ULTIMATE Water Cool your Video Card "How To" Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,915 words · ~9 min read
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adata xpg V2 memory kits are optimized for the latest Intel gaming platforms
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check the link in the video description for more details welcome to the ultimate
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video card water block installation guide right here we have nus GeForce GTX
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Titan and step one guys is for the love
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of whatever you believe in please test
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the card before installing a water block on it because it's an awful lot of work
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to take it apart put it back together take it apart and then put it back
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together when you find out it doesn't work after you've put a water block on
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it make sure you're working at a safe anti-static workstation in our case
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we're using a modm from Mod right next lay out everything you're going to need
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so Tools in this case a Philips head screwdriver next is Hardware so in this
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case our graphics card as well as all the pieces that were included with our
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water block itself a little bin for screws it's a disaster if you lose those
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isopropyl alcohol as well as something to clean thermal compound off with and
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last but not least guys instructions I don't care who you are if you're not
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reading the instructions for a water block you're doing it wrong it's very
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important because sometimes there will even be last minute revision notices
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posted on the instructions step four remove the stock heat sink before you
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start I recommend taking pictures so that if you have to put it back together
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you're going to have a point of reference to use later
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on
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as you remove screws put them somewhere safe this is incredibly important
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because whether you're selling your graphics card down the road or whether
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you have to send it in for a warranty repair you may need to be able to put
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that stock cooler back
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on always be sure that you've removed
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all the screws before attempting to take the heat SN off sometimes there can be
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one left that you didn't spot before or
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one that's a little bit tricky to find such as the one that holds the card onto
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the io panel right
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here another couple of spots where you might find tricky screws are
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here those are pretty tight remove those with a different screwdriver and then
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I've sometimes found ones at the back of the card that need to be removed as well
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but that's not the case with the Titan these two do need to go though one thing
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to watch out for as you're removing screws is not all the screws in the
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graphics card are the same so either with pictures or by labeling them as you
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go make sure you keep track of what goes where remember it could be 2 to 3 years
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by the time you have to reassemble this thing so once all the screws are removed
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pull the PCB away from the heat sink with a twisting motion rather than with
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a pulling motion to ensure that you don't pull any RAM modules off of the
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PCB as you go there we
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go carefully remove any fan
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headers or LED light headers without damaging the
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connectors take all of the thermal pads that are still attached to the card and
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put them back on the cooler this helps
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you keep them safe and in the right place during
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storage next put the card aside for now
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and and put all of the screws back exactly where they went into the stock
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cooler step six is the same as one of the other steps please for the love of
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everything RTM read the manual this
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particular water block comes with two different thicknesses of thermal pads
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read the manual and you will know why don't read the manual and you could end
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up frying your GPU that serious guys
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step seven seven is to clean the existing paste off of the GPU core I
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usually use toilet paper for the first round as well as 99% isopropyl
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alcohol flip it over for a clean
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side and take another run at
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it then as a last Finishing Touch once you've dried all the alcohol
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off of it it's never a bad idea to take a lintree cloth in this case I'm just
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going to use my sleeve cuz I don't have one handy and ensure that there are no
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toilet paper bits left on the GPU itself that can affect cooling it's also never
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a bad idea particularly for some configurations where you're going to be
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using small heat sinks on the RAM or vrm components to do a quick pass of those
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ones cuz there might be a little bit of oily residue left on them that would
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cause additional thermal adhesives that you put on afterwards to not stick
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correctly now because we read the manual we know to use the 7 thick thermal pads
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instead of the one thickness thermal pads because this one is for most cases
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but because of manufacturing tolerance issues with some gpus you might need to
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add a slightly thicker thermal pad for you know these memory modules or these
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ones where this one doesn't quite make contact but if you use this one in the
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first place it could hold the block so far away from the card that the GPU
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itself doesn't get adequately cooled now
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what we'll need to do is cut to size so
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you can either measure this or hold it up against the right spot or just kind
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of eyeball it thermal pad
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strips remove the backing from both
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sides this is very important because if you don't do that then your parts will
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overheat so there's one piece and a
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second piece there we
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go then apply these to all of the parts
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indicated by the instruction manual in this case it comes on a separate piece
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of paper that indicates exactly where all the thermal pads go once you've cut
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them to
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size in the case of this water block we need thermal pads not only on the CPU
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block itself but also on the aluminum
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back plate aluminum aluminum
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aluminium as they say in some
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territories not in Canada that's not even a Canadian accent
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which really begs the question why did I say it at
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all next up is to apply new thermal
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compound to the GPU itself you can use the included thermal compound in this
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case we will be but you can get better quality aftermarket thermal compounds a
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lot of the time than the stuff that tends to get included with these blocks
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uh my personal favorite thermal compound is IC
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Diamond uses like diamonds and
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stuff for gpus I do tend to use a little bit of a different methodology than for
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CPUs I tend to spread out the compound a bit more because they tend to be a bit
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larger and I tend to put on a little bit
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more this is a non-conductive thermal goop so I'm not too worried about it
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getting sort of over the edges here and causing a short for this next part I
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recommend taking the water block and putting it on something that is raised a
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little bit above the surface of your work area it's important to give room for the
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rear iio to overhang the surface that you're working on line up the block
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carefully with the mounting holes in the back of the card see this you can just
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VIs visually check as you put it down
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then once you have everything aligned just going to poke my head in here to
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make sure I've got it there we go I
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would press it down then you're actually going to
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remove it this allows you to check on the
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thermal pads to make sure that everything was making adequate contact
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and gives you a pretty good look at the spread of the GPU thermal paste this
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looks all right by the time we crank this down tight
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that should be spread out just fine so we're going to put that back on and
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we're ready to tighten her down the aluminum back plate goes on before we
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put on the screws because many of them actually go through
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it there we are and this particular
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block comes with optional plastic washers to keep the screw heads from
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scratching the top of the aluminum back plate however I'm not too worried about
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that and I would rather the clean look of the screws directly through the back
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plate to having those plastic washers in everything goes in lightly to start very
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very lightly to start we don't start cranking things tight until all the
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screws are in I recommend starting with the GPU screws themselves in a cross
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pattern before moving on to the ones all over the rest of the card now that
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everything's in Loosely we're ready to start tightening things down you don't
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want to Wrench It super tight remember that's a fragile graphics card under
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there but you also want to make sure that everything's making good contact
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with the thermal interface material on both the aluminum back plate and on the
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GPU water block itself this next part is
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totally personal preference guys but you're going to have to get some
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fittings for your GPU block most of them
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well pretty much all of them these days use G1 qu threads which means as long as
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you get G1 quter fittings you should be good to go in our case we're using some
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coolant 3/8 in ID 5/8 in od compression
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fittings and the these you have the option of either installing on the top
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of the card so here or you can take out the plugs on the bottom and install them
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here you don't want to put them both fittings on one side CU then it'll go
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right through without cooling anything but as long as you put one either here
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or here and the other either here or here the water will pass through the
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card so this gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you connect
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the tubing to your graphics card so
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there you have it guys now you've installed the water block on your graphics card this yields better
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temperatures and it can with GPU Boost 2.0 yield better performance as well as
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a different overall look in terms of the Aesthetics of the card now whether you
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prefer the stock cooler on something like a GTX Titan or the water block look
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is totally up to the individual but I personally don't find that there's much
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that's sexier than a couple of graphics cards or even more than that water
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cooled next to each other in an SLI or Crossfire configuration thanks for
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checking out our ultimate video card water block installation guide as always
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