RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition Tear-Down - 'No Disassembly' Edition
# Comprehensive Teardown of the NVIDIA 2080 Ti Founders Edition Card
## Introduction: Changes in Design and Purpose
The NVIDIA 2080 Ti Founders Edition card marks a significant shift from its predecessors. Known for its move to dual axial fans instead of the traditional single radial blower fan, this change has sparked curiosity about NVIDIA's intentions. The new design aims to address the high power demands of the card, which a single fan could no longer efficiently manage. This teardown explores every aspect of the card, from its physical components to its cooling solutions.
## Tools and Materials Required for Disassembly
To embark on this teardown journey, you will need:
- **Digital Calipers**: Essential for measuring mounting holes if planning a liquid cooling mod.
- **iFixit Pro Tech Tool Kit**: A reliable set for handling various screws and allen keys. While not sponsored, it's highly recommended for its quality.
- **Phillips Screwdrivers**: Multiple sizes to handle the intricate hardware on the card.
- **Allen Keys**: Specifically 2.5mm and 4.0mm for loosening screws on the cooler components.
## Step-by-Step Disassembly Process
### Removing the Backplate
1. **Loosening the Cold Plate**: Begin by usingPhillips screwdrivers to loosen the cold plate. Be cautious, as underneath are small screws that might snap if over-tightened due to Loctite use.
2. **Handling Tiny Screws**: These screws are prone to breaking. Turn them until snug but avoid overtightening to prevent snapping.
3. **Backplate Removal**: The backplate is a complex assembly of metal and thermal pads. It features extensive shielding for components like the GPU core, memory modules, and VRM (Voltage Regulator Module). screws securing it are a mix of hex and Phillips heads.
### Detaching the I/O Cover
- **Screws on the Base Plate**: Remove screws attaching the I/O cover to the base plate. These typically range from two to four in number.
- **Handling Thermal Pads**: The backside reveals thermal pads covering critical components, ensuring minimal heat interference during operation.
### Removing the Vapor Chamber and Cooler
1. **Cooler Assembly Challenges**: The dual axial fan cooler is securely fastened with screws that might require a hex driver. Notably, some screws are hidden between fins, making their removal tricky without causing damage.
2. **Vapor Chamber Considerations**: Unlike traditional cooling solutions, the vapor chamber here doesn't rely on solder but thermal pads for attachment to the PCB, allowing easier separation once螺丝are removed.
### Exposing the PCB Components
1. **Power Solution Overview**: The card boasts a 13+3 phase power solution, with separate domains for GPU core and memory. MOSFETs from On Semi 3170 are used, while capacitors and VRAM are sourced from Micron.
2. **Capacitor Bank and Inductors**: Extensive coverage of these components ensures efficient cooling, especially under heavy workloads.
### Shunt Resistors and Component Identification
- **Shunt Mod Possibilities**: The PCB features shunt resistors, typically two 5MΩ units. Identifying their location is crucial for any potential mods.
- **Component Layout**: Detailed examination reveals the placement of power regulators, inductors, and other critical components.
## Challenges Faced During Disassembly
### Fragility of Components
- **Plastic Parts**: Certain embellishments on the cooler proved fragile, risking snapping during removal. Extreme care was necessary to avoid damage.
### Complexity of Screws and Hardware
- **Excessive Screws**: The card uses an extensive number of screws, varying in size and type. Proper organization is essential for successful reassembly.
### Hidden Fasteners
- **Buried Screws**: Many screws are hidden between the fins and shroud, complicating their removal without causing damage.
## Conclusion: Maintenance Considerations
The NVIDIA 2080 Ti Founders Edition card exemplifies high-end engineering with its intricate design. While its cooling efficiency is commendable, disassembly for maintenance or upgrades poses significant challenges due to its complex hardware setup.
This teardown highlights the meticulous attention to detail required for such a task and underscores the necessity of patience and precision when working with high-end GPU components.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneveryone are back for another tear down this time of the 2080 ti reference card or the founders edition card as they call it these days what with the confusing prices and all that so the founders edition card has taken quite a change from the previous reference card and video designs the first major change for them in many years and the biggest change obviously is going dual axial cooler instead of a single radial fan or blower fan and that is what we've been sort of questioning in terms of Nvidia's motive of does it push some of the lower and a IV partner cards out of the market and we'll see what it does in terms of the rest of the market but for the card itself it is somewhat necessary because this is a lot of power and a blower fans it's not going to cut it and they've instead gone for dual axial fans this card for the cooler is identical to the 2080 for the PCB there are some differences we'll talk about that later but for today we're just going to take this apart go through the different screws if you want to take yours apart for a liquid cooling mod or something like that and also talk about the power solution on the vrm before that this video is brought to you by the Thermaltake level 20 VT micro ATX case the level 20 VT takes the high quality at level 20 design and makes it more affordable and shrinks it down to a micro ATX form factor at that with fully modular paneling it's possible to rearrange this case into whatever configuration you prefer for a micro ATX case that can be a discussion piece in a home theater system click the link in the description below quick for note on this and video sent out a memo at about 6 p.m. 15 hours before embargo lifts which is very courteous saying that disassembly was explicitly disallowed and so we were going to hold this content but it appears that Nvidia did not send this memo to all media only to u.s. media and it was at 6 p.m. Eastern Time so half the world is already asleep so a very poor organization by Nvidia but regardless it's out there now their NDA explicitly states that anything that's in public domain can be talked about and so we can therefore show our teardown and there was really no reason not to show it anyway because Nvidia posted their own 3d graphics of the card taken apart anyway so very odd decision-making on the videos part very last minute and felt extremely targeted regardless let's walk through the card and see what it looks like time to do the teardown we have a few tools for the job here not involving tweezers this time the verge instead we're gonna start with a pair of digital calipers and get the new mounting hole size that you're doing a water mod you probably need that so this is 98.5 ish so let's just call it 98 98 millimeters of course it's going to be squared yes 98.5 senator centers to call it 98 millimeter Center to Center for the hole spacing so there's your GPU hole space in a few are a maker of liquid cooling parts that'll probably be helpful as well we are also going to be using our iFixit Pro Tech tool kit and they haven't been a sponsor for a while for just normal ads but they do make a good product and we'll link up below if you want to pick one up because we're gonna need it for this as it does have some allen key screws it's got multiple size Phillips and videos reference design cards are typically very complicated just with regard to all the different mounting hardware they use it's it's a lot of different screws size is totally unnecessary but it's part of their shi shi high-end want to be designed that they go with so let's let's start taking it apart this one should be pretty straightforward overall we'll start with some phillips action and get the the cold plate loosened up but we're not going to completely remove it yet most likely underneath these small screws on the other side they're probably screwing into another screw that's typically what nvidia does and this card is going to be complex enough that we will be tracking the screw removal on our mod mat which you can grab on store deck game is XS net if you'd like to pick up your own because there are a lot of screws so want to make sure we get them all back in the same spot for reassembly we're not going to go over that in this video but just as I note these tiny screws that I'm taking out right now these are extremely easy to break they use Loctite to mount them so if you are reassembling in the with the original cooler and you screw in just pass where starts getting tight it'll probably snap at the stem so don't do that just just turn it until it stops and do not go any further with these so that's all the small screws so far and let's count those up we have two four six eight ten twelve fourteen of the really small screws just laid out this is how they go back in this is our again this is our anti-static mod mat it's got a layout of the GPU so we can easily track where they go and again is on stored our game is exes net if you want to pick one up there on backorder coming in this week I think or the next so they should be shipping out soon so let's loosen the rest of these four big screws either these are the spring retention screws for the cooler and the cold plate and you'll see that these are not coming straight out I'm like cards past which would indicate there well it might come out it's got like a washer or a hook on the other end of it so we're gonna leave that alone and take off the rest of the backplate first if we can and then see if there's something holding those in because I haven't taken this apart yet so you are seeing the screws and the locations for the first time with me today okay so this backplate is a little bit insane I'll show you why in a moment here's why it's insane it looks like a whole lot of metal especially when you look from here because that looks awfully thick but in reality it's a very thin sheet and you can see that here too and even feels plasticky but it is in fact metal aluminum it's got this glossy coating on the inside to prevent any shorts between SMDs that might touch the back plate if some legs poked through or you lost a thermal pad or something then throwing pads in all the key areas so we have a thermal pad on the backside of the inductor line over here we have throne pads on the backside of the memory which is fairly common but not as common as it should be a thermal pad on the back the GPU core itself and then throw all pads on this side which is probably an extension of the vrm so that is most likely going into the the left half of the card vrm depend on your orientation so let's let's get the rest of this off this is the envy link cover coveted cover that I'm really was very proud of there's the back plate not very advanced but has lots of thrown pads on it so should I actually get used so that's good okay and then these screws now are coming out easily so they were just caught on the backside of the back plate and as as called out it's exactly the same approach as previous efi cards so nvidia is using a set of hex small hex heads that the small Phillips heads thread into we'll find out what size that is momentarily same size as previously I believe that would be a 4 that's a 4 millimeter hex driver so we have an equal amount of these to pull out so they're like 14 something like that and each one corresponds with one of the smaller screws on the other side these are going into the base plate as well of the card on the top cooler side okay that should be all of the four millimeter hex screws so at this point we have some screws in the i/o plate and it looks like some of those might go into the shroud not a lot a hundred percent clear on that but typically they don't so let's try removing it first if it doesn't come off there are two more screws exposed in here by the way but those two screws should just be for separating some of the internal components of the shroud and the base plate so we're gonna try and leave everything else alone right now and just see if the card will separate actually can already tell it's not because this needs to come off so the next step is to remove then the i/o over the PCIe expansion cover and for that we have a couple screws that go into the base plate and a couple that just go into the IO IO areas so you got two three four probably in the base plate okay there's the cover removed which apparently says mo 1 to1 nosh not sure what the meaning of that is but that's the manufacturing stamp a whole lot of thermal pads on this thing kind of idiot called EVGA for help with this design amount of thermal pads they have here here's what we've got we've got one ribbon cable for everything so that's fans it's a synchronous fan control it's LEDs all that stuff on one it looks like we have two sets of thermal pads for the choke so there's a blue pad at the bottom and then some of the center chokes have a more standard nvidia style canvas pad which is probably from fuji poly or similar supplier normal nvidia pads 3 maybe roughly 3 watts per meter Kelvin pads on everything so inductor line choke or chokes right here inductors right there MOSFETs a capacitor bank capacitor bank VRAM VRAM VRAM so on the card then we have capacitor bank capacitor bank inductors everything's covered so they have a lot going on for this they have all the small SMD is covered so it's a lot of a lot of care going into it which considering they're using a vapor chamber that a hundred percent covers this entire surface this has to be done because there is zero air flow here or very near zero anyway that gets to the PCB itself you can see now the fans are entirely obstructed by the base plate there are no cutouts anywhere unlike most the other aftermarket Ford partner cards and that's because on video is using a giant vapor chamber for their cooler we'll look at that in a minute and so because of this layout if there's not thermal pad contact to the component it doesn't get cooled ever so that's that's their decision-making for that let's let's go ahead and clean off the dye and that's some very hard into their own taste and then take a look at the the Assembly of the vapor chamber and the base plate so same one k1 same as the other ones we've seen say tu 102 300 a k1 part and then a revision a 1k one is a signifier for which memory module is missing which in this case is the same as the a C's card it's that one right there so this is clean enough for now we'll get the rest later before we assembly and we'll leave that alone actually for now so PCB components will go over next but they are ready to look at first we want to look at the cooler and this is where it gets a bit more complex to take apart so we have Phillips heads on this side this is going to be one of the longer tear downs so two on the far side that go on the underside of the cooler gonna try and keep those isolated so we know where they go later and there's probably no separation yet there's not any separation yet so now we need to start pulling out these allen keys and this is the first 20 series founders Edition I've taken apart so let's let's just start with the large ones get kind of a base to work off of here just so that it's not contacting anything so I don't have to worry about those thermal pads what size is this so an hour iFixit protec toolkit this is a size 2.5 allen key again that should be linked below if you want to pick one up it's it's a link that will let them know you're buying from our link so they will appreciate that so 2.5 on these just get all these out there's four of them then a smaller allen key for the hole that one's gone forever for the embellishments on the side I'll pull that out in a moment these are very similar to the old asus strix fans before they changed it for this generation as well alright so that was 2.5 I think the embellishments on the sides are probably a 2.0 Hey yep 2.0 ish on those so we've got two here and two on the other side and that winds gonna come off so that much is the same as the previous design those don't come out yet so at this point what have we taken apart okay there's another couple screws over here so we have two screws on this side which side of the card is this this is going to be on the side opposite the power connector so this is closer to the i/o so we have a couple more that are buried in there and there's our Phillips heads yeah I don't work so large PA or a phillips-head Wan will work for that these on the top okay a lot of screws right now this just this is why the bottom that's useful have a lot of stuff to put back in later a whole lot this is an absurd amount of screws is this loose yet kind of there's some some separation of stuff that knotch looks like it's there on purpose to like to pry or something I think we're being held up by these embellishments on the side so I need to figure out how to remove these last time I worked on one of these it snapped and it may do that again that is some pretty fragile metal yep for sure would snap I think this plastic has to come out where's the where's the hiding part there's gotta be a screw somewhere you really don't want this thing disassembled oh I see screws in there okay so there are screws you're not gonna be able to see them on the camera but we've identified why this won't come off unfortunately before causing it attached to it so there are just if you watch where the screwdrivers going you're not gonna be able see it there screws in there between the fins and the top part of the crap the shroud and that's what's holding that plate in so we're not gonna be able to pop that out until we can get those screws removed which means that this entire thing removes as one unit from the base plate and the vapor chamber it's just a matter of figuring out how they separate and aware just seems like it's screwed in and I feel like this probably comes up and reveals a screw somewhere Nvidia builds insane cards anybody's design is like impossible take apart it's like an Apple product cut that out can't take the cooler part so it's very difficult to maintain it I guess no no what the yes so it's like this thing separates and then this thing separates and then under that this thing separates and then this comes out don't touch the thermal pads I don't know I don't want it like there shouldn't be a screw hiding under there all that would be stupid so no that's not it either wouldn't surprise me if anybody I started like going the route of making custom tools to fix their yeah a lot of bike companies do that too okay folks so this is where we stopped when we got that notice that the tear downs were no longer allowed and then obviously resumed it later recording this audio about 12 hours later or less than that even so we stopped here at attempting to think about the cooler tried another hour or so pushing on different parts trying to figure out where it's connected and for now you know what we're just gonna leave it as is there if you see something really obvious that I'm overlooking I'm taking apart the cooler let us know but we've looked under every thermal pad we've pushed on all the different things the cooler the the vapor chamber itself is loose now and it appears to be connected by thermal pads not by solder to the base plate so it's loose and it should come free but at this point we are going to leave the rest of it together and we'll look at taking apart this cooler separately in the future it's been a long long night because we got that email about not allowing tear downs after we had already filmed our teardown most of it anyway and so we built our whole day around that then we had to flip everything and film that architecture video and so I had video crew working 12 hours I worked I slept two hours worked all the others so yeah we're gonna stop here hopefully hopefully you're okay with that for for this one given the circumstances we would have finished the cooler itself but that that memo did kind of throw a wrench in things so anyway we'll talk about the rest of this later maybe for our hybrid mod but you've seen the rest of the disassembly for now so let's cut back to the rest of the video so for the PCB this one is a 13 plus 3 phase and the other card should be an eight phase or V core and a six phase for V core for the 2070 in the 2080 an opposite order to this one see one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 yes so 13 plus 3 for core and memory respectively there are two voltage domains on these cards so you have one four core and one for memory and for the MOSFETs they look like on semi 31 70s and will perhaps throw this to build Zoid for more information on those but that's they look like from here the memory used is micron memory on this card we haven't taken apart enough yet to know if there are other suppliers in the in the field yet or if it's just micron to start with we have a small power regulator over here that'll be discussed more in our asus video that handles some VIN and current steering and then for shunt resistors we haven't tried a shunt mod on this yet but if we were to try one there's a shunt right there so you got a shunt resistor there and it looks like there's a shunt resistor there as well so those should correspond to these we're just not sure in what order but those would be our two five million ohms shunt resistors that you could try shorting we might do that later but that's that's the PCB that's what we can talk about from now with this and we might do more later with build Zoid or you can check our Asus video for other information on their PCB so that's the founders Edition card this isn't videos attempt at becoming Apple they're trying to become the Apple of video cards it is nearly impossible it's not hard to get the PCB exposed this is not difficult so if you want to water cool it getting this far is not hard if you wanted to take the rest of the cooler apart maybe for service or maintenance it's pretty difficult and just to give you a count for the screws to my left not counting the rest of the screws inside of the cooler there are over 50 of them I don't have an exact count but it sits between 50 and 55 somewhere in that range just for the screws to expose this and then start exposing the rest of the cooler now if you're just taking the PCB out it's probably closer to something like 35 to 40 screws which is still completely insane but this is why these cards are expensive the tooling or what the factory process who knows what that cost buying a million screws and then using thick aluminum in places where you don't necessarily need it I guess it looks nice and it makes the card really heavy in unnecessary ways so if you're going for that quality buy feel approach then NVIDIA has achieved that but man what a what a pain to take the cool air apart or even begin to Daddy the PCB exposed again not that different from the 1080 series or the 980 series it's the same process same screws same tools so you need like a 4 millimeter hex you need a just large Phillips small Phillips like pH 1 something like that and then that's more or less it for forgetting to the PCB the hex is the big one and then for taking apart the rest you need some allen keys 2.5 4.0 stuff like that so anyway that's the 20 atti founders edition card if you have full teardown now we have the asus card separately on the channel definitely check for that we should already have an architecture piece on the channel if you're interested in the touring architecture at a technical level and and how it all works we have a video on that and then benchmarks if they're not up already will be up shortly we had a different embargo for those so although some testing obviously can occur between before the benchmarks release the unboxings and things like that we're allowed to go up earlier along with the technical white paper discussion and stuff like that so anyway subscribe go to stored on cameras next it's not nets picking up the mod mat featured in this video which you know normally I don't necessarily need to put the screws in a diagram anymore I've done it enough where I don't need the screw track them for this card yeah it's it's a good kid I have to use my own tool so you can pick that up on the store patreon.com slash gamers Nexus otherwise thanks for watching and subscribe for more I'll see you all next timeeveryone are back for another tear down this time of the 2080 ti reference card or the founders edition card as they call it these days what with the confusing prices and all that so the founders edition card has taken quite a change from the previous reference card and video designs the first major change for them in many years and the biggest change obviously is going dual axial cooler instead of a single radial fan or blower fan and that is what we've been sort of questioning in terms of Nvidia's motive of does it push some of the lower and a IV partner cards out of the market and we'll see what it does in terms of the rest of the market but for the card itself it is somewhat necessary because this is a lot of power and a blower fans it's not going to cut it and they've instead gone for dual axial fans this card for the cooler is identical to the 2080 for the PCB there are some differences we'll talk about that later but for today we're just going to take this apart go through the different screws if you want to take yours apart for a liquid cooling mod or something like that and also talk about the power solution on the vrm before that this video is brought to you by the Thermaltake level 20 VT micro ATX case the level 20 VT takes the high quality at level 20 design and makes it more affordable and shrinks it down to a micro ATX form factor at that with fully modular paneling it's possible to rearrange this case into whatever configuration you prefer for a micro ATX case that can be a discussion piece in a home theater system click the link in the description below quick for note on this and video sent out a memo at about 6 p.m. 15 hours before embargo lifts which is very courteous saying that disassembly was explicitly disallowed and so we were going to hold this content but it appears that Nvidia did not send this memo to all media only to u.s. media and it was at 6 p.m. Eastern Time so half the world is already asleep so a very poor organization by Nvidia but regardless it's out there now their NDA explicitly states that anything that's in public domain can be talked about and so we can therefore show our teardown and there was really no reason not to show it anyway because Nvidia posted their own 3d graphics of the card taken apart anyway so very odd decision-making on the videos part very last minute and felt extremely targeted regardless let's walk through the card and see what it looks like time to do the teardown we have a few tools for the job here not involving tweezers this time the verge instead we're gonna start with a pair of digital calipers and get the new mounting hole size that you're doing a water mod you probably need that so this is 98.5 ish so let's just call it 98 98 millimeters of course it's going to be squared yes 98.5 senator centers to call it 98 millimeter Center to Center for the hole spacing so there's your GPU hole space in a few are a maker of liquid cooling parts that'll probably be helpful as well we are also going to be using our iFixit Pro Tech tool kit and they haven't been a sponsor for a while for just normal ads but they do make a good product and we'll link up below if you want to pick one up because we're gonna need it for this as it does have some allen key screws it's got multiple size Phillips and videos reference design cards are typically very complicated just with regard to all the different mounting hardware they use it's it's a lot of different screws size is totally unnecessary but it's part of their shi shi high-end want to be designed that they go with so let's let's start taking it apart this one should be pretty straightforward overall we'll start with some phillips action and get the the cold plate loosened up but we're not going to completely remove it yet most likely underneath these small screws on the other side they're probably screwing into another screw that's typically what nvidia does and this card is going to be complex enough that we will be tracking the screw removal on our mod mat which you can grab on store deck game is XS net if you'd like to pick up your own because there are a lot of screws so want to make sure we get them all back in the same spot for reassembly we're not going to go over that in this video but just as I note these tiny screws that I'm taking out right now these are extremely easy to break they use Loctite to mount them so if you are reassembling in the with the original cooler and you screw in just pass where starts getting tight it'll probably snap at the stem so don't do that just just turn it until it stops and do not go any further with these so that's all the small screws so far and let's count those up we have two four six eight ten twelve fourteen of the really small screws just laid out this is how they go back in this is our again this is our anti-static mod mat it's got a layout of the GPU so we can easily track where they go and again is on stored our game is exes net if you want to pick one up there on backorder coming in this week I think or the next so they should be shipping out soon so let's loosen the rest of these four big screws either these are the spring retention screws for the cooler and the cold plate and you'll see that these are not coming straight out I'm like cards past which would indicate there well it might come out it's got like a washer or a hook on the other end of it so we're gonna leave that alone and take off the rest of the backplate first if we can and then see if there's something holding those in because I haven't taken this apart yet so you are seeing the screws and the locations for the first time with me today okay so this backplate is a little bit insane I'll show you why in a moment here's why it's insane it looks like a whole lot of metal especially when you look from here because that looks awfully thick but in reality it's a very thin sheet and you can see that here too and even feels plasticky but it is in fact metal aluminum it's got this glossy coating on the inside to prevent any shorts between SMDs that might touch the back plate if some legs poked through or you lost a thermal pad or something then throwing pads in all the key areas so we have a thermal pad on the backside of the inductor line over here we have throne pads on the backside of the memory which is fairly common but not as common as it should be a thermal pad on the back the GPU core itself and then throw all pads on this side which is probably an extension of the vrm so that is most likely going into the the left half of the card vrm depend on your orientation so let's let's get the rest of this off this is the envy link cover coveted cover that I'm really was very proud of there's the back plate not very advanced but has lots of thrown pads on it so should I actually get used so that's good okay and then these screws now are coming out easily so they were just caught on the backside of the back plate and as as called out it's exactly the same approach as previous efi cards so nvidia is using a set of hex small hex heads that the small Phillips heads thread into we'll find out what size that is momentarily same size as previously I believe that would be a 4 that's a 4 millimeter hex driver so we have an equal amount of these to pull out so they're like 14 something like that and each one corresponds with one of the smaller screws on the other side these are going into the base plate as well of the card on the top cooler side okay that should be all of the four millimeter hex screws so at this point we have some screws in the i/o plate and it looks like some of those might go into the shroud not a lot a hundred percent clear on that but typically they don't so let's try removing it first if it doesn't come off there are two more screws exposed in here by the way but those two screws should just be for separating some of the internal components of the shroud and the base plate so we're gonna try and leave everything else alone right now and just see if the card will separate actually can already tell it's not because this needs to come off so the next step is to remove then the i/o over the PCIe expansion cover and for that we have a couple screws that go into the base plate and a couple that just go into the IO IO areas so you got two three four probably in the base plate okay there's the cover removed which apparently says mo 1 to1 nosh not sure what the meaning of that is but that's the manufacturing stamp a whole lot of thermal pads on this thing kind of idiot called EVGA for help with this design amount of thermal pads they have here here's what we've got we've got one ribbon cable for everything so that's fans it's a synchronous fan control it's LEDs all that stuff on one it looks like we have two sets of thermal pads for the choke so there's a blue pad at the bottom and then some of the center chokes have a more standard nvidia style canvas pad which is probably from fuji poly or similar supplier normal nvidia pads 3 maybe roughly 3 watts per meter Kelvin pads on everything so inductor line choke or chokes right here inductors right there MOSFETs a capacitor bank capacitor bank VRAM VRAM VRAM so on the card then we have capacitor bank capacitor bank inductors everything's covered so they have a lot going on for this they have all the small SMD is covered so it's a lot of a lot of care going into it which considering they're using a vapor chamber that a hundred percent covers this entire surface this has to be done because there is zero air flow here or very near zero anyway that gets to the PCB itself you can see now the fans are entirely obstructed by the base plate there are no cutouts anywhere unlike most the other aftermarket Ford partner cards and that's because on video is using a giant vapor chamber for their cooler we'll look at that in a minute and so because of this layout if there's not thermal pad contact to the component it doesn't get cooled ever so that's that's their decision-making for that let's let's go ahead and clean off the dye and that's some very hard into their own taste and then take a look at the the Assembly of the vapor chamber and the base plate so same one k1 same as the other ones we've seen say tu 102 300 a k1 part and then a revision a 1k one is a signifier for which memory module is missing which in this case is the same as the a C's card it's that one right there so this is clean enough for now we'll get the rest later before we assembly and we'll leave that alone actually for now so PCB components will go over next but they are ready to look at first we want to look at the cooler and this is where it gets a bit more complex to take apart so we have Phillips heads on this side this is going to be one of the longer tear downs so two on the far side that go on the underside of the cooler gonna try and keep those isolated so we know where they go later and there's probably no separation yet there's not any separation yet so now we need to start pulling out these allen keys and this is the first 20 series founders Edition I've taken apart so let's let's just start with the large ones get kind of a base to work off of here just so that it's not contacting anything so I don't have to worry about those thermal pads what size is this so an hour iFixit protec toolkit this is a size 2.5 allen key again that should be linked below if you want to pick one up it's it's a link that will let them know you're buying from our link so they will appreciate that so 2.5 on these just get all these out there's four of them then a smaller allen key for the hole that one's gone forever for the embellishments on the side I'll pull that out in a moment these are very similar to the old asus strix fans before they changed it for this generation as well alright so that was 2.5 I think the embellishments on the sides are probably a 2.0 Hey yep 2.0 ish on those so we've got two here and two on the other side and that winds gonna come off so that much is the same as the previous design those don't come out yet so at this point what have we taken apart okay there's another couple screws over here so we have two screws on this side which side of the card is this this is going to be on the side opposite the power connector so this is closer to the i/o so we have a couple more that are buried in there and there's our Phillips heads yeah I don't work so large PA or a phillips-head Wan will work for that these on the top okay a lot of screws right now this just this is why the bottom that's useful have a lot of stuff to put back in later a whole lot this is an absurd amount of screws is this loose yet kind of there's some some separation of stuff that knotch looks like it's there on purpose to like to pry or something I think we're being held up by these embellishments on the side so I need to figure out how to remove these last time I worked on one of these it snapped and it may do that again that is some pretty fragile metal yep for sure would snap I think this plastic has to come out where's the where's the hiding part there's gotta be a screw somewhere you really don't want this thing disassembled oh I see screws in there okay so there are screws you're not gonna be able to see them on the camera but we've identified why this won't come off unfortunately before causing it attached to it so there are just if you watch where the screwdrivers going you're not gonna be able see it there screws in there between the fins and the top part of the crap the shroud and that's what's holding that plate in so we're not gonna be able to pop that out until we can get those screws removed which means that this entire thing removes as one unit from the base plate and the vapor chamber it's just a matter of figuring out how they separate and aware just seems like it's screwed in and I feel like this probably comes up and reveals a screw somewhere Nvidia builds insane cards anybody's design is like impossible take apart it's like an Apple product cut that out can't take the cooler part so it's very difficult to maintain it I guess no no what the yes so it's like this thing separates and then this thing separates and then under that this thing separates and then this comes out don't touch the thermal pads I don't know I don't want it like there shouldn't be a screw hiding under there all that would be stupid so no that's not it either wouldn't surprise me if anybody I started like going the route of making custom tools to fix their yeah a lot of bike companies do that too okay folks so this is where we stopped when we got that notice that the tear downs were no longer allowed and then obviously resumed it later recording this audio about 12 hours later or less than that even so we stopped here at attempting to think about the cooler tried another hour or so pushing on different parts trying to figure out where it's connected and for now you know what we're just gonna leave it as is there if you see something really obvious that I'm overlooking I'm taking apart the cooler let us know but we've looked under every thermal pad we've pushed on all the different things the cooler the the vapor chamber itself is loose now and it appears to be connected by thermal pads not by solder to the base plate so it's loose and it should come free but at this point we are going to leave the rest of it together and we'll look at taking apart this cooler separately in the future it's been a long long night because we got that email about not allowing tear downs after we had already filmed our teardown most of it anyway and so we built our whole day around that then we had to flip everything and film that architecture video and so I had video crew working 12 hours I worked I slept two hours worked all the others so yeah we're gonna stop here hopefully hopefully you're okay with that for for this one given the circumstances we would have finished the cooler itself but that that memo did kind of throw a wrench in things so anyway we'll talk about the rest of this later maybe for our hybrid mod but you've seen the rest of the disassembly for now so let's cut back to the rest of the video so for the PCB this one is a 13 plus 3 phase and the other card should be an eight phase or V core and a six phase for V core for the 2070 in the 2080 an opposite order to this one see one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 yes so 13 plus 3 for core and memory respectively there are two voltage domains on these cards so you have one four core and one for memory and for the MOSFETs they look like on semi 31 70s and will perhaps throw this to build Zoid for more information on those but that's they look like from here the memory used is micron memory on this card we haven't taken apart enough yet to know if there are other suppliers in the in the field yet or if it's just micron to start with we have a small power regulator over here that'll be discussed more in our asus video that handles some VIN and current steering and then for shunt resistors we haven't tried a shunt mod on this yet but if we were to try one there's a shunt right there so you got a shunt resistor there and it looks like there's a shunt resistor there as well so those should correspond to these we're just not sure in what order but those would be our two five million ohms shunt resistors that you could try shorting we might do that later but that's that's the PCB that's what we can talk about from now with this and we might do more later with build Zoid or you can check our Asus video for other information on their PCB so that's the founders Edition card this isn't videos attempt at becoming Apple they're trying to become the Apple of video cards it is nearly impossible it's not hard to get the PCB exposed this is not difficult so if you want to water cool it getting this far is not hard if you wanted to take the rest of the cooler apart maybe for service or maintenance it's pretty difficult and just to give you a count for the screws to my left not counting the rest of the screws inside of the cooler there are over 50 of them I don't have an exact count but it sits between 50 and 55 somewhere in that range just for the screws to expose this and then start exposing the rest of the cooler now if you're just taking the PCB out it's probably closer to something like 35 to 40 screws which is still completely insane but this is why these cards are expensive the tooling or what the factory process who knows what that cost buying a million screws and then using thick aluminum in places where you don't necessarily need it I guess it looks nice and it makes the card really heavy in unnecessary ways so if you're going for that quality buy feel approach then NVIDIA has achieved that but man what a what a pain to take the cool air apart or even begin to Daddy the PCB exposed again not that different from the 1080 series or the 980 series it's the same process same screws same tools so you need like a 4 millimeter hex you need a just large Phillips small Phillips like pH 1 something like that and then that's more or less it for forgetting to the PCB the hex is the big one and then for taking apart the rest you need some allen keys 2.5 4.0 stuff like that so anyway that's the 20 atti founders edition card if you have full teardown now we have the asus card separately on the channel definitely check for that we should already have an architecture piece on the channel if you're interested in the touring architecture at a technical level and and how it all works we have a video on that and then benchmarks if they're not up already will be up shortly we had a different embargo for those so although some testing obviously can occur between before the benchmarks release the unboxings and things like that we're allowed to go up earlier along with the technical white paper discussion and stuff like that so anyway subscribe go to stored on cameras next it's not nets picking up the mod mat featured in this video which you know normally I don't necessarily need to put the screws in a diagram anymore I've done it enough where I don't need the screw track them for this card yeah it's it's a good kid I have to use my own tool so you can pick that up on the store patreon.com slash gamers Nexus otherwise thanks for watching and subscribe for more I'll see you all next time\n"