Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N RTX 3090/3080 TUF (AC-11939) doesn't fit over capacitors, bending the PCB

Hotslice

New member
SUMMARY: Newly installed Alphacool Eisblock Aurora Acryl GPX-N RTX 3090/3080 TUF with Backplate, mounted on ASUS RTX 3090 TUF Gaming OC, doesn't have enough clearance for 2 of the capacitors near the video ports. The acrylic top is pushing down on these capacitors, causing the PCB to flex. This flexion then puts a curve through the entire PCB, bending it away from the backplate in the center section. So the backside RAM -> 2mm thermal pad -> backplate is barely touching, causing the memory to run hot. End result: the memory runs HOTTER than it did with the stock air cooler, AND my PCB is being flexed and possibly damaged.

Picture 1: Marked with red arrows at the top of the photo are the 2 capacitors in the row that are significantly taller than the rest, impacting the acrylic.
Picture 2: Left side capacitor impaction and PCB flexing.
Picture 3: Right side capacitor impaction and PCB flexing.
Picture 4: UPC of the Eisblock.
Picture 5: UPC of the GPU.

Now that I am double checking the parts, I see that the GPU has part number 90YV0FD1-M0AA00, but the Eisblock manual claims compatibility with part 90YV0FD1-M0NM00 . Is this the source of the issue? How can the average consumer be expected to know this? If the waterblock advertises that it is for ASUS RTX 3090 TUF Gaming OC, then I would expect it to work on all cards bearing that model name. I purchased the GPU on December 28 and the Eisblock on February 21.
 

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davido_labido

Moderator
Hi @Hotslice

I will forward this onto the R&D team so that they can have a look at it, but it is likely due to the last part of the question. Unfortunately, GPU manufactueres can change the GPUs without informing anyone. If we had 90YV0FD1-M0NM00 and then later they changed things and released 90YV0FD1-M0AA00 silently we have no way of knowing, neither do customers. It is something that is frustrating as sometimes the changes can be quite substancial and can completely render blocks useless.

In this instance, we might be able to modify our waterblocks to account for the extra hight of the capacitors, but the R&D team will have to look into that I am afraid.
 

Hotslice

New member
The installation diagram for the thermal pads on the backplate seems to show that they should be installed in a different / wrong place from the stock pads. The stock pads go on the large SMD capacitors on the backplate as seen in the attached photo #1 (taken from
which is a 3080 TUF teardown but my 3090 had the pads in the exact same place). The instructions with the Alphacool block instead show the pad being installed on the tiny capacitors further out from that, which are on the backside of the inductor / power stages on the front.

Essentially there are 2 pairs of components here, with each pair occupying the front and the back of the board in the same location. I believe by the stock location, the front capacitors can receive some cooling by the pad on the back side. But with the Alphacool instructions the large capacitors receive no direct cooling on either side. Instead priority is given to cooling the small capacitors on the back side of the inductor that already has a pad on it? This seems like a clear mistake. Especially since pads #6 and #8 are 2mm pads which will never make good pressure against the tiny capacitors they are shown on in the diagram - you would need a 3mm pad for that.

Stock Pad PlacementAlphacool Pad Placement
Front: Large Cap / Back: Large CapBackNONE
Front: Inductor / Back: Small CapFrontFront AND Back
 

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Hotslice

New member
I would also like to register a complaint about the flatness of the backplate. I chose the Alphacool block for my build because it appeared to have the smoothest backplate with no features. My intent was to attach 2x Alphacool 17272 D-RAM Cooler X4 Universal to the backplate to also cool the backside VRAM. I have been mining Ethereum on this card and want to reduce the memory temperatures. Setting the backplate on a flat surface it was immediately apparent that it was bowed to one side in the middle. It was also coated with a rough matte material that would not be a good thermally conductive interface to attach a cooler to. After doing a few rounds of 400 grit sandpaper on each side, you can see clearly where the backplate was warped toward the inside (pictures #1 and #2)

It required a significant amount of additional sanding for me to remove enough material to get the backplate flat enough to attach the RAM coolers. Picture #3 is the final product, which represents MANY hours of hand sanding + polishing to get a smooth surface to attach the coolers to.
 

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Hotslice

New member
The gap between the front side of the PCB and the front cooler is 2.5mm. There is a small outdent on the front cooler for each memory chip (~ 0.75mm in height?) and the RAM chip is about 1mm off the PCB. That leaves ~ 0.75mm of space for the 1mm "ultra soft" pad to compress into. This seems OK.

On the backside, however, the gap is 3mm. There is no outdent on the backplate for the RAM chip (unless you count the warping in the middle that I have now sanded off). This means that the 2mm pad is supposed to fill 2mm of space exactly between the RAM chip and the backplate with no compression. This is NOT adequate cooling for the backplate RAM. What is the point of creating these "ultra soft" pads if you then spec them to not be compressed at all?

My PCB is actually warped and the middle section is closer to 3.5mm of gap. I don't know if this is as a natural result of sag, or because of the capacitor impaction happening at the end of the board, or just due to poor tolerances with the low quality nylon backplate standoffs provided by Alphacool. My camera didn't want to cooperate when taking these photos but I think you can clearly see that the 2mm pads on the backside VRAM are not compressed at all.

End result: My backplate VRAM runs at 104C+ while mining Ethereum with max UNDERclock. With my stock cooler (modded with additional passive heatsinks on the back and a 120mm fan pointed at them) I could do 125 MH/s @ 98C VRAM. Now, after installing the waterblock, I can only do 85 MH/s @ 104C VRAM. The backplate is barely warm at all, whereas with the stock cooling the backplate was extremely hot to the touch, especially near the memory chips. This means that heat is not successfully being transferred from the memory to the backplate.
 

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Yukss

New member
I installed this block on my asus 3080 ti tuf. i was gambling because this is for the 3080 and 3090. and it fitted perfectly, ZERO issues, no bending or weird problems.

gpu core temps 48c on load
hot spot 62 c on load
Vram on load 65 c
 

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