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a hundred freaking degrees

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now that's hot and not in a good way

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what you're looking at right now is a thermal camera shot of the back of an

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rtx 3090 it's got a problem that's been fairly well documented by the pc gaming

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community the RAM runs as hot as an Intel macbook pro

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and that's no joke fortunately we've got a solution to tame

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the beast and great news if you can afford a 30-90 then you can probably

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afford it too and you can probably also afford our sponsor kiwiko because you're

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a mad baller like that kiwico ships out crates that contain hands-on projects

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for kids to help develop their creative confidence and problem-solving skills

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learn more at the end of this video or at the link down below

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memory specifically video memory needing cooling is nothing new the electronic

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components in your pc release nearly 100 of the electricity they consume as heat

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so while many graphics cards have all of their RAM chips on the front where they

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can be cooled by the same heatsink that cools the GPU we've also seen many

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designs over the years that have such a massive amount of video memory that RAM

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chips end up being installed on the back of the card as well and these often

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require their own cooling this usually takes the form of a metal back plate

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with a couple of thermal pads to facilitate the transfer between the

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chips and the heatsink now obviously a

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flat piece of aluminum like most graphics card back plates isn't the most

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efficient heatsink you could design but the thing is RAM chips are relatively

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low power consumption at only a couple of watts each making it mostly a

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non-issue that is until you make a graphics card with a

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TDP of 350 watts like an rtx 3090 specifically

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for the purposes of today's test we're using the zotac rtx 3090 trinity

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when you've got that much heat to get rid of in such a small space the problem

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is that it's got to go somewhere and if it's not being removed fast enough it'll

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soak into anything nearby like say for example memory chips to add insult to

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injury NVIDIA switched to the appreciably faster micron gddr6x memory

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for their 3080 and 3090 class gpus now

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technically gddr6x is more efficient per

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bit of data transferred but due to its faster overall speed it still results in

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more overall power consumption and therefore more heat

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so you take a hotter running chip and

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put it in a hotter environment and you end up with what we showed you in the

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intro a bone stock speed rtx 3090 trinity with surface vram temps of over

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a hundred degrees celsius and remember guys this is a reference board which

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means that it's the design that NVIDIA provided to their partners like zotac

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ASUS etc to base their own custom cards

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off of now this shot here is with the factory back

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plate removed which does mean we're hurting the cooling of the rear memory

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chips a little but we only did that to give you a visual prior to removing the

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back plate the memory junction temperatures reported by the graphics

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card itself were still in excess of 100 degrees with thermal camera readings

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putting the back plate itself at about 90.

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that sounds really scary but there have been a lot of hot cards in

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the past are those temps maybe okay

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well we don't have a firm answer from either NVIDIA or micron about the

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maximum temps of these chips but micron did recently share the zero to 95 degree

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operating range of gddr6x and according

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to igor's lab the maximum is likely somewhere between 105 to 110 degrees

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celsius after which the card will start to thermal throttle now then it's time

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to fix it the cheap and cheerful way is to swap the factory thermal pads for something

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with a little more gumption GPU manufacturers don't always use the

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highest efficiency thermal pads and pastes and it's not always just to cut

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cost sometimes it's more about improving the longevity of the paste

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sometimes but today's video is about something new

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now this looks like a bog standard water

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block and technically

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you know it is but

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it's not meant to cool your GPU in the way that you might think rather it goes

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on the back of your graphics card like a back plate but with active cooling it's

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an active backplate it's really cool but to be clear it's

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more of an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary idea back when dual GPU

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cards existed we had double blocks that handled the individual gpus sometimes on

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their own separate pcbs and aquacomputer actually built a heat piped backplate

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that hooked into their water block terminal for cooling a 2080 ti

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this is just the first time we've seen it done so elegantly now it's not a

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standalone product rather it's meant to be used in combination with one of ek's

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other existing water blocks just remove the terminal piece of the water block

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you already have throw on thermal pads according to the instructions and then

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tighten it all in it's a little tricky because you have to line up the holes on

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both the terminal as well as the back plate all while squishing it like a

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stress ball to compress the thermal pads but it only took a few minutes

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with it all installed the loop filled with my fancy water bottle lttstore.com

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it looks pretty freaking cool

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now i wouldn't bank on being able to use the slot above the GPU as it's now

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practically entirely blocked get it but we can at least now answer

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the question of whether it really does fix the problem

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with stock cooling a long-term gaming stress test with f1 2020 left our memory

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just barely within spec this is probably good

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enough for most people but it's common knowledge that the lower your temps the

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longer your semiconductors will last and a stress test like furmark was able to

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push it out of that comfort zone with ethereum blowing past it and this is

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even with more mining optimized lower power settings

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including running the fans at one hundred percent

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of course before we recommend going out and buying a 150 dollar backplate it's

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worth investigating if a normal water block is enough to bring the beast

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within safe operating temps in both f1 2020 and furmark we were now well within

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spec even with no back plate on the rear memory chips just by removing the heat

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from the GPU and the front memory chips a little faster so for those of you who

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exclusively game you probably don't need an active backplate but if you're a

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crypto miner there's still a solid chance that you will end up in the

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danger zone of course if you rock a 3080 that does

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not have rear mounted memory chips you should be fine

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so finally then with ek's backplate fitted our firmark memory temps were a

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little over half of what they were when we were air-cooled and even while

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ethereum mining we didn't get anywhere close to what i would consider dangerous

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and as an added bonus the GPU core itself ended up being cooler thanks to

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the additional contact area on the back of the card

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now i'm not going to pretend to be surprised by these results the active

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back plate effectively adds direct water cooling to these couple watt memory

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chips on the back of the card along with a big old hunk of copper to sink the

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heat off the back of the card what's more surprising is why this

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solution even needs to exist NVIDIA is clearly aware of the problem and in

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typical fashion silently adjusted the design of their founders edition cards

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to include additional thermal pads after igor lab's initial report on the memory

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issues but it's also possible that this will

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not be an issue going forward with the mining lock that's expected to be in

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place on the upcoming 3080 ti subscribe by the way so you don't miss our review

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and then presumably on the rest of NVIDIA's products going forward but then

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that also assumes that NVIDIA manages to build a mining lock that actually works

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speaking of circumvention you can't circumvent this message from our sponsor

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off your first month of any crate so thanks for watching guys if you liked

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this video maybe check out our rtx 3060 review it's a much more reasonably

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priced graphics card that doesn't need active backplate cooling or at least

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normally it's more reasonably priced well what look what do you want from buy

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one