'Gainward Phantom, Phantom GS, Palit GameRock, GameRock OC RTX 3090, 3080 waterblocks'

[Freakyer]

Sorry, but this isn't entirely correct...

I've attached the actual specs from Palit for doing a thermal pad swap, however their rep's recommendation was not to, because some of the custom sizes they used were such a PITA to recreate using off the shelf products.

Obviously I did it anyway, and tried using a squishier 1mm pad... *<SNIP>* ...heat we're seeing on the VRAM is what seeps over from the core, and having a higher power limit/core temp is the main thing that affects your VRAM temps (which is why water-cooling even just the core brings VRAM temps down considerably).

I'm not saying I regret doing it, as I'm definitely one of those who just can't live with not knowing. But knowing what I know now, I certainly won't be in a hurry to swap the pads out on it again until putting a block on it necessitates it.

Great post! That goes for ailveen as well! Interesting stuff both, thank you!

Based on the other AC cards I assume that the AC Waterblock for these cards will remove this issue with odd thickness pads and reduce everything to 1mm with the odd 2mm area...

@Eddy @Thomas_S - Are either of you able to comment on the pad thicknesses for the up-coming block at all?

 

[Hugh Jass]

Thanks for the official sizes. I do agree with the advice to get a soft 1 mm pad, since 0.75 mm is not easily available. I used Thermal Grizzly minus pad which is expensive but got the job done. I wish some of the pads didn't tear off the first time I disassembled so they do not need to be replaced, but unfortunately they did.

Now, the real elephant in the room is that core you were talking about. The core GPU die is the main reason I opened it up first time, to try to get it to cool better. I easily throttled when my GameRock OC was new.

Most of the GPU dies nowadays are also convex (raised slightly at the middle), so when tightening the pressure plate to the cooler, one has to be sure that is tight to the point of almost stripping the screws. Another guy also suggested to me that after tightening, loosen all four screws by one turn, and then tighten again in a criss-cross pattern.

HWInfo's Hotspot temperature tells you if you have optimized the mount. A delta of more than 10C over the GPU die temp means the tightening process could be further improved.

Eventually, I settled on Liquid Metal. Not sparingly, but a little bit more LM than usual but not dripping. Now my Hotspot delta never goes over 10C (see attached OC profile). To protect the area around the die, I used Liquid Electrical tape.

As for the memory junction temperature, they need to be below 110C before they throttle. So far, if I run my OC profile, the max they ever reach with the Thermal Grizzly pads is 100C, but averages only around 86C when gaming.

Yeah, this is all exactly in line with what I found when I did the thermal pad swap, and when I did the liquid metal TIM swap before that (I think I was probably the guy you're quoting about the screw tightening and the liberal LM application...I'm the guy that made his own cooler using 140mm Noctua Industrial 3000s lol XD).

I completely agree about the GPU hot spot temps too...everytime I've put the thing back together, the delta between my core temps and hot spot has been different ??‍

Thankfully, the silver lining for doing the pad swap (most frustrating day I've had in a long time due to mentioned 20+ reassemblies!), is that my delta is now the best it's ever been, and the card never goes above 68° with a 10° delta, even with the 520W BIOS (the 1000W BIOS still sees it creep into the 70s though).

I too haven't seen my memory junction temps go over 100° since swapping the pads (used to go as high as 106°). It's just obviously not the 80° max kind of temps people with the FE cards running a 350W-400W PL are seeing after the swap, but then that's just what another 100W+ going through the card gets you, I guess ?

I've also done similar mods on my wife's Red Devil 6900XT, and the mounting pressure issues are just as bad with that (loving her 68° max VRAM temps though lol).

Anyway, thanks for sharing your findings ? They seem to line up exactly with my own, and will hopefully serve as useful reference points to others thinking about doing TIM/pad swaps.

? the mounting pressure solution for the new waterblocks will make things a bit easier for all of us in this regard, and we don't have to c**k about with things quite so much in the future!

 

[PumpNZ]

Thanks for the official sizes. I do agree with the advice to get a soft 1 mm pad, since 0.75 mm is not easily available. I used Thermal Grizzly minus pad which is expensive but got the job done. I wish some of the pads didn't tear off the first time I disassembled so they do not need to be replaced, but unfortunately they did.

Now, the real elephant in the room is that core you were talking about. The core GPU die is the main reason I opened it up first time, to try to get it to cool better. I easily throttled when my GameRock OC was new.

Most of the GPU dies nowadays are also convex (raised slightly at the middle), so when tightening the pressure plate to the cooler, one has to be sure that is tight to the point of almost stripping the screws. Another guy also suggested to me that after tightening, loosen all four screws by one turn, and then tighten again in a criss-cross pattern.

HWInfo's Hotspot temperature tells you if you have optimized the mount. A delta of more than 10C over the GPU die temp means the tightening process could be further improved.

Eventually, I settled on Liquid Metal. Not sparingly, but a little bit more LM than usual but not dripping. Now my Hotspot delta never goes over 10C (see attached OC profile). To protect the area around the die, I used Liquid Electrical tape.

As for the memory junction temperature, they need to be below 110C before they throttle. So far, if I run my OC profile, the max they ever reach with the Thermal Grizzly pads is 100C, but averages only around 86C when gaming.

Are you using the Stock gamerock OC cooler with the liquid metal? I thought it was an aluminon block?

 

[Hugh Jass]

Are you using the Stock gamerock OC cooler with the liquid metal? I thought it was an aluminon block?

It's an aluminium fin stack..the cold plate is nickel plated copper. I can't recall a card that's used an aluminium cold plate in quite some time thankfully! XD

 

[church]

BTW, does anybody knows where to source those non-standard pads used if needed to? Quick googling mostly returns more generic thickness pads..

 

[Thomas_S]

@church which pads do you need? To answer your question better, it would be easier if you open a new post for it.

 

[Lareng]

I have a Gainward Phantom GS 3090 and took a thermal image showing clearly the hotspots from the memory chips. I used a cooler master cpu heat sink and just added some thermal paste and placed it on back of the card. The MJT dropped 10 degree Celsius after this. Still the 3 fans are quite busy and noisy so really want to buy a water block if/when it’s out.

 

[tobytones]

In my experience it was not even worth it to replace thermal pads on my Phantom 3080. I was having mem temps of 96 C under full load, swapped to 2 mm on the back touching the plate, 1 mm on mem chips around the die, got 106 C, redid with thermal paste on top of the pads, back 96 C. Impossible to get an even pressure it seemed. Ive since tried 1,5 mm around the die, but that causes the die to not have proper contact. I've laso tried Gelid, TG and Arctic pads, just a huge waste of money for no improvement on my part.

 

[Hugh Jass]

BTW, does anybody knows where to source those non-standard pads used if needed to? Quick googling mostly returns more generic thickness pads..

I think that's the issue with them being a custom size, i.e. you can't buy them at retail anywhere.

Your best bet is to try a 1mm pad that's squishier than the 40 hardness one I used, and hope that it squishes down okay.

If you're using thermal paste as a TIM then that might grant you some extra leeway too, but the 40 hardness 1mm ones I got definitely won't work with a liquid metal TIM.

 

[Eddy]

Gamerock cooler..... release 17.06 with stock!

 

[Hugh Jass]

Gamerock cooler..... release 17.06 with stock!

Awesome work on all of our behalf! ??? Thanks, Eddy! ??

 

[StuPot]

Gamerock cooler..... release 17.06 with stock!

Great news, can we pre-order? ??

 

[church]

 

[Eddy]

Preorders are not possible right now, sorry. We will launcht with stock and i hope we have enough on stock for all oders in the first days. But if you really like to get one, i would recommend to order the cooler on the first day. Because the last deliveries of the other coolers were usually sold out within a few days. Some even on the second day. And unfortunately, not so many come with the first delivery.

 

[Lareng]

Will the Gamerock cooler fit the 3090 Phantom GS?
Think the PCB is the same but would be nice to get a confirmation that the cooler will fit both cards.

 

[Eddy]

I don`t know, we have no datas about the Phantom edition.

 

[church]

Will the Gamerock cooler fit the 3090 Phantom GS?
Think the PCB is the same but would be nice to get a confirmation that the cooler will fit both cards.

Palit is parent company of Gainward brand, and from what i heard/found, PCB of (gamerock, gamerock OC, phantom, phantom GS, of 3080 & 3090) should be same, only stock air cooler differs. I guess Eddy doesn't want to tell for sure something he had not checked in person, as probably only Palit's card sample was sent in for measurments/block design.
From here:
"PALIT | GAINWARD - Not available in North America
Palit Microsystems (stylised PaLiT) was founded in Taipei, Taiwan in 1988, acquired the Gainward brand and company in 2005, currently headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan." and PCB links for those four cards of two brands, i see linked article of Palit's card for all of them. From googled up Phantom 3090 review i see it even including same acrylic gpu anti-sag as included with mine gamerock OC. Clocks are same. Card lengths are same. Product numbers are similar.
i bet that 98% blocks should be compatible with imho essentially same card sans stock cooler and slight bios modifications for branding. It may make business sense to rebrand card and sell in specific markets where other brand is better known. It imho makes no business sense to make custom cards themselves, when "rebadging" is sufficient.
I guess that probably there will be Phantom & Phantom GS buyers that will buy this block too. For piece of mind of others, would be nice for them to post back their experiences here. Just that .. i guess by that time first batch will certainly be sold out, LOL

 

[Synologic]

Palit is parent company of Gainward brand, and from what i heard/found, PCB of (gamerock, gamerock OC, phantom, phantom GS, of 3080 & 3090) should be same, only stock air cooler differs. I guess Eddy doesn't want to tell for sure something he had not checked in person, as probably only Palit's card sample was sent in for measurments/block design.
From here:
"PALIT | GAINWARD - Not available in North America
Palit Microsystems (stylised PaLiT) was founded in Taipei, Taiwan in 1988, acquired the Gainward brand and company in 2005, currently headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan." and PCB links for those four cards of two brands, i see linked article of Palit's card for all of them. From googled up Phantom 3090 review i see it even including same acrylic gpu anti-sag as included with mine gamerock OC. Clocks are same. Card lengths are same. Product numbers are similar.
i bet that 98% blocks should be compatible with imho essentially same card sans stock cooler and slight bios modifications for branding. It may make business sense to rebrand card and sell in specific markets where other brand is better known. It imho makes no business sense to make custom cards themselves, when "rebadging" is sufficient.
I guess that probably there will be Phantom & Phantom GS buyers that will buy this block too. For piece of mind of others, would be nice for them to post back their experiences here. Just that .. i guess by that time first batch will certainly be sold out, LOL

For sure i will buy one and test it on my Gainward Phantom 3090 (not GS) ... as per the initial discussions on this thread, the PCBs should be the same, but from what i read around here there might be a problem with the thermal pads.

I just hope it will match

 

[church]

Thermalpad offtopic was regarding pads to be used with stock air cooler. Alphacool's LC block might be designed with other clearances/pad thickness in mind (unknown yet), and certainly their block will include right pads in set (and probably you will be able to source replacements from alphacool, if need arises). Don't mix up various coolers and thermal interfaces for them, one shouldn't guide their choice for one from data available for another even if for "same card", very possibly running into issues of wrong clearances/thickness/bad thermal conductivity/uneven contact & mounting pressures and so on.

 

[Synologic]

Thermalpad offtopic was regarding pads to be used with stock air cooler. Alphacool's LC block might be designed with other clearances/pad thickness in mind (unknown yet), and certainly their block will include right pads in set (and probably you will be able to source replacements from alphacool, if need arises). Don't mix up various coolers and thermal interfaces for them, one shouldn't guide their choice for one from data available for another even if for "same card", very possibly running into issues of wrong clearances/thickness/bad thermal conductivity/uneven contact & mounting pressures and so on.

Thank you for the advice, I guess the safest choice would be to send the card to Alphacool for measurements and see if the cooler complies.