Eiswolf 2 360 for Strix 3080 Thermal Pads, Temperatures & Coil Whine

[TotalControl]

Received my AIO yesterday and was amazed at the quality firstly, everything seemed simple and easy to put together, installation was fantastically easy.

Then I turned the PC on. VRAM temperatures easily hit 100°c and when I loaded a game the coil whine was unbearable (see linked video)

Assuming id done something wrong I dissembled to find none of the thermal pads were making contact for the VRAM and even the pads on the backplate were barely touching the components (everything was screwed as tight as possible) I took some time reading forums here and googling other peoples issues and found what I believe the issue might be, my 3080 was one of the very first batch to arrive in the UK last September when I was lucky enough to purchase on launch day. It sounds like the GPU die on early batches are slightly higher?

I removed the included thermal pads and replaced them with the ones on my stock cooler (photos below) sorry I didn't get photos of the included white ones, but you can see the difference in thickness and the stock pads do make contact with the cold plate now but the VRAM temperatures have not improved and the coil whine was so bad it forced me to take everything apart and replace the stock air cooler.

Purchased from Aquatuning in UK, I've applied for a return but I wondered if there was anything else I could try before returning, many thanks.

Video of coil whine noise

 

[Eddy]

First.... never use the thermalpads from the air cooler. They have different sizes. That can`t work at all.
RTX 3XXX GPUs have problems with the package of the DIEs, so sometimes they are higher or lower than normal. We are talking only about 0,5mm but that is enough for some issues.
Please get in contact with our support team directly, they have some experience with that general problem and they can help you with the right thermal pads. info@alphacool.com

 

[TotalControl]

Thanks Eddy I have emailed directly,

I appreciate the difference in thermal pad sizes, I don't have a supply of different sizes so trying the air cooler pads was more for diagnosis.

The coil whine in the video was with the thermal pads included with the AIO, do you believe correctly sized pads would resolve this?

 

[Eddy]

We dont have pads on the coils so no, here nothing will really help. There are a few things you can try agains coil whine.
1. Try to fiy your FPS in games with a max setting.
2. Some people douse them with epoxy resin or similar hard non-conductive substances. But of course, this voids the warranty.
3. Sometimes it helps to play around with the voltage and the clock rates a bit. This can reduce the problem, but unfortunately it can't eliminate it.
But in general, this has become worse rather than better with the new Generation graphics cards. The last option is to replace the card. A cooler generally doesn't help here.

 

[TotalControl]

The issue only started when using the AIO, and stopped when I reverted to the stock air cooler. No changes to game settings, voltage or clock rates.

I'll wait for a reply to support email before decide to return or not. Thanks for the input

 

[Eddy]

Then the air cooler probably has thermal pads on the coils which minimize the vibrations. It is really rare that this helps. We don't put anything on the coils because that can have the opposite effect and make it worse.

 

[TotalControl]

Update:

A friend gave me some 1.5mm thermal pads for the VRAM - issue resolved

A long time spent researching the coil whine issue led me to find customers of EK waterblocks had similar or the exact same issue, caused by the backplate. Sure enough when I removed the backplate the coil whine disappeared completely. Adjusting the thermal pads on the backplate to EKs updated specifications resulted in a massive reduction of noise, to a level you won't notice while gaming etc. I prefer this result over removing the backplate completely for aesthetics.

I appreciate this is a new'ish product so please pass along my findings and hopefully this helps anyone else reading.