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Old Post but great. Having stripped the 3090 FE and an EVGA 3090, the FE was easier. Simply because the thermal pads didn't make an absolute mess. Took me 2 hours to clean the crap off the EVGACalm down sarge...
"molested" the card? you follow all the rules when it comes to using anything you own right?
You know the warranty people can be a pain to deal with even if you havent "molested" the card. Maybe they accuse you of overclocking it? Or dont believe your story.
What I don't understand on a forum with "OVERCLOCKERS" in the name, is how many people seem petrified to do anything with their hardware.
Despite the very activity in the title of the forums 'voiding your warranty' just the same.
They also act like taking a GPU apart and changing paste/pads is an order of magnitude more difficult or risky than building the rest of the PC. I grant you, the FE cooler is not the simplest thing in the world. However.... neither are the mounting brackets on many a cooler.
And there is plenty of risk in the building stage of a PC. Maybe you bend the CPU pins, or drop the motherboard while trying to line it up... basically the name of the game is to "take care" as you build the system.
What I find certainly gets on my ghost is constantly reading people nannying people that DO want to improve the cooling of their card. If you fear for your warranty so much, then sure don't do it.
There is no need to remind people that DO, that they MAY have issues claiming on said warranty in the future. Especially when this is done with no evidence or examples.
These same folks don't same to come out in such force when it comes to people installing a custom water loop, or just overclocking / undervolting there hardware.
Again... all that stuff technically voids the warranty too.
What we do thankfully see very little (if any?) of, is people actually reporting getting warranty rejected. (For anything, not just re-padding.) It seems that mostly companies will honour warranties and get things sorted.
/rant
Did a bit of tinkering and finally tipped 20k with a 20018 total (21306 gpu/14913 CPU) GPU stock FE cooler - CPU on water.
That mod was £15 well spent!
I beat that score I'm certain
I was also albiet it briefly #1 with an 8700k and 3090I beat that score I'm certain