Gadgetory

those back plates that you find on some graphics cards are like a bra for your graphics card they look sexy and alluring making the reveal of what's underneath that much more fun and the sag prevention is a bonus but do they help with cooling I mean you can find people asking about this everywhere from the line of tech tips for them to overclock dotnet to Tom's Hardware to EVGA zone forums reddit and even super user forums they're all asking the same question and the answer has always been nope no cooling benefits just aesthetics and rigidity though you'll find the odd mention of protection for the components on the back from things like drop screws abrasion or small water cooling mishaps which is valid but not cooling right well that's what I thought but Oris recently released their gtx 1080 extreme edition 8g a beastly looking card with an advanced copper backplate cooling they claimed that excess heat from your GPU not only gets dissipated by the massive cooling module on the front you know the standard graphics card heatsink biele but also through the backside with a ribbed copper plate providing a well-rounded thermal solution for the GPU well they piqued my interest but they don't say exactly by how much the advanced copper backplate cooling solution will actually reduce temps by there is this giant egg Row 3 that's just chilling on the graphic of the backplate so I guess we're going to go with that welcome to episode 1 of manufacturers say where we're going to test if or as's new solution can stand up to their bold claims geez people is hosting a buy one get one free promotion for their energy drink tubs check it out at the link below let's set the playing field this is a non reference NVIDIA GTX 1080 but we'll start with a Founders Edition 1080 it also has a backplate but doesn't claim that it improves cooling and there's no shiny copper on it just a few weeks off thermal pads that are probably there mostly to make sure that the back plate isn't detrimental to cooling I threw it on a test bench and loaded up fur mark the fuzzy doughnut of death I left the card at stock settings other than cranking the temp target up to 83 degrees and after letting it burn for about 20 minutes just to be sure it was out of stable 79 degrees Celsius all right time to take it back off the bench and remove the backplate this is a relatively simple process four screws around the GPU two bigger ones near the i/o and then there's a ton of tiny little incredibly annoying screws everywhere ah be sure to have a magnetics parts tray if you don't have one we have this handy guide on how to make one out of a dead hard drive because these little devils will run away on you god they're annoying anyways bench time again the fuzzy donut is back and the results 79 degrees no change whatsoever this is starting to feel like the workshop we even took some shots with our Fleur thermal camera to give you guys a more complete picture of what's going on but in a nutshell the founders edition card well the backplate didn't really help anything what a challenger approaches aggressive angles animalistic symbols refined copper metal and industrial styling same process plot it in lock it in place screwed and cranked the thermal and power limit to max overclocked the core and memory by a hundred megahertz each apply the fuzzy donut and wait 20 minutes results 67 degrees and that's at over two gigahertz on the core this is a pretty wicked card it's fast it runs cool I hit a voltage limit at that overclock but yeah I'm liking it so far but how about that back plate well looking at the floor thermal imaging there is a cold spot right where that back plate sits but does that translate to a difference in core temperatures time to find out remove the three random screws from the back plate then the four ones around the GPU realize that there are more internally remove the entire heatsink unplugging all four plugs from the inside and undoing two remaining screws find another power connector behind the back plate for the glowing orit's logo try not to break the connector when removing it as it's rather fragile attach the cooler again but leave the backplate off put it back on the bench and conclusions 67 degrees that's the result 67 degrees is not lower than 67° 67° is the same damn thing as 67 degrees these results are not different the FLIR footage doesn't show the cold spot anymore but as there was no improvement the core is not less hot the card is not running any faster does the back plate look really cool yep does it cool things maybe maybe the back of the PCB but not the GPU or anything else that is going to affect performance it's hard with the tools that we have to say whether this is to do with poor thermal transfer through the PCB or the thick thermal pad that's on the copper plate and the card does perform well so we aren't saying not to buy it or anything just brace yourself for disappointment if you're a hardcore copper backplates for their GPU cooling abilities nerds and I guess it's that exists thanks for watching guys does this video suck you know to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button and considered going down below to click on links to buy stuff or buying a shirt which is the same as buying stuff but the stuff could reference graphics cards you saw in this video so that's slightly more specific than what I said right before that also watch this video which is our video on my personal break there we go that video is not up yet but theoretically considering it's like almost done editing it will go up before this goes up so I'll be that work though see you next time