So I added all the Thermalright Odyssey pads below the backplate on my XC3 Ultra and I got maybe 2C difference when mining, gaming has always been fine.  I have a huge Noctua NH-D15 on my 5600x above the card so there isn't much clearance.  I ordered some 5mm tall easycargo heatsinks that come with 3M 8810 Thermal Conductive Adhesive Tape pre-applied. It looks like the thermal conductivity of that tape is only .6W/mK though, I have this tape already  and is 3W/mK so I will be scraping the old off and putting this on.  @Dabadger84 have you tried changing your thermal tape?

My Mp5works Backplate cooler should be here Saturday 😎

Cute kitties.

🤣

Mibix

Dabadger84
I haven't been using much in the way of things that have thermal tape in a while.  What I do have thermal tape on is just containing the stuff that's sitting on Thermal Paste (so it can't move around) - the thermal taped heatsinks are less important because they're over VRM/power transfer components, which already don't run that hot.

lol so where are you at now, having a hard time finding your current setup you have tried a lot of different ways?  You just have thermal paste smeared all over the back of your backplate and some heatsinks over the VRM parts on the backplate?  I have the Thermal Odyssey pads on everything on the back and I'm going to add a bunch of heatsinks on the ram with some 3W/mK tape, I haven't bothered with anything on the front since the sizes for pads and the thermal foam stuff makes it sound like I won't get very good results and I only have the stock air cooling. Any tips you can recommend?  Should I bother with the front?  Do you know a way to see individual ram temps on the EVGA XC3 Ultra?

Thermal paste over the core area of the backplate (GPU core, VRAM chip areas, and the big VRM), thermal taped heatsinks on the other VRMs. 
 
I should've taken a picture while I had the fans out of the way when I was changing my backplate fan & taking my RAM out to take the plastic protective covers off.
 
It's pretty similar to this but some additional heatsink coverage:
 

 
Older picture but you can kinda see, other than a gap between where the paste-heatsinks end & the VRM-taped heatsink begins on the right, it's pretty much full coverage: 
 

 
That's of course from the 9900K/Z390 setup.
 
As far as I know the XC3 card don't have iCX sensors like the FTW3 ones do, so you can only see Memory Junction Temp right?  You can always assume your Mem1-3 would be lower than Junction, since that's supposedly the reading from which-ever memory chip is running the hottest (and that's supposed to be internal temperature), whereas from what I understand, the iCX Memory temps are sensors that are not inside, but rather immediately adjacent to, memory chips - maybe sandwiched in between them?  They don't really SHOW where they are exactly.
 
 
I'll try to remember next time I have it off & get some decent shots of the backplate cooling with the fan as out of the way as I can get it, but it's pretty much wedged in there between the GPU inlet tube & the VRM heatsink on the motherboard... RAM being in makes it hard to get the fan out of the way :-D

@Dabadger84 How did you attach the dual fans on the rads did you attach the fans to the rads and then use regular fan screws to hook every thing to the case or did you use the long screws to attach the fans and case at the same time...sandwich the fans? I just got a box of short screws not short enough and am going to try attaching all the fans to the rad then attach to the case with fan screw. Only have to cut 64 screws the length... for the exhaust side of 2 480mm xe rads! Or i would have had to get just as many long screws and probably have to cut them also.

Doesn't NEED new thermal pads, it's just that the stock ones are mid level in terms of performance since high performance pads would drive production costs up lol

deadpocketss
Been researching a bit and finding all kinds of conflicting info but this thread seems to have the most in one spot.
I have a 3090 FTW3, looking to cool off the back VRAM. I ordered a  as well as a bunch of different thermal pads. (1, 1.5, 2, and 3mm pads coming, just in case.)
Going to see if just sticking the whole heatsink on the back of the card will get the temps down, if it does I'll leave it at that.
If not, I'll look at pulling the backplate off and replacing the pads for the back VRAM only. (Don't want the hassle of pulling off the rad/front when those temps are doing fine.)
 
I'll try and have more accurate temps/pics when I get off work and actually start fiddling with it. 

What did you get aside from pads, link didn't post right
Edit- you need 10 posts before it will let you post links or pics iirc

I'd love to see someone go full for a more professional look and put one of these heat sinks on it. You can get different sizes/heights/etc. but this one is set up with mounting holes for a 120mm fan (you could screw in whatever 120mm fan you want to it). If that's too big, you go down a size and get a 92mm fan. You can get lapped, copper, aluminum, whatever floats your boat. You can even get some with a built in baby fan you can put a normal DC fan header on and just run at 12V. Of course, it is easy for me to say this, with no KP lol.

I'm a little bit late to the party here, but if anyone still wants the actual dimensions of the thermal pads for the various 3090 KP cards, here you go:
 
3090 KP HY:

• Mem Pad 1: 49mm x 13mm x 2.25mm (x2)
• Mem Pad 2: 37.5mm x 12mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Pad 3: 13mm x 13mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Plate: 5mm x 5mm x 2.25mm (small little guy near the edge of the memory/GPU plate)
• MOS Pad 1: 75mm x 4.5mm x 2.25mm (left side of memory)
• MOS Pad 2: 103.5mm x 4.5mm x 2.25mm (right side of memory)

3090 KP HC:

• Mem Pad 1: 51mm x 14mm x 2.25mm (2x)
• Mem Pad 2: 37.5mm x 14mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Pad 3: 15mm x 12mm x 2.25mm
• MOS Pad 1: 76mm x 6.5mm x 2.75mm (left side of memory)
• MOS Pad 2: 110mm x 6mm x 2.75mm (right side of memory)

3090 KP Backplate:

• Mem Pad 1: 49.5mm x 13.1mm x 2.5mm (2x)
• Mem Pad 2: 36.7mm x 13.1mm x 2.5mm
• Mem Pad 3: 13.1mm x 11.1mm x 2.5mm
• MLCC Pad: 18mm x 18mm x 2mm

EVGATech_LeeM
I'm a little bit late to the party here, but if anyone still wants the actual dimensions of the thermal pads for the various 3090 KP cards, here you go:
 
3090 KP HY:

• Mem Pad 1: 49mm x 13mm x 2.25mm (x2)
• Mem Pad 2: 37.5mm x 12mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Pad 3: 13mm x 13mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Plate: 5mm x 5mm x 2.25mm (small little guy near the edge of the memory/GPU plate)
• MOS Pad 1: 75mm x 4.5mm x 2.25mm (left side of memory)
• MOS Pad 2: 103.5mm x 4.5mm x 2.25mm (right side of memory)

3090 KP HC:

• Mem Pad 1: 51mm x 14mm x 2.25mm (2x)
• Mem Pad 2: 37.5mm x 14mm x 2.25mm
• Mem Pad 3: 15mm x 12mm x 2.25mm
• MOS Pad 1: 76mm x 6.5mm x 2.75mm (left side of memory)
• MOS Pad 2: 110mm x 6mm x 2.75mm (right side of memory)

3090 KP Backplate:

• Mem Pad 1: 49.5mm x 13.1mm x 2.5mm (2x)
• Mem Pad 2: 36.7mm x 13.1mm x 2.5mm
• Mem Pad 3: 13.1mm x 11.1mm x 2.5mm
• MLCC Pad: 18mm x 18mm x 2mm

This is a God send 😆

Hi everyone-
I have scanned thru a lot of this and I am a longtime EVGA customer...I think my first real card was a 260.  I just got my Kingpin and full admit that I am doing some mining with it to offset some of the cost as a kingpin is not my usual card.  I have a huge corsair case, but placement of the AIO cooler was tough as I already have one for the CPU.  The only real issue now is the memory junction temps- I am getting a great hashrate after a bunch of work and I have dropped the junction temp for 108+ to 98 pretty solid.  I set a large heatsink on the backplat like many- and a fan.  Has anyone tried a graphite pad with the heatsink and had good results?  Right now its just sitting on the backplate-
Thanks

libranoelrose

joshbkeith
Hi everyone-
I have scanned thru a lot of this and I am a longtime EVGA customer...I think my first real card was a 260.  I just got my Kingpin and full admit that I am doing some mining with it to offset some of the cost as a kingpin is not my usual card.  I have a huge corsair case, but placement of the AIO cooler was tough as I already have one for the CPU.  The only real issue now is the memory junction temps- I am getting a great hashrate after a bunch of work and I have dropped the junction temp for 108+ to 98 pretty solid.  I set a large heatsink on the backplat like many- and a fan.  Has anyone tried a graphite pad with the heatsink and had good results?  Right now its just sitting on the backplate-
Thanks

I used a thermal pad made of silicone putty with a heat sink and 5000 rpm fan and other heat sinks that had their own "paste" and yet others that had no backing so I bought a thermal double sided tape.
 
No matter what I do I still get hot spots that break 100 degrees if I push my card.
 
The problem is placement. There just isn't enough room to cover every single centimeter and give it good airflow without bumping up against other components.
 
I'm afraid to put too much of anything under the back plate as I know there has to be some air flow.
 
It's super frustrating that a tiny hotspot will throttle the card when I've got $300 worth of extra cooling after the original (lol) purchase price.
 
 

Feel the back plate and heat sinks while its under load if they are uncomfortable to touch you can get them cooler the first ones i tried just were not big enough they were still hot. i got as big as i could and they are just barely warm now and temps don't break 75 with a 1300+ mem clock. Mp5 water block and hydro copper kit are next on the list putting the loop together as i have spare time! Just play with it and have fun!
 
Edit : typos 
 
OOps forgot i took the back plate off and am running with heat sinks directly on mem chips .5mm thermal pads The chips by the back of the card pcie bracket end are the hottest on mine by far.

I'm thinking of buying the Hybrid whenevery position comes up, then buying the optimus block for it if they are still being made 😆
At which point I will think about changing pads and such, though I hear they are making their KP block have active backplate cooling so possibly just compare the two blocks
Also I might have a clearance issue between my system mem and GPU, the cards backplate literally sits pressed slightly up against the clip for the system mem 😆🤣
Hopefully I can put the mp5works block in the right place and still clear my system mem

joshbkeith
You bring up some good thoughts- I did order some IC graphite pads from Amazon.  i am going to carefully experiment and see what I can do.  I am at 115 MH but wit a healthy memory bump and I would like to bring the temps down.  I doubt I will be able to get the junction temp down as far as I want.  I will report back on my results-

1350 mem -200 core 75% power 0 voltage 121-123 mh  mem j temp 86 deg 
 
never breaks 75 gaming but i can't do any oc on outriders or it crashes even 1% or 1 mhz other games i can go nuts on and with the miner but outriders and cyberpunk 2077 crashes like clock work if i put any oc on the card. I can't wait to get the mp5 works cooler on this thing!