a hundred freaking degrees
now that's hot and not in a good way
what you're looking at right now is a thermal camera shot of the back of an
rtx 3090 it's got a problem that's been fairly well documented by the pc gaming
community the RAM runs as hot as an Intel macbook pro
and that's no joke fortunately we've got a solution to tame
the beast and great news if you can afford a 30-90 then you can probably
afford it too and you can probably also afford our sponsor kiwiko because you're
a mad baller like that kiwico ships out crates that contain hands-on projects
for kids to help develop their creative confidence and problem-solving skills
learn more at the end of this video or at the link down below
memory specifically video memory needing cooling is nothing new the electronic
components in your pc release nearly 100 of the electricity they consume as heat
so while many graphics cards have all of their RAM chips on the front where they
can be cooled by the same heatsink that cools the GPU we've also seen many
designs over the years that have such a massive amount of video memory that RAM
chips end up being installed on the back of the card as well and these often
require their own cooling this usually takes the form of a metal back plate
with a couple of thermal pads to facilitate the transfer between the
chips and the heatsink now obviously a
flat piece of aluminum like most graphics card back plates isn't the most
efficient heatsink you could design but the thing is RAM chips are relatively
low power consumption at only a couple of watts each making it mostly a
non-issue that is until you make a graphics card with a
TDP of 350 watts like an rtx 3090 specifically
for the purposes of today's test we're using the zotac rtx 3090 trinity
when you've got that much heat to get rid of in such a small space the problem
is that it's got to go somewhere and if it's not being removed fast enough it'll
soak into anything nearby like say for example memory chips to add insult to
injury NVIDIA switched to the appreciably faster micron gddr6x memory
for their 3080 and 3090 class gpus now
technically gddr6x is more efficient per
bit of data transferred but due to its faster overall speed it still results in
more overall power consumption and therefore more heat
so you take a hotter running chip and
put it in a hotter environment and you end up with what we showed you in the
intro a bone stock speed rtx 3090 trinity with surface vram temps of over
a hundred degrees celsius and remember guys this is a reference board which
means that it's the design that NVIDIA provided to their partners like zotac
ASUS etc to base their own custom cards
off of now this shot here is with the factory back
plate removed which does mean we're hurting the cooling of the rear memory
chips a little but we only did that to give you a visual prior to removing the
back plate the memory junction temperatures reported by the graphics
card itself were still in excess of 100 degrees with thermal camera readings
putting the back plate itself at about 90.
that sounds really scary but there have been a lot of hot cards in
the past are those temps maybe okay
well we don't have a firm answer from either NVIDIA or micron about the
maximum temps of these chips but micron did recently share the zero to 95 degree
operating range of gddr6x and according
to igor's lab the maximum is likely somewhere between 105 to 110 degrees
celsius after which the card will start to thermal throttle now then it's time
to fix it the cheap and cheerful way is to swap the factory thermal pads for something
with a little more gumption GPU manufacturers don't always use the
highest efficiency thermal pads and pastes and it's not always just to cut
cost sometimes it's more about improving the longevity of the paste
sometimes but today's video is about something new
now this looks like a bog standard water
block and technically
you know it is but
it's not meant to cool your GPU in the way that you might think rather it goes
on the back of your graphics card like a back plate but with active cooling it's
an active backplate it's really cool but to be clear it's
more of an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary idea back when dual GPU
cards existed we had double blocks that handled the individual gpus sometimes on
their own separate pcbs and aquacomputer actually built a heat piped backplate
that hooked into their water block terminal for cooling a 2080 ti
this is just the first time we've seen it done so elegantly now it's not a
standalone product rather it's meant to be used in combination with one of ek's
other existing water blocks just remove the terminal piece of the water block
you already have throw on thermal pads according to the instructions and then
tighten it all in it's a little tricky because you have to line up the holes on
both the terminal as well as the back plate all while squishing it like a
stress ball to compress the thermal pads but it only took a few minutes
with it all installed the loop filled with my fancy water bottle lttstore.com
it looks pretty freaking cool
now i wouldn't bank on being able to use the slot above the GPU as it's now
practically entirely blocked get it but we can at least now answer
the question of whether it really does fix the problem
with stock cooling a long-term gaming stress test with f1 2020 left our memory
just barely within spec this is probably good
enough for most people but it's common knowledge that the lower your temps the
longer your semiconductors will last and a stress test like furmark was able to
push it out of that comfort zone with ethereum blowing past it and this is
even with more mining optimized lower power settings
including running the fans at one hundred percent
of course before we recommend going out and buying a 150 dollar backplate it's
worth investigating if a normal water block is enough to bring the beast
within safe operating temps in both f1 2020 and furmark we were now well within
spec even with no back plate on the rear memory chips just by removing the heat
from the GPU and the front memory chips a little faster so for those of you who
exclusively game you probably don't need an active backplate but if you're a
crypto miner there's still a solid chance that you will end up in the
danger zone of course if you rock a 3080 that does
not have rear mounted memory chips you should be fine
so finally then with ek's backplate fitted our firmark memory temps were a
little over half of what they were when we were air-cooled and even while
ethereum mining we didn't get anywhere close to what i would consider dangerous
and as an added bonus the GPU core itself ended up being cooler thanks to
the additional contact area on the back of the card
now i'm not going to pretend to be surprised by these results the active
back plate effectively adds direct water cooling to these couple watt memory
chips on the back of the card along with a big old hunk of copper to sink the
heat off the back of the card what's more surprising is why this
solution even needs to exist NVIDIA is clearly aware of the problem and in
typical fashion silently adjusted the design of their founders edition cards
to include additional thermal pads after igor lab's initial report on the memory
issues but it's also possible that this will
not be an issue going forward with the mining lock that's expected to be in
place on the upcoming 3080 ti subscribe by the way so you don't miss our review
and then presumably on the rest of NVIDIA's products going forward but then
that also assumes that NVIDIA manages to build a mining lock that actually works
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
this video maybe check out our rtx 3060 review it's a much more reasonably
priced graphics card that doesn't need active backplate cooling or at least
normally it's more reasonably priced well what look what do you want from buy
one