I bought my EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC Gaming (6GB) and noticed that there is a difference on the cooler. My model has black tape on the rear of the cooler (left side of photos below). The older models posted on TH (l) seems to have no tape on the rear of the cooler. I have a few guesses as to why this is so (prob for redirecting more airflow over VRMs and memory). I am wondering why this mod was put into place because it doesn't make sense since all it does is push all the hot air into my case out of three sides of the card rather than without the tape it pushes hot air out of all four sides of the card. Should I remove it?
 
 Older cooler: 
 
My Cooler: 

the TH link is here 

Make sure your photo is setup for Shared
 https://lh3.googleusercon...fL4lcSUT=w1920-h938-rw
when I try to open I get this error:
 
403. That’s an error.
Your client does not have permission to get URL /fUtIch5lL7q_qXhib4-miZw5OTzCTN_1OHLrWHDNn4NJvQqJg3pN0yMgIuYZAdfJ8ec_SiAQuQr_fL4lcSUT=w1920-h938-rw from this server. (Client IP address: 2601:14e:101:1713:7595:f93e:fe8b:32d2)

Forbidden That’s all we know.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rPSUarPNGt1Qm53cIb0G43YFJwagnqAu

Does this link work better ?

 
Thought this might be easier :)

Yes - exactly. That black tape covering the rear part of the fins (airflow would exit out of the back of the card but its blocked by the tape). Functionally speaking, this only make sense if more airflow was needed over the VRMs and memory. This makes airflow restricted to three sides of the cooler and only empties into my case. On the other hand, if the tape was removed (similar to the original version of the cooler) airflow would exit out of the back of the card giving the fourth side of the card for warm air to escape (also outside of my case). 
 
I may run some testing with the tape on and the tape removed and post to YT. 
 
If anyone has some technical input on whether I should leave the tape or remove it please let me know. Thanks! =)

Probably call evga and ask. The tape is probably protecting the heatsink from shorting something on the pcb.. if it is touching it.

AHowes
The tape is probably protecting the heatsink from shorting something on the pcb.. if it is touching it.

+1

I noticed this as well and would love to know the reason for the tape. I use the card in a very small ITX enclosure and if hot air could exit the case that would be great

This was one of the many changes we made during the thermal mod period.  IIRC, the tape is a piece of acetate tape designed to mostly keep airflow directed towards the GPU and other components that can get warm.  This was only done on one model of the GTX 1060's that I can remember, but it's been a while.