Noctua NT-H1 Update offers excellent insulation properties, making it highly non-conductive.
Noctua NT-H1 Update offers excellent insulation properties, making it highly non-conductive.
Hey everyone, I recently experienced a video card failure and ended up purchasing an Asus NVidia GTX 1050 Ti. Since I’m not a professional gamer, the original cooler was quite loud, so I opted for a cooling upgrade using the solution from my failing card. I learned from this project on the channel that it could work, which gave me confidence. It required some clever adjustments—like adjusting the standoff screws to improve airflow. I used some leftover Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste directly onto the chip die. The result was impressive; the noise dropped significantly and the cooling performance exceeded expectations compared to the stock cooler.
However, later in the morning my PC crashed during BIOS setup. After a reboot, everything stopped completely. The screen remained on but displayed BIOS messages. I replaced the graphics card with an older model, which resolved the issue. Upon reinserting the new card, I noticed excessive thermal paste spilled over, covering nearby capacitors. Although it wasn’t conductive, this affected performance. To fix it, I trimmed a small section of standoffs and added a thin strip of heat-resistant electrical tape between them and the PCB. Stress tests confirmed everything was stable.
I’m still curious about the thermal paste’s conductivity—my initial assumption was it was non-conductive, but it seems there might be some resistance at play. As someone who builds PCs, I’m puzzled by this design choice. Does anyone have similar experiences? Any insights on the electrical properties of Noctua NT-H1 would be appreciated. Thanks!
Sincerely, Jef
I grasped a few of these terms, OP, but noctua nth1 seems very poor conductivity... it looks like you might have made a mistake with the cooler compatibility, or the card would have failed regardless. Who knows?
Thanks for the responses. It seems the thermal paste isn't likely the issue. My next step will be a thorough shake-and-test method. (Power it on until it starts...) They actually offer tools to gently shake electronics to find and fix weak solder connections, which makes sense. If shaking it helps it boot up, I realize I made a mistake.
I’m without Noctua paste, yet I checked the resistivity of the HY880—it came back as unmeasurable, likely due to its high-end multimeter.
So booting does not result in booting. Unplugging the HDMI cable and plugging it back in ... does. That's probably why it worked after cleaning the solderpaste. I had to unplug the HDMI cable to do so. So noctua is of the hook so are the Asus PCB designers. Let's keep it at "I screwed up" for now. If no one minds, I will keep posting on this issue as a way to keep a log. And who knows, one day a fellow adventurer or bored internet archeologist may read all this and decide that changing the cooler of a graphics card is not the wisest of adventures to undertake, or that people in the 21st century had too little real life problems to deal with. Next step, go back to stock cooler. Did that, everything works, PC powers up after shutdown, no need to touch the HDMI cable. I noticed that the stock cooler has rubber rings that seem to insulate the heatsink from the PCB ground. That could explain the HDMI issue. Too large coupling plane? A bit vague and far fetched maybe. I skrewed up still seems to be the best bet, but a bit hard to accept.
PC functioned properly for a week. The same problem appeared again recently. Removed the HDMI cable, BIOS remained unresponsive. Held my breath and then it started working again.
Updated information reveals configurations for quick startup and standard startup (Asus Prime B450). Suggestion: standard startup appears significantly delayed (about a minute or more), while quick startup functions correctly. Adjustments to hardware seem to initiate the standard startup.
is changing the graphics card the reason? Could this have caused something else? Or is this a severe problem linked to the current chip shortage? Time to get straight to the point. Next step: replace the graphics card with a GTX 710 and see if that fixes everything. If it works, I’ll know what to do next.
It's odd to notice I'm paying double for my AMD 3600 now compared to when I first got it. Doesn't seem like technology should make things better at the same cost or lower the price for the same performance.
Well, things seem to have changed. Did you attempt the GTX 710? It might point to a problem with your motherboard. The 1050ti with the standard cooler also faced some challenges? You probably should consider starting over on this hardware issue. Software: Issue description: (Not necessarily what you tried to resolve...)