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.
