I'll be doing it that way. Thermal pad on ram, keep plastic between thermal pad and blockSounds like a plan
Let us know how you get on please and that's what i would do is keep the plastic on between pad and block section
EK Active Backplate Waterblock install for 4090 FE
- Thread starter Jay-G25
- Start date
Just did it, don't bother. Made no difference at all. Memory was slightly hotter, but I couldn't even hit +1600 this time. I don't feel comfortable either with the tape still on the pads as it will add additional pressure to the ram modules. Ill be re doing it back to how it was before.
At this point i am thinking use no thermal pads at all in that case even with the crap EK pads which are 3w/mk it still doesn't get hot enough .... what a crazy situation this is , last gen we would have been praying for temps this low now we want them sky high again
Ah damn I've just assembled mine with the plastic still on!
Still bleeding air out which will take ages!
So far with 4090 FE totally stock running FurMark for over 10min now drawing 455 Watts @ 100% TDP.
Setpoint controller 10c Air to Water Delta.
Room Temp 15c
Water Temp 25c
GPU 46c
Hot Spot 53C
Memory 38C
That's with the EK provided Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut and plastic on the pads between the pad and the block.
Guess I'm happy with the core temp but obviously memory is a bit low!
On the stock FE cooler the same room temp was showing:
GPU 66C
Hot Spot 75C
Memory 62C
That was with the fans on auto around 40%.
Still bleeding air out which will take ages!
So far with 4090 FE totally stock running FurMark for over 10min now drawing 455 Watts @ 100% TDP.
Setpoint controller 10c Air to Water Delta.
Room Temp 15c
Water Temp 25c
GPU 46c
Hot Spot 53C
Memory 38C
That's with the EK provided Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut and plastic on the pads between the pad and the block.
Guess I'm happy with the core temp but obviously memory is a bit low!
On the stock FE cooler the same room temp was showing:
GPU 66C
Hot Spot 75C
Memory 62C
That was with the fans on auto around 40%.
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Core looks spot on as does hot spot but yeah memory still on the low side ... honestly think no thermal pads may be what is needed even though it sounds wrong. Alternatively leave it as is as its only in extreme benchmarks it seems to have an effect. I can daily this at +1200 memory no matter the temp of the memory which is still a nice oc over stock .. it will do +1450 depending on water temp but won't do +1550 it did on air
With plastic on my mem oc went to around +1500 and 47C in PR (3060) OC, decided to do a full re do of everything, EK thermal pads for the Ram and the rest Thermal Right ultra the 14 w/mk. Mem will OC back to 1700 (1800 on air) and I also changed this cool Apex paste with my old Thermal Grizzle K Extreme and temps went down to 41C in a 22 ambient water at 3075 mhz in PR. Happy with that. I'll let it bake in a bit and see if memory will go higher. The only thing I don't have on it is Backplate VRM pads.
End of the day though, I plan on running around 1200 daily and undervolting so it doesn't really matter anyway after the benchmarks.
End of the day though, I plan on running around 1200 daily and undervolting so it doesn't really matter anyway after the benchmarks.
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Looking at the difficulty in getting the memory stable with the active back plate would you guys just recommend sticking with the standard waterblock? I picked up a Founders Edition yesterday so I`m looking at this thread with interest, especially with the cost of the active back plate compared to the standard waterblock.
My advice from what i know now is to just stick with the stock EK block , the ABP is a stunning looking bit of kit and can understand if you want to do it on looks alone but from a performance point of view is probably doing more harm than good as very likely not helping with the memory temp issue as the back of the pcb is watercooled as well as the front so hardly has any chance to build up heat and remain stable for the memory. I do plan strip this down eventually and get the pads changed to either EK pads at 3w/mk or find something with an even lower rating to try and keep some sort of heat in the memory chips , alternatively im still keen to see what they do with no thermal pads as there is so much headroom available with them technically being able to rech 110deg safely
Few pics with temps showing the delta between water and core at various power loads in games i play , probably a more realistic outlook on what it will do day to day when not running benchmarks as the card is set to stock and capped to the framerate of the oled which is 120Hz . With the card like this you have absolutely no issues with memory instability and works perfectly as intended and is virtually silent as no need to have the fans on full chat like when benchmarking
Thanks for the reply Jay, I`ll stick with the standard block, saves a few quid tooMy advice from what i know now is to just stick with the stock EK block , the ABP is a stunning looking bit of kit and can understand if you want to do it on looks alone but from a performance point of view is probably doing more harm than good as very likely not helping with the memory temp issue as the back of the pcb is watercooled as well as the front so hardly has any chance to build up heat and remain stable for the memory. I do plan strip this down eventually and get the pads changed to either EK pads at 3w/mk or find something with an even lower rating to try and keep some sort of heat in the memory chips , alternatively im still keen to see what they do with no thermal pads as there is so much headroom available with them technically being able to rech 110deg safely
The standard block is more than enough on these 4090 , i was initially in 2 minds if to go fr the ABP or not knowing full well it had no ram chips on the back to cool but will openly admit the main factor was looks for me as i previously had a 3090 Strix with ABP and loved the look and design and wanted to replicate that again so went with the ABP for looks alone with the hope it may offer better cooling , well we now know it looks stunning but is a pita for overcooling the card somewhat , what a bizarre generation this isThanks for the reply Jay, I`ll stick with the standard block, saves a few quid too
It is a bizarre generation, who would have thought that there would also be a minimum temperature for chips to perform well.The standard block is more than enough on these 4090 , i was initially in 2 minds if to go fr the ABP or not knowing full well it had no ram chips on the back to cool but will openly admit the main factor was looks for me as i previously had a 3090 Strix with ABP and loved the look and design and wanted to replicate that again so went with the ABP for looks alone with the hope it may offer better cooling , well we now know it looks stunning but is a pita for overcooling the card somewhat , what a bizarre generation this is
It must be something to do with the new 2GB modules they are now using on the 40 series compared to the 30 series using 1GB versions as they never suffered from this issue at all , in fact was the total opposite and got to damn hot as stock
It would be interesting to know if the 3090Ti had the same issue as that is when they started using these new 2GB ram modules but i suppose the card wasn't that popular and even less people watercooled them as i don't think i have seen one till this day... 40 series obviously a lot more popular so the problem was found very early on.
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Installed the TUF 4090 block and finally testing the performance. Amazing, I can completely max everything in RDR2 and stay in the 100fps region (without even using DLSS.)
Temps staying high 40s with 2 360 rads.
Room temp around 18C.
Water temp around 35C max.
Hotspot temp about 8C higher than core temp.
Memory temp in the 50s.
Was so worried about installing the EK block as I made a mistake with a previous block and had terrible hotspot temp.
Coil whine is audible but not bad at all and the block hasn't increased the sound that I can tell.
All good so far!
Temps staying high 40s with 2 360 rads.
Room temp around 18C.
Water temp around 35C max.
Hotspot temp about 8C higher than core temp.
Memory temp in the 50s.
Was so worried about installing the EK block as I made a mistake with a previous block and had terrible hotspot temp.
Coil whine is audible but not bad at all and the block hasn't increased the sound that I can tell.
All good so far!
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Shocking. Did chilled water today had the 13900k running at all core 6ghz, 4.8 e cores with the water temp at 6C and tried to pull a quick test timespy before the pub. Could t even run 1100 ram!!
Men was 6C. Def need to sort something for benchmarking.
Men was 6C. Def need to sort something for benchmarking.
The standard block is more than enough on these 4090 , i was initially in 2 minds if to go fr the ABP or not knowing full well it had no ram chips on the back to cool but will openly admit the main factor was looks for me as i previously had a 3090 Strix with ABP and loved the look and design and wanted to replicate that again so went with the ABP for looks alone with the hope it may offer better cooling , well we now know it looks stunning but is a pita for overcooling the card somewhat , what a bizarre generation this is
The back block isn't needed, ekwb is just selling it because they spent so much money on RnD for it so they will try to keep selling it
Yeah similar to what i experienced having to downclock the memory even more than normal to get it stable... on mine water temp was like 3 deg c with memory getting to about 14-16 deg and couldn't have it any higher than +1200 . I think the only answer to this is use no thermal pads at all as when people do LN2 overclocking the memory is normally left naked and they don't seem to have as much of an issue as we do although they are still affected somewhat but assume that's due to the whole pcb getting cold from the ln2.
I agree its not needed at all this gen and probably doing more harm than good but hay it looks much nicer which is the important thing here