When I left this project off I had just built the thing in my head and then spent a month or so buying and amassing the parts. Instead of getting down to business, I got cold feet and decided I’d burn time on coming up with clever names for this build like The Water Boy, Ol’ Drippy, and of course My Midlife Crisis, as well as starting to blog / tweet the project. Having done all of these things, and re-watched a bunch of PC build YouTube videos for good measure, I was out of excuses. It was time to actually do the build, and so I’ve embarked on my adventure.

Night 1: Emancipating the GPU PCB

First up I had to retrieve the GPU’s PCB from within its absolutely fucking MASSIVE enclosure. This thing has an absurd chonkiness and sheer weight to it that makes it feel really expensive (which I guess it is). My two big takeaways from this process were that it required a really surprising amount of force to separate the enclosure (because of thermal paste / pads sticking), and that I was thus absolutely terrified the whole way. Sweating quite a lot. I still don’t know if I did damage, and the barely audible slight creaking sound as I wiggled the fan housing off was straight-up unnerving! Guides and videos basically say “be careful, but don’t force it, but also don’t be afraid to use a bit of force, but JUST NOT TOO MUCH” and that lack of precision is really unhelpful. I also had a little trouble with the fan cables because I wasn’t aware for a couple frustrating minutes that one of them had a tiny clip. There’s also just not a lot of clearance to lift off the fan housing and wiggle your fingers in to get at these fan plugs. It seems like it would be rough to hand-assemble these things continuously, but what do I know?

Once the fan housing was off, the backplate came off much more easily and induced less anxiety. There was still a little bit of stickiness with the pre-applied thermal pads, but certainly not as much this go, and I figured that if I fucked up it was on the fan housing removal anyway! Upon inspecting the unencumbered PCB it did seem like the thermal paste application on the GPU itself was not great (certainly it was not even). I’m hoping I did a better job of even application (more on this below).

Finally, I cleaned the thing. This ended up wanting a good bit of (isopropyl) alcohol, and after a minute or so I stopped being cheap/stingy with the cotton balls/Q-Tips, which sped the process up a bunch. This was enough for one night. The whole process took me something like 90 minutes. I’m sure an old pro at doing these is going to be much faster, but I really want to approach this build with the care it deserves.

Evening 2: Installing the GPU water block + backplate

During our Wednesday D&D session, between rounds of combat and such, I figured I’d have plenty of free time to do the work of putting on the block and backplate. It took me a little over two hours, but that was with a lot of role play in between. I’d guess again if I was focused on this it would’ve taken around 90 minutes, maybe even less.

The bulk of my time was playing with1 cutting thermal pads to some approximation2 of the right shape. Amusingly, the backplate took more time because the instructions wanted me to make 3mm pads by stacking 2+1mm pads. I don’t know why you wouldn’t ship 3mm pads from the start, but okay. I think this helps save a bit on cost of packaging since the difference between a 3080/3080 TI and a 3090 is that the base/TI have many fewer chips on the rear of the PCB (since it has less RAM), a 3090 simply doesn’t need 3mm pads at all, so why include them? This packaging situation did also gave me the impression that the sizing and application of the backplate pads really didn’t need to be an exact science, so much as “sufficient for a healthy amount of contact”.

I applied what may be a bit too much thermal paste, but I erred on the side of caution3 here. Finally, I assembled the whole thing, water block first, then backplate. I actually popped off the backplate after my first pass, and re-applied it after reducing screw tension a little. I had noticed a slight amount of flex in the PCB, which didn’t sit quite right with me. Slow and steady on this boi, after all. The bowing was almost certainly not severe or threatening, but it was just visible.

That was enough for another night, and it’s off to my friend the Final Fantasy 4 Pixel Remaster. I’m hoping this was the most singularly arduous / worrying part of the process. We’ll see how I feel about pumping liquid around inside my case here in a few days. 🤣

footnotes

  1. Slap a thermal pad on your forehead, it feels kinda cool. Get it? But no really, you can feel it continuously pulling heat off your body. It’s fucking cool! ↩

  2. I noticed that the thermal pads that came pre-installed weren’t super precisely cut, and again a lot of online advice/YT videos says this is cool and you don’t have to be perfect. ↩

  3. I’ve read/seen previously that, if you aren’t egregiously stupid, too much thermal paste beats not enough. The GamersNexus people seem wiser than I and I am taking their word for it here. ↩