Installation

Installing the EVGA Hydro Copper block has been the easiest of any tested so far, with the pre-installed thermal pads and well-written manual all contributing positively to the experience. Begin with removing the plastic covers from the thermal pads. Next, apply some TIM to the GPU core, connect the LED cable to the LED header on the PCB, and bring both blocks together in such a way that the holes in the back of the PCB align with the standoffs in the block. Now, take the five longer screws and install them in their appropriate places as mentioned in the manual, some with the provided nuts to secure the display connectivity part to the PCB. With that done, use the remaining shorter screws to further help secure the PCB to the block. As always, begin with the four around the GPU core and move outward, before finally tighten all of them down together.

One of the benefits of the EVGA block is that it accommodates not only the NVIDIA Founders Edition backplate but also the EVGA ACX backplate. Seeing how popular the EVGA SKUs are for their user friendly warranty policy on watercooling, I think this is a big plus, and I indeed used the ACX backplate that was with my EVGA ACX 3.0 GTX 1080. As seen in the last picture above, it worked out well with no variance in mounting pressure.


I did remove the block to examine TIM spread and if the thermal pads were indeed making good contact with the components. For this demo I used the provided EVGA TIM, which I do not recommend you do unless you have nothing else. It is really designed for sub-zero applications, and there are better-performing thermal pastes available that are also easier to apply and clean off if they get onto your fingers. But as far as actual TIM spread goes, I was very happy with what I got, and I did get a similar result with the Gelid GC Extreme TIM I use for testing. Every single thermal pad made good contact too, so installation is definitely a strong point here.