Repair technician “northwestrepair” on YouTube reveals the dangers of using copper memory cooling mods on GPUs. In a RTX 3080 repair video, the technician shows the damage done by a user who modded his founder’s edition RTX 3080 with a copper mod. Extensive damage to the GPU’s 1.8V rail, memory voltage, and other sub-systems was evident.
Copper modding, in this context, is a cooling upgrade for graphics card VRAM that can significantly improve memory temperatures. The mod involves replacing the stock memory thermal pads with a copper cooling plate (or copper shims) that sit between the memory ICs and the GPU heatsink. Thermal paste is then used to bridge the small remaining gaps.
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While this mod can massively improve temperatures, northwestrepair reveals that copper mods can impose significant danger to the system components surrounding the GPU. Any component near the memory ICs is vulnerable to damage, as a result of copper’s electrically conductive properties.
That is exactly what happened to the RTX 3080 northwestrepair fixed. Despite the original owner’s attempts to protect the surrounding VRMs with Kapton tape, the GPU suffered immense damage making the GPU completely unusable.
The repair technician discovered a variety of issues with the GPU including a short in the memory power delivery system, and several knocked-out capacitors and components affecting the 1.8V rail, 5V VCC, and other systems. Other damage was also discovered including cuts to some of the traces near the PCIe finger, as a result of bad handling of the card which the technician also had to repair.