Gadgetory

what's up guys Jays $0.02 here and I am going to be water-cooling some 10 80s coming up here pretty soon for the skunkworks update so I like to take the opportunity when I can to show you guys something to do with water cooling and every single time I've upgraded my graphics cards and done water cooling blocks I've done a tutorial on how to install said blocks and we're going to be using the e K FC 1080 GTX full cover nickel plexi water block for this tutorial I don't have a black back plate at the time of doing this tutorial but when I do the skunkworks builds I will have one but the reason why I really want to do this video is I've not taken this card apart yet and seems when people say that the back plates are kind of hard to get off on these I'm not sure if that's true or not so I figured well let's do it together and see whether or not that claim holds any water and then you know same time you guys might actually learn something so let's go ahead and rip this thing apart that's always fun I love taking stuff apart if you're a hardcore gamer and love to customize stuffed and check this out because mass drop has a drop going for the might ODS a sci-fi ki cap set buyers have the choice to build whatever custom kits they want including color schemes and layouts they even have layouts for planked pre on ik ergo docks and non-standard layouts for razer corsair logitech in coolermaster and heck they even have Nordic German and UK layouts covered as well for full details about this drop head to the link down the description one of the things that makes a 1080 a little different than other reference cards with the exception of the standard 90 80 not the 980ti is that it has a backplate typically nvidia doesn't put back plates on their cards but this time they did because they're trying to make it a retail card and for ya they put it back plate in it's it's a nice black plate it's plastic but some folks have said it's hard to get off and I'm not sure if that's true or not now taking a look here I can see there's a lot of tiny tiny little Phillips head screws on this thing then a couple of larger standard Phillips head screws and of course you've got your GPU spring loaded screws right here so I don't see anything really that looks too difficult it's got a seam right here so this looks like this is a different part than the front so it's gonna be a two piece back plate it looks like so I've got this guy here just a little T handled screwdriver husky brands it's a Lowe's brand but it's got some bits that fit down in there now these aren't gonna be on there too too tight again because this is plastic but you certainly don't want to strip one of those out that would suck these of our this back plates actually already been taken off before ek had this card before me well actually I shouldn't say before me I had the card and then I sent it to ek for them to verify their block design on because for whatever reason Nvidia did not send them a card so I sent them mine and they've already taken this thing apart but these screws are so freakin tiny I mean you can kind of get an idea right there just how small those screws are really really small it's one of the reasons why I like the t-handle or any sort of ratcheting screwdrivers I can keep downward force on it and then I can just turn this get the screw out and it doesn't pop off or slide off or anything like that especially you're dealing with such tiny screws I know the video just really doesn't show you how small these screws are so all of the screws for the back half have been taken off and there's that you can see it just comes right off so I so far this seems pretty pretty dang straightforward the only thing I can see here and each one of the places where there would be a screw when these tiny little backplate screws is a standoff a threaded standoff that they screw into so I mean I guess you just have to go through and take each one of these off but that that's really just a little bit of an extra step it's not that big of a deal look like they might be maybe a four millimeter now with the reference cards this also screws right here on the face that you have to take off there's one right there and one right here so you have to make sure you take those two screws out as well I'll remove these two right here though because the other screws are actually holding the outputs here to the shield that way they don't break when you plug in your port for your cables so it's just these two in the middle left to come off okay then over here in the corner we have a couple of regular sized screws so these are spring-loaded once you get them completely threaded out they'll just pop up these hold tension exactly on the four corners of the GPU core ah I missed the screw so you could take off the backplate without having to undo those four screws I thought so would seem weird if we couldn't so there we go there's our two-piece backplate taken off and here you can see the 1080 doesn't have any Ram mounted on the back of the GPU so adding an aftermarket backplate to this will add a little bit of heat dissipation from a company like ek because it puts a thermal pad right here on the back of the die a lot of heat actually comes off the back of the core right here and then the plate can help dissipate some of that heat but a plate like this here this is this is purely aesthetics this is purely an aesthetic backplate I got really lucky I just happen to have a four millimeter socket in here don't even ask me why I remember why but it's the size that you need to remove these standoffs here so if you guys are wondering it is a four millimeter that you need here all right there we go it looks like I got all of them I don't see any of them missed here let's go ahead pull this apart gently it'll be gentle because the pace makes a pretty good bond when it gets heated and yeah there we go just like that now inside the ek packaging you're going to get all the screws and hardware that you need to install your block thermal paste plugs allen keys you've got your thermal pads here what's interesting is the pads are pre-cut for the RAM but they're not pre-cut for anything else you will need scissors to cut these and the instructions here will tell you what to cut and where to put it I always recommend I know us men are like we don't need instructions but yeah you should you should really pay attention to the instructions trust me and then of course we have the block in all of its glory look at this I think the nickel plexi block looks so good I like nice clear blocks it looks very very elegant I guess would be the word and if you look at the way it is on the card it looks like that it just looks so nice now I like to keep the boxes a bit of a workbench if you will because this hangs down when you go to flip that over to put your back plates or your you know screws on the back of the card it can actually hang off the edge like that it gives you a better area to work on because we do it like that then the block is going to fall and it makes it a little harder so I keep the block around on the box around is a bit of a workbench so I'm already cleaned off the GPU core right here I use isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth of some sort a lot of people like to use coffee filters those tend to work pretty well but I'm now referencing the instructions here so I can see which of the pads go where now you've got a thicker pad a half millimeter pad and a one millimeter pad so number three here is the one millimeter as you can see it's what's going to be covering all the VRMs back there number two is going to be a thinner pad and it is the one that gets put on all of the chokes right here the square things are the chokes so we're going to be actually active cooling the VRMs right back here and then the chokes for those as well so what I like to do that way I know which way to cut is I like to just kind of take it here put it where I need it to go and then push it down like this push it real hard because then it makes an imprint on here and how why you can pick it up it makes an imprint and I can see exactly at that point where I need to cut let me see if I can get this ah there we go like that you can see where the components are so now I know where I can cut my length sometimes pulling off the backing is the hardest part now it might stretch a little bit too when you pull the backing off because it is really really soft so if it does he might trim it down just a little bit more did stretch a little bit when I pull it off the backing so I'm going to trim it like that place and there once that's in place and we need to peel off blue backing just like that so there's one set of thermal pads and I basically do the exact same thing here for the the chokes I'm also going to cut this one a little bit long ways because it is a little bit too wide and these don't have to be perfect you just have to make contact and lay it across just like that make sure it's nice and sticky if you find that your thermal pad doesn't stick it might still have some residue left over from the pads that come on the factory cooler these are very greasy so you might find that that's the reason why it's not sticking very good so if that's the case take some alcohol rub it on the component so let the alcohol dry use compressed air to help dry it and then you'll find it will stick a lot better the same goes for the the RAM now the nice thing about the thermal pads for the RAM is it is already cut now once all the thermal pads are on it's time to do the thermal paste and they include a non-conductive eco therm ek Tim they call it thermal interface materials with Tim stands for now this is the part everyone likes to get controversial about how do you put it on well as you can see right here on the instructions ek recommends the x+ across now obviously when you have an opening as big as the tip of this thing how ladies it gets a little bit difficult to do that without there being a ton of paste so i'ma think on this one here because his diet is pretty small I'm just going to do the cross it's going to be more than enough thermal compound what we really want to make sure here though is that we don't actually do a dot there dot there dot there done there I know that just looks really globby and ugly but again you guys know it's really difficult to get a nice thin stream of paste what matters is that every square millimeter of this is covered it's okay if it squishes out along the side but you obviously if you put way too much nothing terrible's going to happen watch this video right here if you guys don't believe me but this is more than enough and it's not too too it's more important that you have enough rather than too little so what we're going to do now is we're going to line up our our water block here flip it over now you guys can see why I like to use the box and if you were using a back plate at this time you would use the manual for the back plate to see which screws you can put on first then you put on the back plate and then use the back plate screws to connect the rest of it together like a sandwich because I don't have a back plate yet those are coming in the mail and this isn't one of the cards that's actually going in skunkworks at the moment I'm just going to I'm finishing out this video for the sake of it show you guys how it goes together now you want to use these little plastic standoffs oh these little plastic washers here every time you use a screw that way it doesn't bite into the actual card material itself these also just make sure that the screws themselves aren't going to be shorting out or pinching on anything also the manual says to do it so so that's why I'm doing it now I always start with the four corners around the GPU first because that's obviously where the most important amount of torque be put down on the card or the block because we want to make sure the GPU is getting nice even torque on it so we get good thermal compound spread as well as making sure that we're not going to be overheating because we have any sort of gaps in there now tighten down till snug and do a star pattern again that's a cross pattern go diagonally and then go to the other corner then go diagonal again now we're going to get nice even pressure on the block and the die don't over tighten you can easily strip out the block remember it is made of copper so if you over tighten this then you end up stripping the block and then you don't do yourself any favors whatsoever and then once you're done just give it a little bit of an extra turn again not too much force and that is all you have to do so your work from these corners right here these four don't get any screws but you're going to work outward till the entire block is done now in this corner right here you're going to use one of the screws and nuts that come with the es screw nut I get it so you're going to use the one that comes with the kit right here to make sure that this front plate has something to screw into because that's actually where the front plate mounts right there to the card if you don't do that they you couldn't you know end up putting too much torque on this plate and bend it and you don't want to do that all right there we go fully installed and like I said if you were doing the back plate the only difference is like these outer screws right here typically are the ones that mount the back plate down so you put the plate on with its thermal pad right here and then put the screws for the plate on there and then there's your back plate but yeah as you can see right there not too difficult and it looks pretty slick so there it is GTX 1080 water cooled now we'll be doing some testing with this guy here to see if water cooling gets us any additional Headroom when it comes to overclocking I don't expect to too much but I hope temperatures stay really really low that was one of the nice things about the standard 980 was the fact that temperatures were super low with that compared to the big maxwell chip like Titan X and 980ti which got significantly hotter in my loop than the 980 s did so it'd be nice to be in those temps down I'm actually thinking about going with 210 ATS instead of three not because of the three-way conflict but really about heat and really there being more more power in there than I truly need but anyway it's an enthusiast build and I guess going over the top is kind of what we do around here isn't it every guys thanks for watching I just want to make this quick video where I document putting on the block because I know that there's people out there they're going to be watching for that make sure you guys if you guys going to get EK blocks make sure you use the EK configurator to make sure it's going to work with your card as of as of the filming of this video the only card that is supported by EK is water blocks is our EK water blocks is going to be the founders edition PCB or reference PCB they might come out with other boards in the future but as of right now the founders is the only one that's actually included with the lineup and is covered no pun intended alright guys thanks for watching in as always i will see you in the next video