5

I heard it is

but that was on the internet, so...

@Vader How about not listening to rumors and read what the manufacturer says?

arcticsilver.com/as5.htm

Doesn't get much clearer than that.

thanks

@Bob good; that settles it even more than wiki does... maybe someone should edit the wiki article on it to add that info

you make a good point

There's the chance that the manuf is lying... but then they'd get sued over it, so...

If you do apply the paste and find it does conduct (and can prove it, which shouldn't be too hard), then you have a pretty straightforward case.

@Bob not only that, but manufacturers usually overestimate their products' performance related to undesirable characteristics, and not underestimate them

@ÃŁŁǫǛȉЖΦΤїҪ I'm not sure if that's an argument for or against trusting this :P

^^ that kind of scenario just doesn't happen

what I would EXPECT of a slimebag company would be the opposite

Eh. There's really no such thing as a perfect conductor or insulator (barring a vacuum).

All insulator materials have some voltage at which they'll conduct. Or at least let the arc through.

@Bob positive lightning strike? :P

@ÃŁŁǫǛȉЖΦΤїҪ That's one example, yes :P

positive lightning can be 1GV @ 300 kA

I don't know if man makes a material that it can't arc right through

Still, in normal use, where you shouldn't see voltages > 12V, it's pretty easy to determine if something is conductive.

@ÃŁŁǫǛȉЖΦΤїҪ Depends on the thickness?

@Bob ofc :P

Hell, @Vader, if you really want to then grab a multimeter and measure the resistance.

nah, I will trust the manufacturer

Or buy/build a tesla coil.

it sounds like we've reached an Occam's Razor position with respect to this particular GPU "anomaly"

Or use your Sith lightning.

Oh wait you can't do that :(

Get your master to do it?

should the thermal paste cover the entire GPU chip?

I don't see why we need to go any further -- Occam's Razor: this IS the cause (and respective solution)

@Vader No. Tiny dollop in the centre. The pressure of the heatsink will spread it.

Here's @JourneymanGeek's favourite link: pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/…

yeah I saw a video on it

a good video as well

Either put a tiny dollop in the centre (saves paste, too) or put a really thin and small X across it.

Remember, the paste is not supposed to bridge the two surfaces.

Metal-metal contact is best.

The paste is only supposed to eliminate air pockets.

I put about a pea sized dot in the center

A tiny tiny bit and a lot of pressure will work best.

oh

@Bob I probably did a bit too much in that case

@Vader Yea, that's alright.

The problem with just a bit in the centre is it doesn't always spread to the edge, but the actual effectiveness is good enough.

@Vader Pea-sized might be a tad much, but it won't do any harm.

actually a bit bigger, but not much

should be fine

I screwed it on tight anyway

should be direct contact

water cooling would probably be better

are overclocked GPUs just the factory card with a fancy fan overclocked?

or are the manufactured differently

@Vader if the product name claims that the product is factory overclocked, generally they have some custom cooling solution, or better heatsinks, or better thermal paste, or all of the above -- compared to the stock card -- to allow for overclocking. Or maybe the stock card was just VERY conservatively designed, allowing for "free" OC headroom, without even modifying the reference cooling.

the GPU itself -- the logic -- is exactly 100% identical

both are made by nvidia

the only thing that can differ is the cooling aspects and sometimes the material used in the board

eve the ASUS/EVGA ones?

hmm

good to know

anything other than that can in theory be changed by the board manufacturer

which on has better cooling do you think?

the bottom one is more expensive

@ÃŁŁǫǛȉЖΦΤїҪ e.g. the RAM, the voltage regulators (important for overclocking!), the cooling (obviously), and a lot of other support circuitry (e.g. capacitors for power filtering)

There can be a world of difference between two "GTX 580" cards

@Bob on the other hand, Nvidia and AMD aren't especially known for skimping on quality in their reference designs. it's hard to imagine there being much improvement that doesn't sacrifice something in the sake of something else

e.g. much louder fans that cool better, or bulkier heatsink that dissipates more heat, or quieter fans that cause the GPU to throttle back at full utilization

and water cooling is the best of both worlds?

@Vader as long as nobody with sharp claws (cats, birds, dogs?) or sharp pins comes near it

My next GPU will have water cooling

you can poke a fan -- worst case, it'll make a nasty noise and maybe stop working -- but it won't cause collateral damage to the rest of your rig

if the water inside the water cooling system escapes, you probably lose most of your build

hmm

good point

I love that there's now a "for the love of Dog please stop flagging this post" on this

@Mokubai That's an amazing post.

It certainly is something special.

What happened? It's been 13 minutes! superuser.com/review/suggested-edits/264091

(does it just take that long?)

@bjb568 It's done. Be patient, it won't kill you to wait

I need to wait? AAAAAAAAHHHH!

@bjb568 peer review bra'!

There should be a thing to check if you have gotten a gold edit-review badge in another site or something first.

But each site also has various rules for that they deem acceptable edits

Like?

SO, not allowed to change code, but you can add language to the code blocks

Good point... That's the only exception I can think of... Sorry

You are allowed to change code, but unless it's JS, HTML, XML, CSS, or something like I know AND post quality is positive AND edit improves the post AND the code before is good AND the edit isn't trivial, I'll reject it as vandalism :P

If I asked a question about why my code wasn't working as expected, and you changed it, then wouldn't it change the entire meaning of my question?

Exactly

BRB

humblebundle.com/books <- Over 100 Transformers digital comics for $15.

@MichaelFrank So the "don't change the code" rule can be generalized to "don't change the question" - that's SE wide.

@MichaelFrank Free Walking Dead, volumes 1-3

@CanadianLuke Yea, I have all of The Walking Dead already. :3

I bought Volumes 15-19... I've read the others though before that.

wowowowow