Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm making a 1080 hybrid so in the first video we took this apart this is a GTX 1080 and we're turning it into a liquid-cooled card I have a few good reasons for that one is because I want to and two is because overclocking so we had some thermal throttling issues with the stock cooler which I would pick up and show you but it's in pieces like this and like this this is the alloy heatsink that went on underneath it so the first video we take this apart we encountered a few points of attention and drama and those are mostly involving this screwdriver pen thing and this hammer which happened after the video concluded because I could not get the screw out of there that got sucked into it so you can watch the first video if you want to see how that happened spoiler alert the screw is still in there so I gave up on that but we are moving on now and installing the liquid solution onto this thing this of course being the 1080 proper so let's get started I guess first thing we're gonna do is locate on the pump the plug for power so that's what this is this is from EVGA this is an ASA tech pump and they are all basically the standard pump so what we have here is the VRM blower fan that stock with the 1080 this fan has a cable here and this cable plugs into the PCB and that's how you power the vrm blower fan for the stock solution that's no good for us because we have to power a pump as well as the vrm fan so they're both can be powered in our solution that means we need to tap in to the same spot on the PCB and that is done by plugging effectively bridging this vrm van into this solution from the pump and then that into the board and that powers all of it so we're just gonna try and try and do that right now which is not the easiest thing in the world to do you'll see actually move this since our last video because it's getting in the way so we remove that and we're just gonna go ahead and figure out the best way and route this through there so I'm gonna push this out there's thermal pads all over the back of this thing by the way so I'm try not to touch it because I don't want to compromise anything than I have to so we're just gonna connect that like that that is done we now have power for the vrm fan and for the pump push the cable through there and then I'm going to try and connect this to the PCB while not losing any thermal pads in the process I think we're aligned the correct way this is very very difficult okay there we go all right cool so that's connected it's all we have to do so now we've got power to everything I'm gonna just mount this loosely back where it belongs on top of the PCB in theory we've got a bunch of cables here now on the way so I'm gonna kind of move those around the problem with this is this is built for 980ti so it is not meant for 1080 and that means that if I wanted to use EVGA faceplate we couldn't do it because NVIDIA has tessellated they're designed in a fashion that these mounting points no longer line up for the screws and that's a problem so we can't use this plate anymore this is effectively useless to us as you'll see without knocking over 100 video cards maybe yeah the 980ti is first of all there's the nihti you can tell cuz the GP is massive compared to the 1088 GP 104 GPU that's GM 200 this works well because this was built for this card and it's a reference design you see if I applied some force it would actually mount into place and everything with line up so that's that's fine but it doesn't work for the 1080 I don't know if Andrew the camera guy over here showing you the stack of video cards teetering on each other but so we're just gonna ignore that plate and build this ghetto style which is fine because we don't need it to look pretty we just need it to run for some overclocking tests probably gonna mount it like this at the end of the day just let the cables be free that's not really a big deal to me but first of course we have to rebuild this card and we're gonna start with going it in from the underside all the pieces that I removed early and there's a lot of them so we're gonna go through that first to reapplying these thermal pads where they belong to give some thermal throwing protection to the backside of the GPU or whatever's left those pads anyway okay so the first thing to do I'm tethered to this thing now which does make my new ring a bit difficult but we're gonna reinstall this expansion cover over here there's a couple screws for this but really not not a difficult process other than being unable to see what I'm doing because the pump so this we've got hex bolts that flanked the DVI slot they can't do this in a way that you can see it so we're gonna screw this in I use the hex driver to finish that off I call it's good I can no longer use this screw driver not only because there's something stuck but because if you look at the end it's taking a bit of a beating and also this end is no longer uniform so I can use that but I will return some of these screws to their position for the expansion cover and that'll lock the expansion cover into place so then we can mount the backplate the very slow process it takes to reinstall the backplate oh wait this isn't aligned normally I'd be worried about dropping screws into the video card but seeing as the video card is completely dismantled this is really her danger I'm glad you can just cut through all of this okay so now that we've gotten the backside situated so now we've got the expansion cover on we can start installing all these screws which are used i found out actually just recently as mounting points for the back plate so the back plate will use its million tiny dust sized screws and screw into these so these are a foundation for the smaller ones that's why we need these in here now one of these screws is forever entombed in the crew driver I'm currently using so we are going to be one short until I this thing open which we'll do later that means I'm just gonna I'm basically just gonna not put one there and hope that the tension from all the surrounding screws is enough to flatten the thermal pads against the board I really think it'll be fine there is going to be one missing of them strategically choosing to make it that one rather than a corner mound where we won't have any other means to generate the force and this one I don't know if you can see that on the camera this one has the head of a screw in it let's see one does and one does maybe you can see that or not but the one in my right hand has the head of a screw in it that's because there's little tiny screws which are these I can't even really present it in a way that's meaningful there was tiny screws you really can't stand a lot of force oh if you if you screw it down even a reasonable amount the torque will eventually compromise the head and it old bust and the body gets stuck in the smaller one so to get that out I'd really have to go to work with some tweezers or something it's just not worth it considering it's just a backplate and I really don't care to be honest I just don't because we're just doing a quick mod to see how the thermal performance is how they oversee performances with liquid whether or not that backplate has one extra screw in it is not going to change anything and that is especially the case because the backplate especially in that particular region is built with the intention of being uninstalled for SLI anyway so we're really not operating outside of spec so now we're gonna install the screws for the rest of the expansion slot or actually actually we're not gonna do that I'm gonna do that because I believe yes this goes on first so obviously I have not done this before because of gtx 1080 and its brand new i've done it for the 980ti but that did not have a backplate so let me just double check that we hit everything and we did we got all the screws that we have that have not been sucked into a black hole and now we're screwing in the remainder of the expansion slot screws I'll lock that into place and after this we begin the journey of screwing in an ungodly number of tiny tiny tiny screws that will bust if you don't apply exactly the right torque to the head okay this backplate actually as I said not necessary I think we're gonna go ahead and keep it on just for posterity sake but it's really really not neat as if you didn't want it what tiny screwdriver was I using it alright so that is the max amount of pressure I can apply these if you do this on your own hopefully my my encounters with this card will teach you but basically just until you start feeling the littlest bit of pressure you just stop so unlike most screws these will not tolerate even one turn past that beginning of resistance it'll just snap and then you really are gonna have a heck of a time trying to get it back out yep I don't even turn it that hard I don't know I don't know if you could see that but that little black dot on the end is the head of the screw and I did not not really apply any pressure to that so I don't know if that's left over from the previous one luckily I have an extra one of these actually doesn't even matter because I can't use that spot anyway cuz there's a screw forever in it until we go in there with tweezers so that one's no good let's just get the rest of these right we're still in a place where nothing's really compromise the do that too many more times probably gonna have some problems in the future if we try to take this cart apart again but for now we are okay I'm gonna keep it that way I'm being exceptionally careful stop right there oh wait I can't use that one because that's where the black hole screw is yeah there's a reason these more traditional outlets like I don't know maybe Mythbusters or something we'll put it do not try this at home disclaimer theirs might be for safety but ours would be because you will damage the ends if you mimic me here but the whole point of the site luckily and our in our unique position the whole point of the site is to create content and that is most fun to do by finding unique challenges and being the first to do something like turn a 10 $8,700 card into either a liquid-cooled beast at overclocking or a brick either one creates great content so really our our risk to reward is much more favorable than a few we're just trying to do this for fun as an enthusiast okay so that is all the screws that we have available missing three now how that one's broken that one's broken that one's missing again in here so that's that's what we got we are about as close to done as we can be I'm going to install this with the tubes facing that direction I'm gonna clean the top of this GPU just a little bit and that's all relatively shiny I have this unique jar of thermal paste this is actually a set external paste that they pulled off their assembly line for us because I told them I was concerned that using my own thermal compound like this antec stuff that we normally use I told them the concern was of course all that really smells strong if we install one of these stock with their paste on it test it pull it off clean it and then install it with our paste on it there's gonna be variance in the temperature so that was the concerns they provided this we're gonna try and find something to smooth that on the surface I might actually need to see if I have like an old card I can use my power so normally I would have values against the credit card suggestion for this for a few reasons I prefer to do a dot in the middle and allow the pressure from screwing down the cold plate spread out the paste but because this isn't in a tube where I can just obviously squeeze it out and let the cold plate take care of the rest I've got to use a card and we're just gonna pretend that you can't see the Starbucks logo on here frankly they didn't pay for this this is obviously a giant amount of paste I'm not gonna use all of it so before you freak just keep the head behind I'm gonna get a reasonable amount on there and kind of spread it I suppose I really don't like this method but that's what we're gonna go with today I'll clean up the exterior after but this will get us started okay well you get me the rubbing alcohol thank you I'm doing right now is just cleaning up the edges a bit it was too much on there spread out a bit over the substrate which I don't like really not gonna not gonna hurt it the amount that's on there but I just want to clean it up as much as is reasonable haha paper towel here is running thin on space here unlike certain larger YouTube channels as we cannot afford endless paper towels all right that's pretty reasonable I'm happy enough with that I think it's not perfect but that's what we got without really using a tube or something proper but it doesn't mean we can use the original correct thermal paste so that's a good thing and we're just gonna go ahead and run with that for this build because really doing more would be I would be sort of unnecessary right now so let's get this thing mounted this is as easy as dropping it into the slot on the top like I've done and we're gonna screw in these screws on the back well that's a challenge I don't know I don't have enough fingers to deal with magnetism right now okay cool so as I've said in the previous video do opposing corners for this you just want to make sure you're not applying too much pressure to any one side and also for purposes of spreading out to that compound and ushering out anything that doesn't belong on the chip or smoothing it out this will help do that because it will apply evenly across the IHS surface it's like a minigame a one-trick with thermal paste is you put too much on there you will actually damage the ability for the cold plate to make contact and keep things cool it's also ideal to make sure it's a smooth distribution because if there's Pompey and then the cold plate application should smooth this out but if it's bumpy then it will reflect in the performance of that cold plate this cold plate is interesting because it's an extruded one which I talked on the 980ti review and the Seahawk review if you're curious about what that means so there we go that's the heart get out liquid cooling solution for the 1080 is not compatible with the 980ti hybrid cover so we're just gonna leave it just like this cuz that cover serves no functional purpose all we want to do is cool the GPU proper with liquid this is this is making it worse the vrm blower fan is still here it's still cooling the vrm not maybe as effectively but to improve that a little bit I'm just gonna go ahead and reinstall this thing which is you can see here it's got kind of a to it to help with the airflow this isn't a real point connecting the LED as we no longer have the LED part of the component attached but I'm gonna go ahead and do it just to get the cable out of the way of the fan alright so that's it that's good this is a semi functional heat sink so we left that on there this concludes the mounting of the the faceplate which will help guide the airflow from the vrn blower fan GPU is cooled completely now by this pump it is no longer cooled by the alloy heatsink which used to mount here perhaps that orientation so that's covered we just have to screw in these screws and then the rest of the card can remain dismantled until we convert it back into its original state assuming it's still still works at that time actually you may not even have anywhere to screw this into now I'm thinking about it oh yeah there is somewhere I can screw it in okay so because we've taken this all apart the this is where that would screw in but that was obstructing our ability to plug in the fan for this liquid solution that's gone I can't screw them in over here for the same reason because we got rid of the bigger part of the faceplate so now we're just gonna use these tiny tiny screws because these will still work and mount the right side of the plate just back into these pegs that'll keep it positioned in a way that won't cause damage or fall off or do any direct shorts but otherwise I mean it's not pretty but it's just going to open bench anyway which isn't pretty either so all we want to do is test the thermals so for part three of this build that is the part we're gonna show the benchmark performance of this liquid cooled solution I'll explain why it succeeds or fails in this particular installation and application and we're gonna look at the thermal throttling potential on the ten eighty with liquid specifically now so previously it was throttling at about 82 degrees Celsius you can see that in our 1080 review that throttle is put there so it'll keep itself under control and prevent any real serious overheating so instead you end up with a clock rate that dips every now and then and that does impact the low frame times for there maybe five to ten seconds that the dip is occurring whether you notice it or not really depends on sort of how high your graphic settings are things like that but overall this should my theory is that this should sustain a higher clock rate and a higher over clock without hitting that thermal barrier that we're hitting at about 82 Celsius with the air solution so that eighty-two Celsius throttle is sort of big deal on the 1080 but check back for part three of this you'll see how it performs we'll do the thermal testing get this saga concluded so I can put this thing back together because honestly in this state it kind of stresses me out because it's a $700 card it looks terrible and I've broken or lost several screws in the process of doing this so hopefully everything is all good either way it's at least I wouldn't say good but modest entertainment value and the the testing data should be the most fun to look at so thank you for watching patreon like the postal video if you wanna house that directly because we may need to crowdfund another one of these if it no longer works I'll see you all next time