With its Prime and TUF Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards, Asus is ditching thermal paste for a thermal pad that melts when hot

pcgamer.com:

AMD hasn't given us much information about the upcoming Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT this CES 2025, but that hasn't stopped Asus from giving us a peek at its own versions of the new graphics cards. The company has just announced its TUF Gaming OC and Prime OC versions of the next-gen AMD cards and probably the biggest change is how they approach cooling.

Instead of thermal paste on top of the GPU die, the TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 (XT and non-XT) OC and Prime Radeon RX 9070 (XT and non-XT) OC graphics cards will all feature a «phase-change thermal pad» that Asus says is «designed to give you reliable performance over the long term».

Asus explains: «The electrically non-conductive pad is a solid at room temperature but liquefies as it heats up. As it melts, it fills the microscopic gaps between the GPU and thermal module, providing superior thermal conductivity and enhanced heat dissipation, ensuring optimal performance, even for sustained, heavy GPU workloads.

»Additionally, the phase-change thermal pads offer exceptional longevity. They outlast traditional pastes by a significant margin, even for graphics cards that see heavy workloads on a regular basis. We can’t say that you’ll never want to repaste one of these graphics cards, but we are confident that it’ll be a long time before you even consider it."

The main reason to opt for a phase-change thermal pad instead of standard thermal paste, as Asus suggests, is because it can offer more longevity. This is because phase-change paste returns to a solid state at room temp, and this should prevent «pump out» in the long-term, which is when thermal paste squeezes away from the die centre over time, leading to increasing temperatures.

Our Nick uses a phase-change pad on his RTX 4080 Super for just that reason. You can see a picture of this below. The material being used to keep the thermals in check is Honeywell PTM7950, which has been shown to perform incredibly well.

The use of such thermal pads isn't completely new.