Thermal Paste VS Thermal Tape
Anyone who repairs a crypto miner knows that fixing a hashboard is no walk in the park. Diagnosing and replacing a single faulty ASIC chip can take hours. But the job isn’t done after the chip is soldered. You still have to clean the board and, most importantly, re-apply a thermal before clamping the heatsink back on.
Most reputable repair shops, including ours, rely on high-quality crypto miner thermal paste. But I’ve seen some chatter online about using thermal tape instead. I even found articles claiming,
“Standard Tapes… are rated for continuous operation at… 90°C up to 150°C.”
This sounds fine on paper, right? It promises a fast, clean application with no messy thermal paste to clean up.
Well, last month we ran out of our usual thermal paste. But we did have a roll of thermal tape on the shelf. Remembering what I’d read, I decided to try it. I meticulously cleaned the chips, applied the tape, and clamped the heatsinks down. The repair seemed perfect.
Fast forward one month.
The exact same crypto miner came back to the shop, throwing 540/541 errors—hashboards failing to initialize. When I opened it, my stomach dropped. It was the two boards I had repaired… with the thermal tape.
The moment I pulled the heatsink, the problem was obvious. The thermal tape had failed, and badly. It wasn’t designed for the intense, focused pressure of a miner’s heatsink. Instead of transferring heat, it had degraded, creating air gaps and hotspots. The chips had quite literally cooked themselves, leading to even more damage.
This costly mistake sent me back to the drawing board. It turns out I, and many others, were confusing two very different products: Thermal Tape and Thermal Pads. If you’re repairing a crypto miner, this is what you must know.
The Problem: Thermal Adhesive Tape (What I Used)
This is the stuff you should never use under an ASIC heatsink.
- What It Is: It’s literally double-sided sticky tape that happens to conduct heat. It’s usually very thin.
- Its Real Job: Sticking lightweight heatsinks onto components that have no screws or clamps (like VRAM chips on a graphics card or other small board components).
- Why It Fails on an ASIC: It’s not made for the massive clamping pressure of a crypto miner heatsink. The adhesive layer itself gets in the way of true contact and breaks down under the 24/7, 100°C+ abuse.
The Right Tools for the Job: Paste and Pads
This is what we should be using.
Crypto Miner Thermal Paste (The Industry Standard)
This is the go-to for a reason. Good crypto miner thermal paste is designed to fill microscopic air gaps and handle extreme, constant heat. It’s formulated not to dry out or “pump out” under pressure like cheap PC paste. Its job is pure heat transfer, and it excels under the high-pressure clamp of a heatsink.
So, let’s circle back. Can you use thermal tape for a crypto miner repair?
Absolutely not.
My experiment proved it: thermal tape is the wrong tool for the job. It leads to failed chips, returned miners. When you’re servicing a hashboard, stick to the right materials: either a high-quality crypto miner thermal paste or a proper, compressive thermal pad.
Don’t let a “quick fix” turn into another expensive repair.