**Installing a Water Cooling System**

So I do not want to individually like cut these out so what I like to do is I'll take the blue side like the light, the that darker blue, the darker blue, the dark blue side and put it against the chokes or whatever I'm going to do and just sort of push down and then it gives me an imprint so I can see where I take my scissors and cut. We will now spare you guys the pain of watching me try and peel these little facts I remember back in the day when the water block was $110 and people were like that's too much, I love that the thermal past matches their pads for OCD reasons that make no sense anyway load it up along the top know it sounds like a lot of pace but you know what too much won't hurt it's non-conductive okay.

So now we got our cake frosting on there I leave it kind of thick that way it does squish out what is uh unnecessary there we go so we just need to put our screws in there and there's only certain screws that you're going to use cuz the back plate is going to take up the rest. So I've got all the components now with they thermal pads on there as they need um this is basically what the backside water block would be doing I believe it's just thermal pads I wouldn't be putting thermal paste on here um but anyway the nice thing about this is it's going to just slide in exactly where it's intended to go and then we just start threading our screws. This is where the captive my God this is the first back blade I've ever installed that's got captive screws and it's so freaking nice cuz trying to get these like the washers and everything lined up is such a pain.

I also really love that the back plate wraps all the way around the edge so you don't see the edge of the PCB cuz to me the edge of the PCB always ends up being the ugly part of your system like or your water cooling system if it's uh if you can see the PCB layer cuz it's not that attractive you know the PCB layer. So there we go just go around tighten this down you got to be careful not to overtighten because you have this tendency to want to just like crank it down but that's not good for because you're just these are very fine threads you can easily uh stripping out so don't overtighten that's it.

That's installed man, it's a chunghus and a half. What is this? I mean I already weigh it but now that it's assembled 1981 so we lost uh 550 g or so off of it. It's funny cuz it feels heavier to me than the cooler maybe that's cuz it was so spread out the density yeah it was like over space but so if you look at it vertical that's what you'd see minus the fingerprints cuz I'm handling all over it touching thermal pad so I've got grease over my fingers.

If you go horizontal, the standard layout that's what you get right there and you can see that that 12 pin it's very recessed. How am I going to un will the plug well? It seats fully it also goes fully inside maybe this is one Fe I guess that's what that's for. It worked but see I feel like to be honest like you can get it really solid that's in there good and you can still get a pretty good bend out of that without like putting too much pressure on it I think so when I get this on my system I'll be using a cable mod cable.

But can I get my fingernail in there nope. So if I take that and I just wedge it in there yeah it literally wedges in there perfectly and it comes out so that's what this is for pretty sure anyway there it is. There's our RGB cable coming out the bottom that's that's the way it'll look. I was like how did I that up but no I didn't it was a to so there's that. There's that and uh there you go.

**Water Cooling Build Experience**

You guys have said you wanted to see more water cooling stuff and that's exactly what you're going to get. So make sure you guys are subscribed uh for some of the water cooling I have actually quite a few water cooling builds that I've got to do for ious people and uh I will of course do longer format talking about what I'm experiencing through the builds rather than just the Montag stuff which you guys were like we love FS montages but we want to see more about the build itself.

Which is exactly what we'll do. So I've got a huge mess to clean up here and uh you guys have probably got some other videos you want to watch so thanks for hanging out with me today while I install the water block and we'll see you guys in the next one

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right so today we're going to take this uh strix RTX 490 and we're going to it's basically going to lose some girth but it's going to gain some weight cuz I'm going to throw an EK water block on it couple different blocks here both the active back plate and a standard back plate block uh we're going to take a look at them as well as some other stuff I got from performance PCS for my black ice build update so I figured I'd take you guys along for the ride on at least what it takes to install a water block on this guy I haven't done it before I have no idea what might be different today's video is brought to you by the jense merch store we got t-shirts gaming mats and mugs and all that kind of stuff so whenever you go buy our stuff we don't have to put other ads here and other annoying crap so go buy our stuff it's funny the PCB on this card only goes to the power cable so we're losing this much length but uh in terms of like thickness and stuff it's going to be much th it's only going to be a single slot card which would be nice unless we go with the active back plate which you'll see it adds the thickness of a block to the backside I don't think I'm going to be able to run the active back plate because of the motherboard that I'm using and I'll show that once it's like it'll interfere with the heat sink but anyway um there's some other things that came that I ordered from performance PCS I get asked a lot like Jay where do you get your custom water cooling stuff from w a lot stickers and you know performance PCS is a us-based water cooling SL PC modification shop they do a lot more than just water cooling they custom back PL or custom yeah custom painting UV printing Custom Distribution blocks custom cables like all they're kind of like your One-Stop shop for both DIY modifications to your systems mostly water cooling and then uh custom stuff that can be made with them but they're based out of Florida I believe they're Fort Lauderdale Florida and yeah you can get anything you need for your systems there so they've been you guys have probably seen them advertise in my channel a lot they are uh who I have gotten my water cooling stuff from this is interesting any my water cooling stuff from for years so what have we got here this is a bik ski uh pump right yes this is a pump the funny thing is I got this just for the pump and I don't plan on using the other pieces of it which is too bad cuz this is a pretty sick pump now this video is going to be about like the water block going on the 490 but I want to show you this other stuff that I picked up from them so I got this big old beefy which I'll be honest like I wish I could use it this way because it looks so good but I needed the pump so I will be taking this apart and taking the pump out which just seems like such a I'll be keeping all the parts of it see cuz I can put another pump back in it whenever I recover one but this is a cool looking Block it's all metal construction is that metal possibly it's heavy enough to be metal and then that's just the outlet top right there for your your fittings and stuff uh oh the shirts I did ask for some new performance pc shirts you guys seen me wear them mine are pretty worn out cuz they're like 6 years old um this is the EK cryful full cryofuel Mystic fog now this one here we have to show up a put a photo up I want to try this I hope it doesn't Gunk up my system I have been just back to colored distilled water for the most part because of all of the opaques and stuff just causing all kinds of gunking up with the system this just adds a sort of a kind of a misty look to the fluid which gives lighting something to bounce off of which I think will look really cool in the distribution blocks that I've already showed um and then there just more of the torque fittings which are the ones that I like to use for my um rigid tubing I've got a few colors here I've got black and then I've got another one I sort of took this opportunity to kind of restock some of the stuff that I really needed why could have swar I only got four of those why do I have five did I did I accidentally hit there okay I know for a fact I think I might have double ordered some of this stuff because I don't think I had this many initially this this this this is the EK Quantum velocity 2 CPU water block this is an AMD water blocker am5 because I am doing an am5 system uh why is this one so much heavier oh cuz this is full nickel that's why am5 okay it's just so heavy so this one is a acetol like just a Plexi top that is a full nickel I I I grabbed one of each cuz I couldn't decide which one I wanted to use for my build we'll look at those in another video not todays um because I am doing a 7950 x3d I'm glad I waited because of the fact that please open carefully smiley face glass I think this is some I think this is a mug or something uh a lot of you guys were like you should do an x3d and I was like you know what did you know these are edible tast like rice case this is the box for the water block the it's longer than the card I've never seen a water block box this big so this one's the standard block I can tell by the weight of it because it doesn't have the active back plate this is like a this was a what I considered a big box in the past this is like a EK Vega box like for a Vega block why they just keeps getting bigger anyway this is the non-active back plate this one oh my God this is the active back plate it's just getting it's actually thicker than the this is insanity I wish I could use the active back plate so badly because well here's the thing I would have to go vertical Mount to use the active back plate which would be fine except for the fact that but the diso blocks on the bottom I like the way it looks fully covered rather than the one that has the cut out anyway and then we've got two of the EK um Quantum surface 360 RADS I'm not going to unbox any of these parts now I just like I said I wanted to do kind of a quick little unboxing make sure I'm not missing anything here because the focus today's video I'll eat those later like the F focus of today's video is uh just to get the water block installed so let's see let me move this out of the way I want to weigh this real quick so the weight of an RTX 490 stri we've already done this before 2513 G okay the weight of the nonactive block 2143 G I have a feeling the active back Plate's going to go off the scales let's see 2884 G I have to install a block today but I don't know which one I can use the active back Plate's cool I just don't think actively cooling the back of the 490 is going to matter cuz I don't believe there's any Ram back there but the first thing I've got to do is clear off this table and I've got to pull the cooler off of that card which I've never done so I don't know what the process is so of course I'm using my ey fix you know what I like to do I like to just start unscrewing stuff and see what happens I like the way the stxs cooler looks I just hate the red and blue why red and blue blue isn't even a was never even a part of rog's color scheme they're like let's Jay hates color let's add one I guarantee I was not a thought in their design I guarantee it but I I knew from the moment we got this card that I was going to go with this for my build I really was hoping that amd's cards would have been more powerful than they are I was hoping that they were going to have something out that was comparable to like a 4090 cuz then I would have considered using it but since my build is just about creating the best gaming PC that I possibly can but with all diminishing returns in all the 4090 is all I have to go with that's metal that's why this card is one so heavy but there you go you can see the length this is the length of card I was expecting to to go with like to have but that's clearly not the way it went this actually seems like it's going to come apart dude it has a freaking subframe right here yeah and it's all metal I think the only thing holding it on now is just these four screws this might be one of the easiest tear Downs ever smaller so I love the iix it kits they have every possible bit you would need even the pentalobe uh anti-tamper stuff that Apple uses you know the reality is versus this cooler the water block probably isn't going to bring the temps down a whole lot because the cooler is already so massive in terms of its thermal dissipation but this is just about kind of going back to my roots with water cooling stuff I sort of I sort of got away from a lot of my roots um with the water cooling stuff and I regret that a lot of folks are Jay bring back the water cooling videos well so there's some SC there's always going to be some screws on the back plate or the retention bracket deal here that screwed directly into the cooler the thing is I just always undo the ones that seem most obvious at first and then kind of keep going from there now back in the day they would offer a single slot bracket but obviously they can't do that with this card because it's not single slot for the io as you can see so okay I'm pretty sure I have to undo no we're good there it is okay when you're taking it apart be careful of thermal pads you can see that thermal pad that's tearing and pulling apart right there now it's going to be okay but I don't want to rip it too badly cuz if I ever need to revert this I want to try and reuse all the stuff that I can I also know that I have cables plugged in right here which is going to be for lighting and fans and all that that's it that might be one of the easiest tear Downs ever to be honest go away s so the only thing on the back that would be actively cooled would be potentially like all these capacitors and stuff for the back side of the vrm maybe the back side of the GPU die itself dang I got to make a decision now am I going vertical Mount or horizontal cuz going traditional layout is the only way I'd be able to use the active back plate no I'm sorry vertical Mount is the only way I could use the active back plate I think I'm just going to go non-active back plate right for now if I decide to go active back plate I'll just change it again course a brings gaming to the next level with the Zenon 45in flexible OLED Xenon Flex display with up to 240 HZ refresh rate 0.03 millisecond gred gray response time motion blur cancelling anti-reflective coating burning protection and customizable Bend based on user preference the Zenon Flex from Co Air allows Gamers to truly tailor their display to their liking click the link below for more details I like to sort of dry rub sorry I like to remove as much of the thermal paste as I can before using the alcohol um because then it doesn't mush around as much I'm also going to use a toothbrush to uh get as much as I can away from all the edges there and then I'm also going to have to do the same thing for all of yeah just put that right there I to do the same thing for all of the memory pads so as you can see all the memory modules had thermal pads on there too and there's a lot of like leftover residue we just want to get all that off cuz obviously the the new block is going to come with its own thermal compound debating on depending on what they used I might just put Kingpin on here because the kpx is just some of the best stuff kpx and kryonaut are like the the pink kryonaut some of the best stuff you can possibly get and I think I might actually just do that instead of using what they've got now I'm using a blue towel here which as you can see is ripping up and leaving residue so you're going to definitely need to make sure that you either use a not compressed air from like a compressor but like a Electronics cleaner blower fan type deal to make sure you get all that residue off or the the fibers cuz that'll definitely hamper performance if you get that in there now the nice thing about alcohol the isopropyl alcohol it's not going to hurt anything on the PCB it might discolor it a little bit if you let it sit on there too long but it's a great neutralizer for all of the solvent or not the solvents but the uh yeah this is a great solvent for all of the residue that's left behind from like the thermal pads and stuff so when I'm done with cleaning this off I'm going to take it out into my shop and I'm just going to use my little vacue blower thingy that I've got that I use to dust get dust out of systems to make sure all these fibers and stuff are gone so there you go it's about as clean as I've ever made a block before doing an install like I'm going to do the non-active back plate first I I'm pretty sure even if I go vertical Mount I'll probably still just not use the active back plate just for Simplicity I don't think it's necessary I think it's a neat feature I think it was a way to kind of progress the whole concept of water blocks on your GPU I just don't personally feel it's necessary if we had RAM chips back there then I think that'd be a different story so here's the block oh it's not as long okay I was worried that they were going to make it like a giant length but as you can see it's not it is only a little bit longer than the card I'm okay with that I was worried about it being as long as the card was Prior oh dude check this out they give us a sick matte black that's all scratched up plate a big old scratch right there jeez what EK how much you charging for these blocks and you're going to have a scratch along there I mean you're not going to see it and I'm probably I'll use it but guys really can you see that scratch freaking Wolverine got a hold of it all right accessories and mounting box all right so they do not include manuals because it is all QR code um which I wholeheartedly agree with because in the manual is always up to date so let's take this they give us their thermal Grizzly um it's like a kryonaut but it's not like the kryonaut extreme I would have loved to used the cry knut extreme I am going going to I don't need these guys cuz I have my iix it k i going to use my kpx extreme which is something I have used in all of my builds as long as this has existed this is some of the best thermal paste in my opinion that you can get your hands on so we got that that that don't need that so there are tools now they've got this like kind of a flathead deal right almost like a scraper spudger kind of a thing and then this is actually hexed so it's almost like a wrench and then these are like that round thing right there people always ask me like what is this for this is actually the tool so you've got your you know your hex head on there that you can get in there and use with the this is for the old school ones too that have like the one that you have to use a coin so it's got that in there it's pretty neat and then mounting accessory mounting box stricks tough I I guess the same block works with the tough so that's nice to have a single block that works with both both I guess that's helpful that Asus use the same PCB layout that is a lot of thermal pads whole has a hole in the bag holy crap why what on Earth why do we have so many one of the things that EK is known for is the amount of screws they would give you I swear they just had bowls of each type and they went with a handful on each one cuz you'd be done building and then you would have like 88 screws left over and you're like what did I do wrong now they're just doing that with thermal pads there is no way in hell all these pads are expected to be used or they give you extra in case you're an idiot like me and you cut them to the wrong length I missed the days when they were pre-cut and they were already like sized properly but they're different thicknesses too so you got to be mindful of that this is such a pretty block um this is the back plate which as you can see it's textured so when you touch it and rub it skin gets stuck to it which sort of sucks but I prefer this over their old jet flow jet plate one that had the Machining marks in it cuz that scratched so easy cuz it gave all those edges for things to get caught on when you face it this way you get this tasteful uh Force RTX which is going to show uh RGB that is where your power plug is going to come through and then this is the front side so if you go vertical Mount this is the acetol and that's what you're going to see uh in terms of RGB lighting this trim right here lights up RGB and so does the vector and then this illuminates like I said so that's about pretty sure that illuminates it might not actually know I guess we'll find out someday oh and by the way something new they've done if you've ever installed EK water block back plate before guess what the new screws are captive for the back plate they're captive cuz the thing that sucked was always trying to get it all lined up you know and then nice basically the manual it's going to give you this guide that shows you exactly what components get uh like covered with the thermal pads you want to make sure you use the right size thermal pads you put them in the right place if you put the wrong size thermal pad like two thick on there it won't Squish and touch the die properly which be cooling problems if you also add it to places that it's not intended it could create a bigger gap between the block and the other components which will lift everything off of its this is very very uh the tolerances on this are very tight so if any of these pads are in the wrong spot or you use too thick of a pad cuz you weren't paying attention you will have cooling problems ask me how I know so I like to just put my phone right here with the board right next to it and by the way the J2 mat makes a very good work surface too um I think we might be out of stock at the moment but uh I plan on getting more back in stock but anyway so it looks like we're putting them everywhere there everywhere here all right so I do not want to individually like cut these out so what I like to do is I'll take the blue side like the light the that darker blue the darker blue the dark blue side and put it against the chokes or whatever I'm going to do and just sort of push down and then it gives me an imprint so I can see where I take my scissors and cut we will now spare you guys the pain of watching me try and peel peel these little fact I remember back in the day when the water block was $110 and people were like that's too much I love that the thermal past matches their pads for OCD reasons that make no sense anyway load it up along the top know it sounds like a lot of pace but you know what too much won't hurt it's non-conductive okay so now we got our cake frosting on there I leave it kind of thick that way it does squish out what is uh unnecessary there we go so we just need to put our screws in there and there's only certain screws that you're going to use cuz the back plate is going to take up the rest so I've got all the components now with they thermal pads on there as they need um this is basically what the backside water block would be doing I believe it's just thermal pads I wouldn't be putting thermal paste on here um but anyway the nice thing about this is it's going to just slide in exactly where it's intended to go and then we just start threading our screws this is where the captive my God this is the first back blade I've ever installed that's got captive screws and it's so freaking nice cuz trying to get these like the washers and everything lined up is such a pain I also really love that the back plate wraps all the way around the edge so you don't see the edge of the PCB cuz to me the edge of the PCB always ends up being the ugly part of your system like or your water cooling system if it's uh if you can see the PCB layer cuz it's not that attractive you know the PCB layer so anyway there we go just go around tighten this down you got to be careful not to overtighten because you have this tendency to want to just like crank it down but that's not good for because you're just these are very fine threads you can easily uh stripping out so don't overtighten that's it that's installed man it's a chungus and a half what is this I mean I already weigh it but now that it's assembled 1981 so we lost uh 550 g or so off of it it's funny cuz it feels heavier to me than the cooler but maybe that's cuz it was so spread out the density yeah it was like over space but so if you look at it vertical that's what you'd see minus the fingerprints cuz I'm handling all over it touching thermal pad so I've got grease over my fingers if you go horizontal the standard layout that's what you get right there and you can see that that 12 pin it's very recessed how am I going to un will the plug well it seats fully it also goes fully inside maybe this is one Fe I guess that's what that's for it worked but see I feel like to be honest like you can get it really solid that's in there good and you can still get a pretty good bend out of that without like putting too much pressure on it I think so when I get this on my system I'll be using a cable mod cable but can I get my fingernail in there nope so if I take that and I just wedge it in there yeah it literally wedges in there perfectly and it com out so that's what this is for pretty sure anyway there it is there's our RGB cable coming out the bottom that's that's the way it'll look I was like how did I that up but no I didn't it was a to so there's that there's that and uh there you go you guys have said you wanted to see more water cooling stuff and that's exactly what you're going to get so make sure you guys are subscribed uh for some of the water cooling I have actually quite a few water cooling builds that I've got to do for ious people and uh I will of course do longer format talking about what I'm experiencing through the builds rather than just the the Montag stuff which you guys were like we love FS montages but we want to see more about the build itself which is exactly what we'll do so I've got a huge mess to clean up here and uh you guys have probably got some other videos you want to watch so thanks for hanging out with me today while I install the water block and we'll see you guys in the next oneall right so today we're going to take this uh strix RTX 490 and we're going to it's basically going to lose some girth but it's going to gain some weight cuz I'm going to throw an EK water block on it couple different blocks here both the active back plate and a standard back plate block uh we're going to take a look at them as well as some other stuff I got from performance PCS for my black ice build update so I figured I'd take you guys along for the ride on at least what it takes to install a water block on this guy I haven't done it before I have no idea what might be different today's video is brought to you by the jense merch store we got t-shirts gaming mats and mugs and all that kind of stuff so whenever you go buy our stuff we don't have to put other ads here and other annoying crap so go buy our stuff it's funny the PCB on this card only goes to the power cable so we're losing this much length but uh in terms of like thickness and stuff it's going to be much th it's only going to be a single slot card which would be nice unless we go with the active back plate which you'll see it adds the thickness of a block to the backside I don't think I'm going to be able to run the active back plate because of the motherboard that I'm using and I'll show that once it's like it'll interfere with the heat sink but anyway um there's some other things that came that I ordered from performance PCS I get asked a lot like Jay where do you get your custom water cooling stuff from w a lot stickers and you know performance PCS is a us-based water cooling SL PC modification shop they do a lot more than just water cooling they custom back PL or custom yeah custom painting UV printing Custom Distribution blocks custom cables like all they're kind of like your One-Stop shop for both DIY modifications to your systems mostly water cooling and then uh custom stuff that can be made with them but they're based out of Florida I believe they're Fort Lauderdale Florida and yeah you can get anything you need for your systems there so they've been you guys have probably seen them advertise in my channel a lot they are uh who I have gotten my water cooling stuff from this is interesting any my water cooling stuff from for years so what have we got here this is a bik ski uh pump right yes this is a pump the funny thing is I got this just for the pump and I don't plan on using the other pieces of it which is too bad cuz this is a pretty sick pump now this video is going to be about like the water block going on the 490 but I want to show you this other stuff that I picked up from them so I got this big old beefy which I'll be honest like I wish I could use it this way because it looks so good but I needed the pump so I will be taking this apart and taking the pump out which just seems like such a I'll be keeping all the parts of it see cuz I can put another pump back in it whenever I recover one but this is a cool looking Block it's all metal construction is that metal possibly it's heavy enough to be metal and then that's just the outlet top right there for your your fittings and stuff uh oh the shirts I did ask for some new performance pc shirts you guys seen me wear them mine are pretty worn out cuz they're like 6 years old um this is the EK cryful full cryofuel Mystic fog now this one here we have to show up a put a photo up I want to try this I hope it doesn't Gunk up my system I have been just back to colored distilled water for the most part because of all of the opaques and stuff just causing all kinds of gunking up with the system this just adds a sort of a kind of a misty look to the fluid which gives lighting something to bounce off of which I think will look really cool in the distribution blocks that I've already showed um and then there just more of the torque fittings which are the ones that I like to use for my um rigid tubing I've got a few colors here I've got black and then I've got another one I sort of took this opportunity to kind of restock some of the stuff that I really needed why could have swar I only got four of those why do I have five did I did I accidentally hit there okay I know for a fact I think I might have double ordered some of this stuff because I don't think I had this many initially this this this this is the EK Quantum velocity 2 CPU water block this is an AMD water blocker am5 because I am doing an am5 system uh why is this one so much heavier oh cuz this is full nickel that's why am5 okay it's just so heavy so this one is a acetol like just a Plexi top that is a full nickel I I I grabbed one of each cuz I couldn't decide which one I wanted to use for my build we'll look at those in another video not todays um because I am doing a 7950 x3d I'm glad I waited because of the fact that please open carefully smiley face glass I think this is some I think this is a mug or something uh a lot of you guys were like you should do an x3d and I was like you know what did you know these are edible tast like rice case this is the box for the water block the it's longer than the card I've never seen a water block box this big so this one's the standard block I can tell by the weight of it because it doesn't have the active back plate this is like a this was a what I considered a big box in the past this is like a EK Vega box like for a Vega block why they just keeps getting bigger anyway this is the non-active back plate this one oh my God this is the active back plate it's just getting it's actually thicker than the this is insanity I wish I could use the active back plate so badly because well here's the thing I would have to go vertical Mount to use the active back plate which would be fine except for the fact that but the diso blocks on the bottom I like the way it looks fully covered rather than the one that has the cut out anyway and then we've got two of the EK um Quantum surface 360 RADS I'm not going to unbox any of these parts now I just like I said I wanted to do kind of a quick little unboxing make sure I'm not missing anything here because the focus today's video I'll eat those later like the F focus of today's video is uh just to get the water block installed so let's see let me move this out of the way I want to weigh this real quick so the weight of an RTX 490 stri we've already done this before 2513 G okay the weight of the nonactive block 2143 G I have a feeling the active back Plate's going to go off the scales let's see 2884 G I have to install a block today but I don't know which one I can use the active back Plate's cool I just don't think actively cooling the back of the 490 is going to matter cuz I don't believe there's any Ram back there but the first thing I've got to do is clear off this table and I've got to pull the cooler off of that card which I've never done so I don't know what the process is so of course I'm using my ey fix you know what I like to do I like to just start unscrewing stuff and see what happens I like the way the stxs cooler looks I just hate the red and blue why red and blue blue isn't even a was never even a part of rog's color scheme they're like let's Jay hates color let's add one I guarantee I was not a thought in their design I guarantee it but I I knew from the moment we got this card that I was going to go with this for my build I really was hoping that amd's cards would have been more powerful than they are I was hoping that they were going to have something out that was comparable to like a 4090 cuz then I would have considered using it but since my build is just about creating the best gaming PC that I possibly can but with all diminishing returns in all the 4090 is all I have to go with that's metal that's why this card is one so heavy but there you go you can see the length this is the length of card I was expecting to to go with like to have but that's clearly not the way it went this actually seems like it's going to come apart dude it has a freaking subframe right here yeah and it's all metal I think the only thing holding it on now is just these four screws this might be one of the easiest tear Downs ever smaller so I love the iix it kits they have every possible bit you would need even the pentalobe uh anti-tamper stuff that Apple uses you know the reality is versus this cooler the water block probably isn't going to bring the temps down a whole lot because the cooler is already so massive in terms of its thermal dissipation but this is just about kind of going back to my roots with water cooling stuff I sort of I sort of got away from a lot of my roots um with the water cooling stuff and I regret that a lot of folks are Jay bring back the water cooling videos well so there's some SC there's always going to be some screws on the back plate or the retention bracket deal here that screwed directly into the cooler the thing is I just always undo the ones that seem most obvious at first and then kind of keep going from there now back in the day they would offer a single slot bracket but obviously they can't do that with this card because it's not single slot for the io as you can see so okay I'm pretty sure I have to undo no we're good there it is okay when you're taking it apart be careful of thermal pads you can see that thermal pad that's tearing and pulling apart right there now it's going to be okay but I don't want to rip it too badly cuz if I ever need to revert this I want to try and reuse all the stuff that I can I also know that I have cables plugged in right here which is going to be for lighting and fans and all that that's it that might be one of the easiest tear Downs ever to be honest go away s so the only thing on the back that would be actively cooled would be potentially like all these capacitors and stuff for the back side of the vrm maybe the back side of the GPU die itself dang I got to make a decision now am I going vertical Mount or horizontal cuz going traditional layout is the only way I'd be able to use the active back plate no I'm sorry vertical Mount is the only way I could use the active back plate I think I'm just going to go non-active back plate right for now if I decide to go active back plate I'll just change it again course a brings gaming to the next level with the Zenon 45in flexible OLED Xenon Flex display with up to 240 HZ refresh rate 0.03 millisecond gred gray response time motion blur cancelling anti-reflective coating burning protection and customizable Bend based on user preference the Zenon Flex from Co Air allows Gamers to truly tailor their display to their liking click the link below for more details I like to sort of dry rub sorry I like to remove as much of the thermal paste as I can before using the alcohol um because then it doesn't mush around as much I'm also going to use a toothbrush to uh get as much as I can away from all the edges there and then I'm also going to have to do the same thing for all of yeah just put that right there I to do the same thing for all of the memory pads so as you can see all the memory modules had thermal pads on there too and there's a lot of like leftover residue we just want to get all that off cuz obviously the the new block is going to come with its own thermal compound debating on depending on what they used I might just put Kingpin on here because the kpx is just some of the best stuff kpx and kryonaut are like the the pink kryonaut some of the best stuff you can possibly get and I think I might actually just do that instead of using what they've got now I'm using a blue towel here which as you can see is ripping up and leaving residue so you're going to definitely need to make sure that you either use a not compressed air from like a compressor but like a Electronics cleaner blower fan type deal to make sure you get all that residue off or the the fibers cuz that'll definitely hamper performance if you get that in there now the nice thing about alcohol the isopropyl alcohol it's not going to hurt anything on the PCB it might discolor it a little bit if you let it sit on there too long but it's a great neutralizer for all of the solvent or not the solvents but the uh yeah this is a great solvent for all of the residue that's left behind from like the thermal pads and stuff so when I'm done with cleaning this off I'm going to take it out into my shop and I'm just going to use my little vacue blower thingy that I've got that I use to dust get dust out of systems to make sure all these fibers and stuff are gone so there you go it's about as clean as I've ever made a block before doing an install like I'm going to do the non-active back plate first I I'm pretty sure even if I go vertical Mount I'll probably still just not use the active back plate just for Simplicity I don't think it's necessary I think it's a neat feature I think it was a way to kind of progress the whole concept of water blocks on your GPU I just don't personally feel it's necessary if we had RAM chips back there then I think that'd be a different story so here's the block oh it's not as long okay I was worried that they were going to make it like a giant length but as you can see it's not it is only a little bit longer than the card I'm okay with that I was worried about it being as long as the card was Prior oh dude check this out they give us a sick matte black that's all scratched up plate a big old scratch right there jeez what EK how much you charging for these blocks and you're going to have a scratch along there I mean you're not going to see it and I'm probably I'll use it but guys really can you see that scratch freaking Wolverine got a hold of it all right accessories and mounting box all right so they do not include manuals because it is all QR code um which I wholeheartedly agree with because in the manual is always up to date so let's take this they give us their thermal Grizzly um it's like a kryonaut but it's not like the kryonaut extreme I would have loved to used the cry knut extreme I am going going to I don't need these guys cuz I have my iix it k i going to use my kpx extreme which is something I have used in all of my builds as long as this has existed this is some of the best thermal paste in my opinion that you can get your hands on so we got that that that don't need that so there are tools now they've got this like kind of a flathead deal right almost like a scraper spudger kind of a thing and then this is actually hexed so it's almost like a wrench and then these are like that round thing right there people always ask me like what is this for this is actually the tool so you've got your you know your hex head on there that you can get in there and use with the this is for the old school ones too that have like the one that you have to use a coin so it's got that in there it's pretty neat and then mounting accessory mounting box stricks tough I I guess the same block works with the tough so that's nice to have a single block that works with both both I guess that's helpful that Asus use the same PCB layout that is a lot of thermal pads whole has a hole in the bag holy crap why what on Earth why do we have so many one of the things that EK is known for is the amount of screws they would give you I swear they just had bowls of each type and they went with a handful on each one cuz you'd be done building and then you would have like 88 screws left over and you're like what did I do wrong now they're just doing that with thermal pads there is no way in hell all these pads are expected to be used or they give you extra in case you're an idiot like me and you cut them to the wrong length I missed the days when they were pre-cut and they were already like sized properly but they're different thicknesses too so you got to be mindful of that this is such a pretty block um this is the back plate which as you can see it's textured so when you touch it and rub it skin gets stuck to it which sort of sucks but I prefer this over their old jet flow jet plate one that had the Machining marks in it cuz that scratched so easy cuz it gave all those edges for things to get caught on when you face it this way you get this tasteful uh Force RTX which is going to show uh RGB that is where your power plug is going to come through and then this is the front side so if you go vertical Mount this is the acetol and that's what you're going to see uh in terms of RGB lighting this trim right here lights up RGB and so does the vector and then this illuminates like I said so that's about pretty sure that illuminates it might not actually know I guess we'll find out someday oh and by the way something new they've done if you've ever installed EK water block back plate before guess what the new screws are captive for the back plate they're captive cuz the thing that sucked was always trying to get it all lined up you know and then nice basically the manual it's going to give you this guide that shows you exactly what components get uh like covered with the thermal pads you want to make sure you use the right size thermal pads you put them in the right place if you put the wrong size thermal pad like two thick on there it won't Squish and touch the die properly which be cooling problems if you also add it to places that it's not intended it could create a bigger gap between the block and the other components which will lift everything off of its this is very very uh the tolerances on this are very tight so if any of these pads are in the wrong spot or you use too thick of a pad cuz you weren't paying attention you will have cooling problems ask me how I know so I like to just put my phone right here with the board right next to it and by the way the J2 mat makes a very good work surface too um I think we might be out of stock at the moment but uh I plan on getting more back in stock but anyway so it looks like we're putting them everywhere there everywhere here all right so I do not want to individually like cut these out so what I like to do is I'll take the blue side like the light the that darker blue the darker blue the dark blue side and put it against the chokes or whatever I'm going to do and just sort of push down and then it gives me an imprint so I can see where I take my scissors and cut we will now spare you guys the pain of watching me try and peel peel these little fact I remember back in the day when the water block was $110 and people were like that's too much I love that the thermal past matches their pads for OCD reasons that make no sense anyway load it up along the top know it sounds like a lot of pace but you know what too much won't hurt it's non-conductive okay so now we got our cake frosting on there I leave it kind of thick that way it does squish out what is uh unnecessary there we go so we just need to put our screws in there and there's only certain screws that you're going to use cuz the back plate is going to take up the rest so I've got all the components now with they thermal pads on there as they need um this is basically what the backside water block would be doing I believe it's just thermal pads I wouldn't be putting thermal paste on here um but anyway the nice thing about this is it's going to just slide in exactly where it's intended to go and then we just start threading our screws this is where the captive my God this is the first back blade I've ever installed that's got captive screws and it's so freaking nice cuz trying to get these like the washers and everything lined up is such a pain I also really love that the back plate wraps all the way around the edge so you don't see the edge of the PCB cuz to me the edge of the PCB always ends up being the ugly part of your system like or your water cooling system if it's uh if you can see the PCB layer cuz it's not that attractive you know the PCB layer so anyway there we go just go around tighten this down you got to be careful not to overtighten because you have this tendency to want to just like crank it down but that's not good for because you're just these are very fine threads you can easily uh stripping out so don't overtighten that's it that's installed man it's a chungus and a half what is this I mean I already weigh it but now that it's assembled 1981 so we lost uh 550 g or so off of it it's funny cuz it feels heavier to me than the cooler but maybe that's cuz it was so spread out the density yeah it was like over space but so if you look at it vertical that's what you'd see minus the fingerprints cuz I'm handling all over it touching thermal pad so I've got grease over my fingers if you go horizontal the standard layout that's what you get right there and you can see that that 12 pin it's very recessed how am I going to un will the plug well it seats fully it also goes fully inside maybe this is one Fe I guess that's what that's for it worked but see I feel like to be honest like you can get it really solid that's in there good and you can still get a pretty good bend out of that without like putting too much pressure on it I think so when I get this on my system I'll be using a cable mod cable but can I get my fingernail in there nope so if I take that and I just wedge it in there yeah it literally wedges in there perfectly and it com out so that's what this is for pretty sure anyway there it is there's our RGB cable coming out the bottom that's that's the way it'll look I was like how did I that up but no I didn't it was a to so there's that there's that and uh there you go you guys have said you wanted to see more water cooling stuff and that's exactly what you're going to get so make sure you guys are subscribed uh for some of the water cooling I have actually quite a few water cooling builds that I've got to do for ious people and uh I will of course do longer format talking about what I'm experiencing through the builds rather than just the the Montag stuff which you guys were like we love FS montages but we want to see more about the build itself which is exactly what we'll do so I've got a huge mess to clean up here and uh you guys have probably got some other videos you want to watch so thanks for hanging out with me today while I install the water block and we'll see you guys in the next one\n"