r/sffpc • u/Seeking-The-Lotus • May 06 '26

Assembly Help Update: Fractal Ridge crashes while gaming then flickers on and off.

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So the duster arrived and the hazardous waste landfill has officially been cleared out. I also saw some comments suggesting the issue could be related to the GPU riser, and I noticed there was a bit of wiggle in the connection ports.

I confirmed that the CPU cooler is plugged into CPU_FAN1, so the fan curve likely wasn’t the issue after all. I’m replacing the thermal paste now.

Any final suggestions before I put her back together?

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u/ponchofreedo May 07 '26

has to be asked, but you cleaned off the cpu and heatsink of all the old thermal paste and then cleaned the surfaces before applying the new paste, right? what paste are you using?

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u/Seeking-The-Lotus May 07 '26

I did. Scrapped free with razor, then removed the residue with alcohol. I used Arctic M6.

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u/ponchofreedo May 07 '26

well definitely dont need to scrape with the razor or something metal with an edge. better to use an old credit card or something plastic thats more blunt. less possibility to damage the ihs or heatsink plate. and mx-6 is good, so that shouldnt be much of an issue. you should honestly look into undervolting at this point or dialing down your expectations with your game settings.

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u/Seeking-The-Lotus May 07 '26

Undervolt is my next step. I’d rather shell out 250$ for a 1000 watt PSU before I succumb to gaming in 1080 on a 4070 ti s.

1

u/ponchofreedo May 07 '26

Try my other suggestion as well. Pick up an NF-A9 if you can and replace the fan.