Cool GTX
Nice job cleaning, changing pads & TIM
What brand of Pads?
Which TIM did you use?
Did you run any testing with the air cooler to compare the temps & OC with the AIO? (& was the room temp the same, for a better compare)
I've got a couple of the EVGA 1080Ti FTW3 Hybrid cards myself (bought new June 2017), they still run great with original pad, TIM & the occasional vacuum of radiator & canned air cleaning
The pads are the same Laird Tflex 300 at 1.2W/mK.
I only replaced two torn 1ms memory pads and part of the torn heatsink pads in contact with the air heatsink. The 1ms heatsink thermal pads are the only one I deal with. Backplate thermal pads don't need to be dealt for two reasons:
1. The backplate are never needed to be opened unlike the flawed instruction from the AIO manual.
2. There are barely any dust on the backplate as the room is pretty much dust free.
None of the original AIO memory baseplate thermal pads or the AIO VRAM heatsink thermal pads are replaced. I cover a layer of Teflon over the pads after dissemble to avoid contamination then reuse them later.
The thermal grease for the core is Thermalright TFX at 14.3 W/mk.
You can see EVGA uses soft thermal pads to individually cool various heating components with only 1.2W/mk.
It's an art of balance. The memory never goes beyond 61C. Too much thermal conductivity from somewhere else but connected to the core you might heat up the core instead.
And a balanced contact pressure with multiple individual heat dissipation brought by 22+4 screws is more important.
I have done several tests at the same 23C room temps. The AIO temperature barely hit 50C under 127% slave OC BIOS.
1080Ti AIO Stock vs AIO OC1080Ti AIO stock vs Air stock