ShadowMAN280x
To confirm, their is no thermal pads over the backside VRM's stock? Stock,there is only thermal pad over the gpu?

On the backplate side of the card, there's only this stock, plus a small pad over the backside of the Die (you can see the gray pastey stuff it left) :
 

Toieo
I've followed this thread and it all seems like a bit much yet it's something I want to do.

Economic reasons aside, is there any reason I can just cover the entire dang thing in pads, put the back plate back on, and mount heatsinks to all available space on the backplate?

Someone else tried exactly that, and it actually resulted in some very odd temperatures.  I did a mono-pad for the entire GPU die/VRAM area, and it didn't perform as well as individual pads either.  I have no idea WHY, but yeah.  I am planning to test that again now that I have the thermal paste on the back of the card, I figure maybe now it will work better, but it's worth doing an A to B comparison.
My plan is to wait for the new pads to get here for the memory, take the card apart, put the mono-pad in, test with that, then if temps are higher than before (which I'm expecting they will be, but I want to check), I'll go back to individual pads, and put 12.8W/mK pads on all the memory modules on the backplate side.
That last option should result in about as good of temps as I can get, while still being completely "safe" for daily use/no risk of heatsinks bridging components like there would be if they were direct mounted.
 
Worth noting, Direct mounting, because of the lack of pressure, is actually a mixed back of results, at least it was for me, I'm sure if someone did 0.5mm double sided adhesive pads, it would have better results, but here's what I'm running currently, vs when I had direct pad to component setup:
 
Now (Paste on backplate plus heatsinks with only component coverage pads, 2 of the memory pads are 6W/mK, 2 are 12.8W/mK cuz I didn't have enough 12 to do all) :

 
Vs direct mount pad to component:
 

 
Definitely not worth it to risk direct pad to component imo when the temp results, for me at least, were that small of a decrease on some, and not even a decrease on others.
The VRMs are already running so cool that those decreases in temp really don't matter - and the better pads (which I can't use on direct contact because it's double-stacked 1mm pads with no stickyness so the heatsink would slide) do more good through the backplate, than the 6W pads do with direct mounting on components.
 
I think once I get the 12W pads on all memory, I might be able to get lower temps across the board, compared to my direct mount numbers.  I'm already close.

Toieo
Yeah I've been following along pretty well and I'm trying to figure out something like this would work in a vertical orientation.
 
I saw back on page 7 (iirc) you outlined what areas need to be padded with what thickness, any changes to that? Or is there a "final revision" master somewhere that can be used as a guide? There was nothing on youtube for this particular project that I could find.
 
I figured if I take off the plate, slap a monster piece on there, and then attach the sinks with sticky back, they would sit vertically okay.
 
I would love to do this project but I have a 60 hour a week job and 5 kids. I can carve out an afternoon but not week after week tinkering to get it just right.

Those measurements are accurate as far as I have tested yes.  You CAN put 2mm pads even on the VRM areas, but they will be squished to the point of not being too reusable if you remove the backplate multiple times, they may get damaged (one of mine did).  2mm on almost everywhere, 1.5mm on the VRM "boxes", should be perfect.
You can definitely just use Thermal tape with the heatsinks - it doesn't perform as well as paste or pads, between the heatsinks & the backplate, but it still helps with heat dissipation, and that would definitely work for vertical mounting. 
If you did thermal paste, it depends on the paste... a lot of thermal paste is "sticky" enough that the heatsinks won't move.  In my case, I have thermal taped heatsinks on either side of the thermal pasted heatsinks, so I could in theory mount my card vertically again, whenever I'm done messing with it.
 
Basically if you want to do something that will definitely improve temps, and be vertically mountable - buy the heatsinks, some thermal tape, and the pads to do under the backplate.  The most time consuming part will be cutting up the thermal pads, doing the heatsinks & tape is a pretty fast process once you get the hang of it, as long as you semi-steady hands.  At least mine wasn't too bad, I got 20mm tape, if I had gotten 40mm tape it would've been much simpler since the heatsinks I have are 40 x 40mm.
You COULD do just a single slab of thermal pad, basically cut it for the entire area of the inside of the backplate, slap it on the backplate itself (so you know it's lined up right) then stick it back on.  If you're not wanting to mess with it continually, that would work just fine.
Pretty sure all you'd need for that is just 200 x 200mm thermal pad that's 2mm thick, cut it to size, and boom.  Won't be as dramatic a drop in temps as being more specific with where you put them, but it will still improve over stock, a fair bit, and take less time to do overall, by a lot.  All told I'd be surprised if it takes more than 1-2 hours, as long as you're prepared with all the tools needed to do it (something to cut the pads with, proper sized screw driver to remove the backplate screws, which I had to search for because the heads on them are a lot smaller than I thought, but not small enough to be doable with my tiny tiny screw drivers, the tape to put the heatsinks on, and scissors to cut the tape).
 
That's a big part of why I wanted to do this thread & get other people's inputs on what they've experienced & tested so we can compare notes, and put together a "simple" guide that pretty much anyone can do, and just do it once then forget about it, while still getting better temperatures.
 
I was going to do a pretty in depth measurements thing on the mono-pad as I like to call it, but with the fact that it didn't exactly perform "great", I haven't yet.  I am planning to re-test it though, with the thermal paste backplate - basically want to have "minimal effort" vs "maximum effort" numbers, minimal effort being the "mono-pad" that covers almost everything with a single pad, maximum effort being the pads only where they're actually "needed" with proper 1.5mm pads on the VRM areas where needed.

Dabadger84

Toieo
Yeah I've been following along pretty well and I'm trying to figure out something like this would work in a vertical orientation.
 
I saw back on page 7 (iirc) you outlined what areas need to be padded with what thickness, any changes to that? Or is there a "final revision" master somewhere that can be used as a guide? There was nothing on youtube for this particular project that I could find.
 
I figured if I take off the plate, slap a monster piece on there, and then attach the sinks with sticky back, they would sit vertically okay.
 
I would love to do this project but I have a 60 hour a week job and 5 kids. I can carve out an afternoon but not week after week tinkering to get it just right.

Those measurements are accurate as far as I have tested yes.  You CAN put 2mm pads even on the VRM areas, but they will be squished to the point of not being too reusable if you remove the backplate multiple times, they may get damaged (one of mine did).  2mm on almost everywhere, 1.5mm on the VRM "boxes", should be perfect.
You can definitely just use Thermal tape with the heatsinks - it doesn't perform as well as paste or pads, between the heatsinks & the backplate, but it still helps with heat dissipation, and that would definitely work for vertical mounting. 
If you did thermal paste, it depends on the paste... a lot of thermal paste is "sticky" enough that the heatsinks won't move.  In my case, I have thermal taped heatsinks on either side of the thermal pasted heatsinks, so I could in theory mount my card vertically again, whenever I'm done messing with it.
 
Basically if you want to do something that will definitely improve temps, and be vertically mountable - buy the heatsinks, some thermal tape, and the pads to do under the backplate.  The most time consuming part will be cutting up the thermal pads, doing the heatsinks & tape is a pretty fast process once you get the hang of it, as long as you semi-steady hands.  At least mine wasn't too bad, I got 20mm tape, if I had gotten 40mm tape it would've been much simpler since the heatsinks I have are 40 x 40mm.
You COULD do just a single slab of thermal pad, basically cut it for the entire area of the inside of the backplate, slap it on the backplate itself (so you know it's lined up right) then stick it back on.  If you're not wanting to mess with it continually, that would work just fine.
Pretty sure all you'd need for that is just 200 x 200mm thermal pad that's 2mm thick, cut it to size, and boom.  Won't be as dramatic a drop in temps as being more specific with where you put them, but it will still improve over stock, a fair bit, and take less time to do overall, by a lot.  All told I'd be surprised if it takes more than 1-2 hours, as long as you're prepared with all the tools needed to do it (something to cut the pads with, proper sized screw driver to remove the backplate screws, which I had to search for because the heads on them are a lot smaller than I thought, but not small enough to be doable with my tiny tiny screw drivers, the tape to put the heatsinks on, and scissors to cut the tape).
 
That's a big part of why I wanted to do this thread & get other people's inputs on what they've experienced & tested so we can compare notes, and put together a "simple" guide that pretty much anyone can do, and just do it once then forget about it, while still getting better temperatures.
 
I was going to do a pretty in depth measurements thing on the mono-pad as I like to call it, but with the fact that it didn't exactly perform "great", I haven't yet.  I am planning to re-test it though, with the thermal paste backplate - basically want to have "minimal effort" vs "maximum effort" numbers, minimal effort being the "mono-pad" that covers almost everything with a single pad, maximum effort being the pads only where they're actually "needed" with proper 1.5mm pads on the VRM areas where needed.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I'll keep watching the thread and see how things go. I have time as I'm still 65 in the queue which is going to put my awfully close to the April deadline. Which btw is going to upset me quite a lot after waiting 3 months if I get taxed an extra 200+ bucks through no fault of my own AND waiting for 3 months. Kinda messed up tbh

@Dabadger84, what do you think this thermal pad?  https://www.amazon.com/Iceberg-Thermal-DRIFTIce-120mm-0-5mm/dp/B08KYGP937?th=1
 

Clovis559

howe10888
@Dabadger84, what do you think this thermal pad?  https://www.amazon.com/Iceberg-Thermal-DRIFTIce-120mm-0-5mm/dp/B08KYGP937?th=1
 

I was peaking at those pads too. Seem tempting.

Their headquarter is in Arizona and there is an office in Hong Kong like Gelid Solution.  The Pads are all made in China.

https://www.reddit.com/r/watercooling/comments/lu54zk/the_growler/

This thing is bad ass sorry this might be slightly off topic but wow just wow

Lord Winchester
Here is my attempt of cooling down the Backside VRAM:
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
I can't provide any numbers yet because the system isn't back together. 
I will come back to this topic once my computer moved to the new Case, is leak tested and running. 
 

Is that a hdd block or a ram block?

This is a HDD water block compared. This makes me want to move to a Z590 and a 11900k so it will not hit the Ram.

howe10888
@Dabadger84, what do you think this thermal pad?  https://www.amazon.com/Iceberg-Thermal-DRIFTIce-120mm-0-5mm/dp/B08KYGP937?th=1
 

That's pretty expensive, but it's also all the pads you would need for all the memory, I think, with it being 120 x 40 x 2mm.  Might be worth a try indeed.
I'm gonna be done with mine after testing the mono-pad & the 12.8W/mK pads on just the memory though, swapping pads as many times as I have has went from being a fun experiment to being tiresome.  And I'm concerned that I'm going to strip the backplate screws if I keep removing it too many more times, so after I test the mono & see what temps are like, if they're worse, I'll be putting the 12W pads back on the memory, all of it this time, once I get more in today, then I'm done-done.  That should be pretty excellent, I expect further drops once the other two longer-sets of memory are under better pads with the thermal paste setup.

Dabadger84

Clovis559
 
This is a HDD water block compared. This makes me want to move to a Z590 and a 11900k so it will not hit the Ram.

 I knew that HDD block was going to be huge but DAYUM lol

 
I haven't touched a Hdd in years. How hot do they get? I really can't imagine they needed a cooling block this big at any time🤣

Lord Winchester

Dabadger84

Clovis559
 
This is a HDD water block compared. This makes me want to move to a Z590 and a 11900k so it will not hit the Ram.

 I knew that HDD block was going to be huge but DAYUM lol

 
I haven't touched a Hdd in years. How hot do they get? I really can't imagine they needed a cooling block this big at any time🤣

HDD blocks are one of many things that some companies came out with during when Liquid Cooling was really catching on, that are actually completely pointless/unnecessary. 
 
 

Is there a reason why every time I check this thread, it takes me to page 24?

Will probably be a little inactive the next few days, had to put our younger dog to sleep because of kidney failure basically out of nowhere, so I'll be dealing with real life stuff.  Might do the pad update still just to give me sometime away from thinking about everything, but yeah, I probably won't post much in the next bit.

Dabadger84 - Oh no! Sorry to hear that.  
Is it worth putting something like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YPXXHSK (lots of room in my case above video card for a heatsink on the backplate) on the back of the backplate with https://www.amazon.com/nkomax-Thermalright-85x45x0-5mm-Conductive-Temperature/dp/B08CGR62QX ? I wouldn't be taking the backplate off or anything along those lines. Or do you have to do that to see a results of placing a heatsink on the back?