Gadgetory

what's up guys Jays $0.02 here and you've probably heard the buzz surrounding before the wind graphics cards here with their a CX 3.0 coolers where there is actually an issue with the power delivery and in some extreme cases actually burning up components and failure of cards so we're gonna talk about that today but more importantly I'm gonna tell you how to fix it and the most important what EVGA plans to do about it now the power delivery system here on the for the wind card unfortunately is not being actively cooled there is no thermal pad that was installed between the power delivery and the baseplate allowing the HDX cooler to blow down on the base plate giving more effective cooling to the power delivery so what's happening here is the temperatures are getting much hotter than EVGA is comfortable with because it's putting the parts barely within tolerance in some extreme cases parts and boards are failing so that's why you're hearing about this now because there is a plan in place to correct the issue here for all AC X 3.0 owners now this is only affecting the AC X 3.0 cards not the AC X 2.0 and older so that's like the 980ti and below if you guys have one of those it's not affecting it's also not affecting Hybrid owners of the 10 series or anyone with a blower style card just the AC X 3.0 but if you want to learn more about this issue head on over to gamers Nexus Stephen Burke over there did a really good article about this and he's also gonna be doing in-depth testing moving forward so that he can also show you guys the problem the fix and how effective it really is but not only that he has a majestic man mane of hair when he steps outside the sunshine always seems to be having a ray of sunshine right on his head it's glistening and it's majestic and I and whatever I see Steven he's always moving in slow-mo because of hair is just so damn fine that wasn't that awkward was it and when issues like this arises when a company either sinks or swims because problems happen all the time if you've ever looked up technical service bulletins you know that pretty much everything that's ever been manufactured has some sort of a flaw or defect that has to be addressed so the fact that something came up is really not that alarming but what really makes a difference is how a company handles it now EVGA has this is all comes from the top from the CEO himself that they stand by their product and they want to make sure that everyone is happy and satisfied so they put an action plan into place and I'm really happy to see this because we've seen issues before and a lot of companies try and sweep them under the rug because there is guaranteed to be financial hit when stuff like this happens now the first thing you should do is go and download the new BIOS for your 1084 to win cards now the new BIOS is gonna bump up your fan speed just a little bit but if you've ever taken a look or listen if you're for the win card it's dead silent anyway and although the GPU is running very very cool the fans are also responsible for keeping power delivery cool as well so the first and simplest fix that the sacrifice of a little bit of noise we're only talking about 400 rpm a fan speed here which is not much for the the ACX cooler whatsoever it's going to bring your temperatures down quite a bit on the VRMs before we even apply the second fix we're gonna talk about here in fact I even got a chance to head out to EVGA because they invited me over to show me what the problem was I took a card without their fix and we were taking a look with thermal camera and thermal imaging what the temperatures were like and the VRMs were getting to a hundred and ten C which is actually very very hot but they also showed me what the fix applied how much cooler it was and how much the temperatures were kept in check by simply adding a thermal pad and trust me guys they're learning a lesson here because what took a few cents per card to apply at the time of assembly being an oversight because I asked them why didn't you guys put this on there it's on every single one of your cards in the past why did you fail to do this they admitted it was a mistake and it was an oversight and they learned a lot from this so that step number one would be download the new bios the second fix is the application here of thermal pads for the power delivery system now the thermal pads are not only going to work on the front of the card touching the base plate and the ACX cooler it's also going to be utilizing the back plate as well making it a functional backplate to help dissipate that dissipate that heat and I'm gonna show you today actually how to install that if you are not comfortable taking it apart there's two things to mention here one they do offer a cross ship RMA for registered owners of for the wind card so make sure you're registered guys it's important register your cards you should always do that that's how you get your warranties and stuff but they are offering a cross ship where they will send you a card what the fix already applied and you send them yours to minimizing downtime so you have to wait to send it and have it apply it and sent back but also to if you try this yourself and I asked I asked the CEO himself I said what if someone tries to apply this and God forbid they accidentally damaged their card then what are they screwed he said no they will still stand by the product so that's huge but anyway if you're brave enough to try this yourself that's we're gonna talk about today so let's go ahead and do it so to do this there's a few things you're gonna need obviously you need your graphics card here if you don't have a graphics card e you're not doing this or at least you're not doing it right you need your kit that comes from EVGA I don't know the packaging is gonna be like this is the one they gave me when I was down there but in here you have your thermal pads it's gonna be for both the base plate and the back plate you have instructions and then of course you have thermal compound because you are going to need to be able to put thermal compound back on the GPU now in terms of tools I'm just using a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screws it's a magnetic tip so I'm not going to lose those we need some isopropyl alcohol cuz we have to clean off the old thermal compound and then of course some paper towels this is a pretty lint-free paper towel but you guys can use coffee can filters or coffee filters whatever something that's lint-free that way you're not gonna get lint all over there now something else to mention here too is this fix also is being applied to the SD cards not just the for the win and the process is the same for all of those so even though we're showing it for the win model here if you have a 1080 or 1070 superclocked they're gonna be exactly the same process so the first thing we have to do is take this thing apart and this is the part that tends to freak out a lot of people we're gonna take out the four screws that are surrounding the GPU first here these are these spring-loaded screws and do yourself a favor get a white sheet of paper or do this on a light surface anti-static surface would be preferred but this would table is perfectly fine but as you can see the screws you're ruling all around we don't want to lose any of these we want to put this all back together as it's supposed to be so make sure you get something to put these screws in a little bowl a little cup something so you don't lose them because these screws are pretty during tiny those four screws believe it or not are the only screws that are actually holding on the main cooler these other smaller screws here are just holding on the back plate and the base plate together like a sandwich like an amazing sandwich of cooling C so yeah I just came apart with only those four screws removed now don't go yanking this apart because there are two wires to disconnect in here there's gonna be one right here that's kind of coiled up and then there's gonna be another one on the backside right here which is for the LEDs and fans and such don't pull by the wires get either a flat head screwdriver and kind of pry it out or get your fingernails in there on the side like I am pry it out gently kind of wiggle back and forth side to side and then they will come out but you cannot pull on the wires the wires are very delicate and you will end up damaging them and then yeah you don't want to do that but as you can see that's what it looks like when it comes apart so for now we're gonna set this guy aside we don't need him again for a little bit we are gonna go ahead and clean off the GPU core right here so this is where you need to take your isopropyl alcohol or your cleaning swabs whichever you use on some brands make thermal compound cleaning swabs so once you get that all nice and clean you're gonna flip this over face down and then we're gonna take out the remaining screws holding these two plates together because if you haven't realized already there is a front plate right here that goes under the cooler this is the part that's supposed to be dissipating the heat that is on the power delivery system which is right under here and then once you get the last screw out the back plate will simply come off like this as you can see there is a couple thermal pads on there already making contact with the surrounding of the GPU socket right there so there is some active cooling that's already taking place on here we're gonna be adding a little bit more so once your back plate is off where we focusing here on the front plate you don't need to take the front plate off there's three screws here that hold that in leave those three in there and we are going to be applying the smaller or the thinner pad to the front of the base plate here so what you want to do here is take your pad take off the plastic and we're gonna go ahead and without making this stretch sometimes they stretch when you pull them so if you kind of pull it little by little like this and just sort of roll it off of there then it won't stretch out too much and it won't hang off the sides we are going to go ahead and apply this right to the center of the components there that are visible and again you don't want it to extend beyond the length of the card if it does you're going to have to cut it and again these things do like to stretch so keep that in mind thank you no I'm just gonna ply it like that once you do that you're gonna set that aside and we're gonna go ahead and grab the back plate here so now we're going to take off the wide pad here and just like before we're going to take off the hard plastic part and we are going to apply this right here in between these four screws basically we're covering the e and the V of EVGA and this is already cut to length so just find the spot where it doesn't overhang past the backplate kind of like I have it right there kind of firmly push it down in place and then you can take off the this plastic piece here just like so serious give me a little bit of a bulge right there that's quite all right don't worry about it okay before we put it back together we obviously have to put thermal paste on our GPU right there otherwise we're gonna have some serious temperature problems more so won't where are you dealing with so one thing to note is even though I am using a swift Tec thermal compound here they're going to be sending a squeeze tube compound of the exact same stuff that they use in the factory which you can see right there so yours is probably gonna look different than mine so we're just gonna put a small drop of this right in the center just like that and I like to put just slightly more than I think I'm gonna need I did a whole video on this you guys can go back and watch that remember I played a whole tube on there to show you what was what could happen and what won't happen so you guys can refer to that if you think that's too much anyway we do have to clean this one off as well so take your isopropyl alcohol and your rag or paper towel microfiber cloth whatever you use and then just kind of scrape that off and make sure you get all the leftover residue off of there so once the compound is on there we are going to go ahead and before we set this down we're gonna go ahead and plug in the two little wires that we unplugged in the beginning because if you don't plug these in then your fans aren't gonna work and again temperature issues will arise different kinds of issues worse worse or issues than what we're dealing with right now it's not a lot of slack on these wires so be mindful of that before you go just cram and down seriously now let's hip here when you go put this together there's a little plastic nub right there that's got to fit in that very top hole the innuendos are strong with this one guys just deal with it so anyway make sure that that's put in there and then you will be able to get everything to line up properly and then you're just gonna put together this and pretty much the reverse order of how we took it apart we've already got our thermal pads applied to both the base plate as well as the back plate so now we have active cooling all around and you have just basically done this fix yourself so as you can see right here though the thermal pad on the back plate is now going to be touching all of the back of the power delivery there's always a lot of discussion out there right our back plates do back plates really do anything a lot of them are purely cosmetic but in instances like this it is going to be purely functional so there you go guys that's how easy it is to apply the fix to the GTX 1084 the wind but as I mentioned this applies to all of the AC X 3.0 coolers 1060 1070 1080 for the win as see all of those so head over to EVGA calm down load the new bios that's going to be an immediate fix you can apply now it's going to bump up the RPMs just a little bit on your fan it's gonna do it automatically if you have a custom fan curve already it probably isn't going to make a huge difference to you but the temperatures do significantly decrease on the back of the PWM circuit just by bumping up the fan speed about 400 rpm and EVGA was demonstrating this to me they had a setup going where it was running fur mark on two identical setups to 1080 for the wins one with the thick supplied with the backplate on and one with the back plate off and the fix not applied and without the backplate on there was actually giving a little bit better thermal dissipation there because there was no no insulation happening with the backplate there was a massive Delta and difference in temperature between both of the cards a simple fix like this is unfortunately caused EVGA a huge headache but they're handling it the right way and like I said this comes from the CEO they are devoted to the customer and this is completely independent this is this is not a PR message that they've asked me to tell you guys in fact I reached out to EVGA first and was like what is going on give me the details I want to know what's happening here so that's when I decided to go down there and see it firsthand and I I am thoroughly happy with the way that they are handling this it's a little bit of a headache if you have to send in your card and get a cross ship or the fact that you even you know would have to do this but again they're doing this all out of devotion to the community because EVGA was founded on gaming and they know that gamers are very passionate about this and they want to make sure that everybody is happy so anyway even though there are instructions that come with the kit sometimes people learn easier by watching someone do it so that's why I decided to do this video where I showed you applying the new thermal pads and you guys were pounding my Inbox literally every single day our on our asking me why I wasn't talking about this well I like to wait until I get all the details and I'm glad I waited because EVGA has made a statement and kudos to them for at least admitting they made a mistake and they're correcting it anyway guys what do you guys think about all of this do you think EVGA is handling it the right way I think they are but again what you guys think as customers are ultimately would make the most difference in all of this not what I think but what do you guys all think as a collective so sound off in the comments or on Twitter and let me know what you guys think anyway guys thanks for watching it as always I'll see you in the next video