Techniques & Skills
PRE-BLOCKED GPUS
If you’re not sold on stripping down
your pride and joy to liquid cool it,
there is, thankfully, a fairly good
alternative out there, although
it might be a bit pricier. A lot of
manufacturers now offer a pre-
blocked version of their highest-end
graphics cards. EVGA has its Hydro
Copper line, Gigabyte has the Aorus
Xtreme Waterforce, and Zotac has
the ArcticStorm. All of these cards
come with a warranty and often
only cost $100–200 more, which,
let’s face it, is the price of a good
waterblock anyway.
However, there’s one significant
drawback to all of this, and that’s
the fact that you can’t use these
cards outside of their liquid-cooled
environments. All of them require
you to install a full loop before you
can even test that the GPU itself
is functional. Now, that’s an issue,
because we know liquid cooling isn’t
an easy task, and building a loop
to then have to strip it because you
have a dud graphics card is going to
take a considerable amount of time.
On top of that, when you’re
upgrading to your next rig or
graphics card, it’s far harder to sell
a card that has a waterblock on it
than one on which you can reinstall
its original stock air cooler.Now you’ve got everything planned, measured the case, and ordered the parts,
it’s time to get on with the build. The first and most terrifying part of the process
is the graphics card disassembly. This is perhaps the most dangerous part
of liquid cooling. If you get it wrong, and knock off a capacitor or a memory
chip, your GPU is as good as dead. And you can bet your bottom dollar few
manufacturers will honor the warranty if that happens. So, where do you begin?Process
Well, you’ve bought your waterblock
and you know it’s compatible with your
GPU. Now you’re going to begin to strip
down the graphics card. To do this, first
remove the backplate—you’ll find tiny
Phillips head screws here, but a small
precision screwdriver should do the trick.
Once the backplate is off, you’ll be able
to work out how the rest of the card is
secured. Remove all major screws, and
identify where the cooler itself attaches
to the PCB (there’s usually one or two
screws connected to the rear I/O plate as
well). Be sure to detach any fan or RGB
headers, and very carefully prize the two
cards apart, slowly rocking it back and
forward. The last thing you want to do
is rip anything off. Word of advice: For
those disassembling a Founders Edition
graphics card, the screws underneath are
4mm or 3/8-inch hex screws—you really
ought to use the correct socket to remove
these; you can use pliers, but there’s a
higher risk of knocking off a capacitor
from the rear.
With the cards prized apart, you can
then remove any additional plates or
support brackets on the graphics card,
and then it’s time to clean up the GPUitself. Remove any remaining thermal
pads from the memory and the VRMs,
then clean off the GPU, preferably with an
alcohol wipe or a microfiber cloth coated
in 99 percent isopropyl alcohol.
The next step requires you to refer
to your waterblock manual, because
each block has different mounting
mechanisms. They usually ask you to
apply a thermal pad to each of the memory
chips and to the power delivery. Then it’s a
case of applying thermal paste to the GPU
directly, before you begin the process of
adding the waterblock to the card. Line
the block up with the screw holes around
the GPU, and carefully place the block into
position. Now, secure the block around
the GPU first, screwing the included
screws down in a hexagonal sequence.
Then it’s a case of installing the remaining
screws into the GPU block and you’ll be
good to go. One thing to note: Once the
four screws surrounding the GPU are in
position and the waterblock is relatively
secure, if you have a backplate, now is the
time to check the manual to identify which
screws you need to leave out, because
the backplate will need to be secured via
additional threads.By far the scariest part of
any liquid-cooled build:
the GPU teardown.liquid cooling
28 MAXIMUM PC MAY 2020 maximumpc.com