- A hundred freaking degrees.
- Now that's hot. - [Man] Yeah.
- And not in a good way.
What you're looking at right now is a thermal camera shot
of the back of an RTX 3090,
and it's got a problem that's been fairly well-documented
by the PC gaming community.
The RAM runs as hot as an Intel MacBook Pro,
and that's no joke.
Fortunately, we've got a solution to tame the beast
and great news,
if you can afford a 3090,
then you can probably afford it too.
And you can probably also afford our sponsor, KiwiCo,
cause you are mad baller like that.
KiwiCo ships out crates
that contain hands-on projects for kids
to help develop their creative confidence
and problem-solving skills.
Learn more at the end of this video
or at the link down below.
(soft music)
(upbeat music)
Memory, specifically video memory meeting cooling
is nothing new.
The electronic components in your PC
release nearly 100% of the electricity they consume as heat.
So while many graphics cards
have all of their RAM chips on the front,
where they can be cooled by the same heat sink
that cools the GPU,
we've also seen many designs over the years
that have such a massive amount of video memory
that RAM chips end up being installed
on the back of the card as well,
and these often required their own cooling.
This usually takes the form of a metal back plate
with a couple of thermal pads to facilitate the transfer
between the chips and the heat sink.
Now, obviously a flat piece of aluminum,
like most graphics card back plates,
isn't the most efficient heat sink you could design,
but, the thing is,
RAM chips are relatively low power consumption
at only a couple of watts each
making it mostly a non-issue.
That is until you make a graphics card
with a TDP of 350 watts like an RTX 3090.
Specifically for the purposes of today's test,
we're using the Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity.
When you've got that much heat to get rid of
in such a small space,
the problem is that it's got to go somewhere
and if it's not being removed fast enough
it'll soak into anything nearby,
like, say for example, memory chips.
To add insult to injury,
Nvidia switched to the appreciably faster
Micron GDDR6X memory
for their 3080, and 3090 class GPUs.
Now, technically,
GDDR6X is more efficient per bit of data transferred,
but due to its faster overall speed,
it still results in more overall power consumption,
and therefore more heat.
So, you take a hotter running chip
and put it in a hotter environment
and you end up with what we showed you in the intro.
A bone stock speed RTX 3090 Trinity with surface V RAM temps
of over a hundred degrees celsius.
And remember guys, this is a reference board
which means that it's the design that Nvidia provided
to their partners like Zotac, Asus, et cetera,
to base their own custom cards off of.
Now, this shot here is with the factory back plate removed
which does mean we're hurting the cooling
of the rear memory chips a little,
but we only did that to give you a visual.
Prior to removing the back plate,
the memory junction temperatures reported
by the graphics card itself
we're still in excess of a hundred degrees
with thermal camera readings
putting the back plate itself at about 90.
That sounds really scary,
but there's not a lot of hot cards in the past.
Are those temps maybe okay?
Well, we don't have a firm answer from either Nvidia
or Micron about the maximum temps of these chips,
but Micron did recently share
the zero to 95 degree operating range of GDDR6X,
and according to Igor'sLAB,
the maximum is likely somewhere between
105 to 110 degrees celsius,
after which the card will start to thermal throttle,
now, then it's time to fix it.
The cheap and cheerful way
is to swap the factory thermal pads
for something with a little more gumption.
GPU manufacturers don't always use
the highest efficiency thermal pads and pastes.
And it's not always just to cut costs,
sometimes it's more about improving longevity of the paste.
Sometimes.
But today's video is about something new.
Now this looks like a bog standard water block
and, technically,
you know, (chuckling) it is.
But, it's not meant to cool your GPU
in the way that you might think,
rather, it goes on the back of your graphics card
like a back plate, but with active cooling,
it's an active back plate.
It's really cool, but to be clear,
it's more of an evolutionary
rather than a revolutionary idea.
Back when dual GPU cards existed,
we had double blocks that handled the individual GPUs
sometimes on their own separate PCBs,
and Aqua Computer actually built a heat-piped back plate
that hooked into their water block terminal
for cooling a 2080 TI.
This is just the first time we've seen it done so elegantly.
Now it's not a standalone product,
rather it's meant to be used in combination
with one of EK's other existing water blocks.
Just remove the terminal piece
of the water block you already have,
throw on thermal pads according to the instructions,
and then tighten it all in.
It's a little tricky cause you have
to line up the holes on both the terminal
as well as the back plate,
all while squishing it like a stress ball
to compress the thermal pads,
but, it only took a few minutes.
With it all installed,
the loop filled with my fancy water bottle, lttstore.com,
it looks pretty freaking cool.
Now, I wouldn't bank
on being able to use the slot above the GPU
as it's now practically, entirely blocked, get it?
But we could at least now answer the question
of whether it really does fix the problem.
With stock cooling,
a longterm gaming stress test with F1 2020
left our memory just barely within spec.
This is probably good enough for most people,
but it's common knowledge
that the lower your temps,
the longer your semiconductors will last,
and a stress test like Furmark
was able to push it out of that comfort zone,
with Ethereum blowing past it.
And this is even with more mining optimized
lower power settings, including running the fans at 100%.
Of course, before we recommend going out
and buying a $150 back plate,
it's worth investigating if a normal water block
is enough to bring the beast within safe operating temps.
In both F1 2020 and Furmark, we were now well within spec,
even with no backplate on the rear memory chips.
Just by removing the heat from the GPU
and the front memory chips a little faster.
So, for those of you who exclusively game,
you probably don't need an active back plate,
but if you're a crypto miner, there's still a solid chance
that you will end up in the danger zone.
Of course, if you rock a 3080
that does not have rear mounted memory chips,
you should be fine.
So finally then, with EK's back plate fitted,
our Furmark memory temps we're a little over half
of what they were when they were air cooled
and even the while Ethereum mining,
we didn't get anywhere close
to what I would consider dangerous.
And as an added bonus,
the GPU core itself ended up being cooler
thanks to the additional contact area
on the back of the card.
Now, I'm not going to pretend to be surprised
by these results.
The active backplate effectively adds direct water cooling
to these couple watt memory chips on the back of the card,
along with a big old hunk of copper
to sink the heat off the back of the card.
What's more surprising
is why this solution even needs to exist.
Nvidia is clearly aware of the problem
and in typical fashion,
silently adjusted the design
of their founder's edition cards
to include additional thermal pads
after igorLAB's initial report on the memory issues.
But, it's also possible
that this will not be an issue going forward
with the mining lock that's expected to be in place
on the upcoming 3080 TI,
subscribed by the way So you don't miss our review.
And then presumably,
on the rest of Nvidia's products going forward.
But then that also assumes that Nvidia manages
to build a mining lock that actually works.
Speaking of circumvention,
you can't circumvent this message from our sponsor.
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So thanks for watching guys,
if you liked this video,
maybe check out our RTX 3060 review.
It's a much more reasonably priced graphics card
that doesn't need active backplate cooling,
or at least normally it's more reasonably priced.
(laughing in background)
Well, what, look, what do you want from me?
- [Man] That You can buy one.