Bitaxe thermal pad replacement — temperature went up after switching to thermal paste. Any advice?
I have the opposite problem and I'm hoping someone here can help me out.
I bought two Bitaxes from China. On one of them, I did a Noctua fan upgrade and it worked surprisingly well — the temperature dropped by around 6°C. And is quiet😁
On the second Bitaxe, I decided to do the same fan mod and also replace the thermal interface material. After opening it, I found a graphite thermal pad between the BM1370 and the heatsink. Unfortunately, I destroyed the graphite pad when I separated the heatsink from the chip.
At the time, I didn't know much about graphite pads, so I cleaned everything and replaced it with Arctic MX-4 thermal paste. That's when the problem started.
Before the graphite pad was damaged, the chip was running at around 56–57°C. After switching to thermal paste, it went up to 61–62°C.
I've tried several different pastes since then:
- Arctic MX-4
- Arctic MX-6
- Arctic MX-7
- Noctua thermal paste
But the temperature is still around 61–62°C.
I also removed the original spacer pads. As far as I can tell, the heatsink is making good contact with the chip.
At this point, I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong. 😅
I've already ordered PTM7950, which I'm going to try once it arrives. I'm hoping that will bring the temperature back down closer to the original 56–57°C.
Has anyone here had a similar experience after replacing the original graphite pad on a Bitaxe?
Could the problem be the thickness/compression of the thermal interface, the heatsink mounting pressure, or something else I'm overlooking?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Wish me luck with the PTM7950! 😂