EK Water Blocks GTX 480 Full Cover Video Card Water Block Installation Guide Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,981 words · ~14 min read
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all right well this is meant to be an installation guide for installing the uh
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GTX 480 full cover water block on the
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GTX 480 and I guess it's a bit of a
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guide for installing a full cover block in general should you want to do that
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okay so the first thing is you will need to have all of the necessary things
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you'll need a water block a video card please do this with a high-end video
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card I've seen people like water cooling GTX 460s by the time you spend $100 on a
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water block for that kind of card you might as well have bought a better one
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um next you will need some thermal compound a Philips head screwdriver
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usually although with the GTX 580 you'll need a Torx as well and then you will
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also need the instructions please follow these carefully read them carefully all
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of that good stuff so the first thing we're going to do is remove the stock
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cooler I haven't quite decided if I'm going to do this video in real time or
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like how real time I'm going to make it I think I'll have to sort of do the
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steps and then come back cuz things like
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removing screws from the back of a video card are pretty tedious and it's um hard
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enough to just kind of Yammer on about random things to fill the empty parts of
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my videos at the best of times but I mean this is just like graphics card
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cooler installation there isn't really much to talk about so uh yeah bear with
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me while I do this once you've removed all the screws from the back of the card
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make sure you don't forget to do the ones at the end of the PCI bracket uh
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before you try to remove the cooler okay so now that the card's apart
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what I usually do at this step is uh take all of the thermal pads off of the
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card put them back exactly where they were on the stock cooler take all of
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these screws put them back into the stock cooler and then put it in a Ziploc
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bag or wrap it in plastic wrap or something so that that's going to still
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be there for you if you ever need to take off the water block and uh put the
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stock cooler back on either for warranty purposes or if you don't want to water
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cool that system anymore or whatever the case may be for this next step you'll
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need something that I forgot to mention you'll need some 99% isopropyl alcohol
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and you will need some uh teepee or I mean ideally you'd use a lintree cloth
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but I mean who has enough of those to throw away oh and this is interesting
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it's funny his timing is awesome because here's a pro tip for you I don't know if
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you can see this or not but there's actually a hair on the GPU from when I
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reapplied the thermal compound with the air cooler it's a multicolored hair so
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I'm pretty sure I know where it came from
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cat hey yeah you pretty sure it came
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from you so uh the next step is you take a little bit of toilet
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paper some ice propyl and you wet
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it and then you remove all
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residue all everything you can get off
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of the thermal compound on the GPU as well as any leftovers of the thermal
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pads on the memory chips so you use the
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wet TP to remove it and then you should
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give it another good wipe down with uh a
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clean part you can see that even though it looked clean there was still quite a
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bit of residue on there find another clean part go again you want to make
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sure you're removing everything cuz that's going to give you the
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best interface between the new water
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block and the stuff that you are trying
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to cool with it what I usually do after
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I've done a good few wipes once the uh
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toilet paper starts coming off pretty clean like that then I usually give it a
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wipe with a lintree cloth which is normally whatever shirt I'm wearing cuz
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I care a lot more about my graphics card than I do about my clothes and that way
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you can be sure that you haven't left any little remnants of of toilet paper
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fibers on uh the any of the surfaces uh
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yet another thing that I didn't account for us needing scissors so now we're
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going to cut the thermal pads to size so
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that we can put them all on the correct parts of the PCB well not the PCB we're
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going to put them on the RAM vrm uh not on the GPU thermal pads do not go on the
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GPU and um yeah so I think the only ones we
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actually have to cut are the RAM ones you can see ek's instructions are like
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that so they show you cut uh four per so
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the easiest way to cut four is to cut half and then to cut half again so we're
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going to do that and
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that and then we end up with little
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thermal pads that are just the right size for a RAM chip so when you're
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applying these please please please make
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sure you remove the plastic covers from
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both sides okay because if you leave
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those on you will be probably roasting your RAM so good luck
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with that so I'm going to go ahead and apply all the RAM ones and then we'll
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cover the uh brm after that these are kind of finicky this is going to take me
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a little
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while it's a lot harder to do this when you're trying to hold a camera at the
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same time so there it's
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applied just like that
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it's been a while since I've installed an EK full cover but it looks like they've actually uh really improved the
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way they do their instructions so they clearly label sort of which pads are
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which and which ones go where and what they're supposed to cover so that's uh
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that's pretty outstanding so I'm going to do the mosfet ones now uh which are
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this one this one and this one which
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used to be square but I cut it down a little bit smaller because the it was
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like coming up to here at the edge of the card and the last thing you wanted
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to have it installed and be able to see the other side of the thermal pad just
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under the block when you look in the side of your case uh I don't know about
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you guys but uh you know I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to this sort
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of stuff so that would be that would be an unacceptable result to me and I would
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have to take the whole thing apart which is a real pain and I don't feel like
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doing that so um as with anything water cooling it's
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way way better to do it right the first time than to try to correct it later so
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there I've put on that one next I'm going to apply this one and this one I
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don't really care if they stick out the bottom because I'll never see those
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actually I would see those I'm going to trim these too so just put well that was
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almost really funny and uh haha I guess it's time to buy a new graphics card
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sort of way I made a small mistake the uh number three thermal pad is actually
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a little bit thicker than the number two thermal pad and I had misread the
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instructions here I thought three was supposed to go over this Square here but actually you're supposed to cut it up
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and put it on these little guys right here so that is now done and then I used
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one of these strips that I figured I was being Innovative and trimmed from the
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bottom of these to put up here so now everything is covered and I'm in good
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shape as always with water cooling and this is why I didn't make the mistake
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ultimately make sure you double check go
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through do a sanity check make sure that all of your bases are covered all right
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so next we're going to put the reinforcer and we should please note
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that the orientation the reinforcer is important one of the other key points
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when installing a GPU water block is making sure you use the right screws for
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everything so you can see these ones are short the ones in the diagram for
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putting on the spacer or rather the reinforcer plate are short I'm going to
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use a technique that I call the Innovative edge of the table technique
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so this allows me to screw something into the back of the card without
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upsetting all of the thermal pads that I have placed on the top so I just kind of
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get my head under it and screwed in from there now this next part's a real pain
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and a total mess uh if you do it the way that EK
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recommends um basically they say take some thermal compound put it on these
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little washers and then put them in place and hopefully that'll help them
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stay in place and then take the card and position it over top uh personally I
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okay if I wasn't doing a guide for you guys and doing things by the book I
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would never use the washers uh the reason they exist is because uh certain
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people couldn't handle not overtightening their full cover water
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blocks and uh here hold on I'm going to orient this this
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way so that the uh PCI back plate is
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going to hang over the edge of the table so I can put it down cleanly make sure
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that I don't move those washers actually I better do this off camera this is
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going to be tricky but anyway people couldn't handle not overtightening their
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water blocks so um everyone started
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implementing standoffs in one in one way or another and basically if you don't
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overtighten it it's not necessary but since the manufacturer does recommend it
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I am recommending that you go ahead and use them although I personally I'm not
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going to cover them in thermal compound because that's a mess that I don't feel
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like cleaning up if I ever have to remove it thermal compound application
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is one of those hotly debated topics I'll be using IC Diamond thermal
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compound okay and because this is such a
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large heat spreader I will be using a large amount of compound and I'm going
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to go ahead and use the X technique so
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when you got a big surface to cover the grain of rice sometimes doesn't really cut it I
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forgot how thick this stuff is it's hard to apply through a camera compared to
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when you're not trying to apply through a camera there we go so then I'm going
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to go where I was before and H take some out this way come
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on okay I would recommend using well
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part of the problem is the room's quite so cold you know what I'm just going to show you guys the end
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result well that's quite possibly the worst job of applying thermal paste ever
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but the most important thing is that we've got really good coverage in the
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center and that it's got somewhere to spread out from so that uh the actual D
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itself is going to be cooled so yeah do as I say not as I do that's terrible
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maybe use the line technique if you're in a cold room with uh icy Diamond cuz
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this stuff is thick when it's cold so I've carefully lowered it down exactly
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where it goes um since I'm not using the thermal grease technique to hold them in
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place uh a lot of them shift a little bit so all I have to do is take a
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screwdriver and make sure that I realign the uh the washer before I try to put
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the screw in which I've already done
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okay so now what I've done is I've gone ahead and put in all of the screws into
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the back of the graphics card now I've put them all in very very gently that is
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to say that they they're not fingertight they're not any kind of tight I've put
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them in far enough that the screw touches the PCB but there is no
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tightening going on right now so um here
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hold on I'm going to do the last one uh these two where there's the weird hole
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for the fan in the PCB I'm supposed to use these plastic washers apparently so
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I've gone ahead and done that so I'm just going to put that in there uh that
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is because there isn't a proper uh screw hole for those ones so I actually
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tighten that too much probably so yeah you can see these are quite loose
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they're barely in there so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go
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around and I'm going to tighten them all watch I'm using two fingers okay I'm not
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going to overdo it I'm going to tighten them about that much that's all you need you need
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contact you're not trying to
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mash the PCB into the block this is not
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like a CP U block where a ton of mounting pressure is going to make some
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kind of difference in performance so you just
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want to give them all a nice little turn there we
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go oops I hope I didn't miss any there
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and always double check so once we've double checked to ensure that we have
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all of the screws installed in the back of the video card it is highly
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recommended that you actually remove them all take the whole thing apart and
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then check for contact between the GPU
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and the block so that means uh if the if
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the thermal pads are all still stuck to the block then you want to check all of
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the RAM chips and all the mosfets to see if they have a little bit of greasiness
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looking to them uh if they're a little bit greasy looking cuz that means they
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were making contact and same for the GPU core you want to make sure that it's
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nice and well spread out on the Block itself so that uh you can be sure that
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everything is going to be cooled cuz remember you can check the temperatures of the GPU but you can't check the
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temperatures of all this other stuff once you've got it installed in your system so you got to be sure that
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they're going to be cooled last thing is fittings uh for
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this you will need uh well fittings so
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I'm going to be salvaging the older style of stop fittings cuz I really
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don't like the uh the look of the new ones I find this much more aesthetically
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appealing so I'll be grabbing these from an old EK full cover 8800 block that I
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had lying around and I'm also going to grab a couple 38 compressions fittings
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that are compatible with my water cooling system so um basically when
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you're installing fittings you want to make sure a your O-rings are in the
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proper position and B that they are
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tight most fittings these days have a recessed o-ring which means you can't
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overtighten them so feel free to crank
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on them the technique I used to install these which is going to make them
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impossible to remove by hand was I actually uh wrap the grip here in a
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cloth and then I use a pair of visce grips to tighten them down so those are
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not coming off unless I go get my Bice scripts
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now so now I'm done the blocks uh
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sexiness Factor has increased the cards
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sexiness Factor by many times in my
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opinion and uh the installation
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procedure is complete as far as I'm concerned although some people would go
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further and buy additional back plates
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or buy uh replacement uh IO plates that
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are only single slot so that they can actually install uh cards in the slot next to the
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graphics card because this is now a single slot GTX 480 see all right so all
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that's left now is to install it in my
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system so I'll just take that apart and
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it's going to go in there where the graphics card is right now thank you for
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checking it out and don't forget to subscribe to lonus Tech tips for more unboxings guides and whatever I