NucleusX
One thing that hasn't been mentioned or covered much in testing is how the fans pull in reverse on the ACX 3.0 instead of push. 

Depending on the direction of the airflow in the case, can be a good solution.

Leonardohlb

NucleusX
I believe the back-plate can both be beneficial and problematic simultaneously. Some components will suffer more with it on, and
others will suffer less without it. A side panel fan blowing at the cards edge might be a good idea if the back-plate is a concern.  

Dust and not as effective as a cooler on top, i tested.

 
Not surprising.

Leonardohlb

NucleusX
One thing that hasn't been mentioned or covered much in testing is how the fans pull in reverse on the ACX 3.0 instead of push. 

Depending on the direction of the airflow in the case, can be a good solution.

Could also be problemtic with the wrong airflow. People would need to take that into account with correctly oriented case fans.

NucleusX

acxcoolerssuck

 
sure, when i got the card in august. these are 2.5mm, but the plate will be slightly bent.
these are 3m 8810.
the gap between pcb and back plate is 2mm. so i chose 2.5mm.
worked great, the plate was very hot during gaming, cant put my figure on the plate for few seconds.
i remove the back plate when i change to aio cooling.
these pads cant be removed after used...
and two sides of the pad are different, if you wrongly place them, the these pad will be on the pcb

 
I'm surprised i didn't even think to check this while it was in my machine. Observing a warmer back-plate
might actually be a good thing. Could mean its doing a better job at extracting more heat away from those
components. After having done all your thermals, do you feel its improved your situation all-round ?
 

sure, hotter back plate means heat of the back of the pcb are spreading to the plate.
no i dont feel any differences as the stock cooling is too weak, 75c~80c during gaming at~2025mhz.  

acxcoolerssuck

NucleusX

acxcoolerssuck

 
sure, when i got the card in august. these are 2.5mm, but the plate will be slightly bent.
these are 3m 8810.
the gap between pcb and back plate is 2mm. so i chose 2.5mm.
worked great, the plate was very hot during gaming, cant put my figure on the plate for few seconds.
i remove the back plate when i change to aio cooling.
these pads cant be removed after used...
and two sides of the pad are different, if you wrongly place them, the these pad will be on the pcb

 
I'm surprised i didn't even think to check this while it was in my machine. Observing a warmer back-plate
might actually be a good thing. Could mean its doing a better job at extracting more heat away from those
components. After having done all your thermals, do you feel its improved your situation all-round ?
 

sure, hotter back plate means heat of the back of the pcb are spreading to the plate.
no i dont feel any differences as the stock cooling is too weak, 75c~80c during gaming at~2025mhz.  

Use a cooler as i used, i want to see if it will make no difference...  use also mode agressive in EVGA precision.

acxcoolerssuck
 
sure, hotter back plate means heat of the back of the pcb are spreading to the plate.
no i dont feel any differences as the stock cooling is too weak, 75c~80c during gaming at~2025mhz.  

Well there's also pads making contact with the back of the GPU, so now when your VRMs go up, some of that heat will shift back to your GPU and vice versa
now that they are linked by the same cooling surface. By that point, your kinda fighting a losing battle for achieving any reasonable temp reductions i'd say.
 
Diminishing returns.

NucleusX

acxcoolerssuck
 
sure, hotter back plate means heat of the back of the pcb are spreading to the plate.
no i dont feel any differences as the stock cooling is too weak, 75c~80c during gaming at~2025mhz.  

Well there's also pads making contact with the back of the GPU, so now when your VRMs go up, some of that heat will shift back to your GPU and vice versa
now that they are linked by the same cooling surface. By that point, your kinda fighting a losing battle for achieving any reasonable temp reductions i'd say.

that pads near gpu are the stock pads, i think these are for preventing the backplate to hurt the pcb but not spreading heat.

you are right, but that is the limitation though.
using cooling plate, not just evga but other brands like msi and galax, helps reducing gpu temp as the heat from vrm and gpu are separated. 
 
if evga acx3.0 has no cooling plate but actively cooled the vrm by the main heatsink, then in my case my ftw may reach 80c~85c. so the nature of the problem is the acx heatsink is not good and powerful enough for some high ambient temp situation and bad airflow cases. 
 
i mean, asia is where evga does not well take care of. it is no doubt that under ~20C ambient temp, with acx 3.0 the gpu temp will be around 67c. but in south asia 20c is very rare. 

acxcoolerssuck
that pads near gpu are the stock pads, i think these are for preventing the backplate to hurt the pcb but not spreading heat.

 
Not so sure about that tbh, the GPU pads material seemed to be very similar to the memory thermal pads. The stock ones at-least.
 

NucleusX

acxcoolerssuck
that pads near gpu are the stock pads, i think these are for preventing the backplate to hurt the pcb but not spreading heat.

 
Not so sure about that tbh, the GPU pads material seemed to be very similar to the memory thermal pads. The stock ones at-least.
 

if that little pads are for cooling, then i think evga should have used the same gpu pad in arctic hybrid 140.

It all so looks like this will block air flow between your PCB and Back Plate.
I would re-review what you are doing here and also use the correct size of them pads as you do not want to bend the Back Plate.
This may lead to bending the PCB and even cracking the PCB.

whitezero

DSP1

whitezero

brokencross

whitezero

brokencross

whitezero
 
I think they're basically saying that regardless of if you do the thermal pad mod or not, EVGA's 3 year warranty applies in this case. So if your VRM explodes 3.1 years down the road, you're probably not going to be able to get a free replacement. 

Yeah, that's exactly what worries me. Either way, I'll probably install the thermal pads just for peace of mind.

 
For sure, seems like an . And in the process, you can opt to put on a higher quality TIM (thermal paste) for the GPU itself for even better thermals than before the mod. I've been considering going with the GELID GC-Extreme, myself.

Yeah. I still have a bit of AS5, but I'll probably get a good ceramic based paste.

Yeah AS5 may not be the best choice, there are a lot of other paste's out there that do a better job on GPUs.  http://www.tomshardware.c...benchmark,3616-20.html
 
And EVGA may include some paste with the mod as well.

Tom's Hardware???
Are you sure that the testing they do there is reliable? 

Not a lot of sites do large scale TIM testing like this. Did you have some specific beef with TomsHardware? Can't say I'm aware of glaring inaccuracies with their testing over the years.

Was a joke.
The whole issue started from a review by Toms Hardware.DE that EVGA says is not reliable.