Hello people of reddit, I come to you in my hour of need.
Over the past few months, I've noticed that my Gigabyte RTX 3070 has been running louder than normal, and that the fans on the card would occasionally kick up to speeds of 3500+ RPM under load before returning to normal, which is much louder than I'd like. I also have a suspicion that the card is just generally running a little slower than it used to, but I haven't totally investigated that. I started looking into the fan issue last week, and I began by altering the fan curves, but even with a more aggressive one, this issue still persists.
Looking at the temps, I found that the card's temperature would climb rapidly to about 75 C under load, where it would stay, and that the hotspot temp would sit around 105 C. From what I can tell, it seems like the card's fans kick up significantly whenever the hotspot climbs somewhat over 105 C, and then fall back to normal speed (which at this temp, is 100%) when the hotspot comes back down. I've also tried opening up the case, which drops temps by a few degrees, but doesn't resolve the issue fully.
tl;dr, that's all to say that with a temperature difference of 30 C between the core and hotspot, I'm pretty sure my card needs new thermal paste/pads to improve its performance.
Looking online, I see a lot of people recommending to others to replace the thermal paste themselves, unless the card is still under warranty. I got this card brand new about 4 years ago, and the warranty period ends on the 16th of this month.
I've heard mixed reviews of Gigabyte's RMA services in the US, and I even sent in a ticket myself last week, but I've gotten radio silence other than an automated message, and I can't even check on the status of my request, as half the links they included in the automated email are broken. So I'm not really even sure if my request has been approved yet, and I'm not sure if I should contact them to investigate this further, or if I should just ditch the process and repair the card myself.
I'm just worried about the card being damaged in transit if I go the RMA route, and I'd also rather not have to wait a few weeks (at least) to get my card back, especially considering that I'll be moving back to university soon. However, I'm also worried that I'll screw something up when re-pasting the card, or that I'll miss another issue with the card that the RMA process would pick up on that might bite me in the future.
So, I apologize for this longwinded and rambling post, but good people of reddit, what do you think I should do?
Also, for those interested, the exact model of my GPU is: GIGABYTE RTX 3070 GAMING OC Rev. 2.0