 A data XPG V2 memory kits are optimized for the latest Intel gaming platforms. Check the link in the video description for more details. Welcome to the ultimate video card water block installation guide. Right here we have Nasus GeForce GTX Titan and step one guys is for the love of whatever you believe in. Please test the card before installing a water block on it because it's an awful lot of work to take it apart, put it back together, take it apart and then put it back together when you find out it doesn't work after you've put a water block on it. Make sure you're working at a safe anti-static workstation. In our case we're using a mod mat from Mod-Rite. Next lay out everything you're going to need. So tools, in this case a Phillips head screwdriver. Next is hardware, so in this case our graphics card as well as all the pieces that were included with our water block itself. A little bin for screws, it's a disaster if you lose those. Isopropyl alcohol as well as something to clean thermal compound off with and last but not least guys, instructions. I don't care who you are, if you're not reading the instructions for a water block, you're doing it wrong. It's very important because sometimes there will even be last minute revision notices posted on the instructions. Step four, remove the stock heat sink. Before you start, I recommend taking pictures so that if you have to put it back together, you're going to have a point of reference to use later on. As you remove screws, put them somewhere safe. This is incredibly important because whether you're selling your graphics card down the road or whether you have to send it in for a warranty repair, you may need to be able to put that stock cooler back on. Always be sure that you've removed all the screws before attempting to take the heat sink off. Sometimes there can be one left that you didn't spot before or one that's a little bit tricky to find, such as the one that holds the card onto the IO panel right here. Another couple of spots where you might find tricky screws are here. Those are pretty tight, remove those with a different screwdriver. And then I've sometimes found ones at the back of the card that need to be removed as well, but that's not the case with the Titan. These two do need to go though. One thing to watch out for as you're removing screws is not all the screws in the graphics card are the same. So either with pictures or by labeling them as you go, make sure you keep track of what goes where. Remember, it could be two to three years by the time you have to reassemble this thing. So once all the screws are removed, pull the PCB away from the heat sink with a twisting motion, rather than with a pulling motion to ensure that you don't pull any RAM modules off of the PCB as you go. There we go. Carefully remove any fan headers or LED light headers without damaging the connectors. Take all of the thermal pads that are still attached to the card and put them back on the cooler. This helps you keep them safe and in the right place during storage. Next, put the card aside for now and put all of the screws back exactly where they went into the stock cooler. Step six is the same as one of the other steps. Please, for the love of everything, RTM, read the manual. This particular water block comes with two different thicknesses of thermal pads. Read the manual and you will know why. Don't read the manual and you could end up frying your GPU. That serious, guys. Step seven is to clean the existing paste off of the GPU core. I usually use toilet paper for the first round as well as 99% isopropyl alcohol. Flip it over for a clean side and take another run at it. Then, as a last finishing touch, once you've dried all the alcohol off of it, it's never a bad idea to take a lint-free cloth. In this case, I'm just going to use my sleeve because I don't have one handy. And ensure that there are no toilet paper bits left on the GPU itself that can affect cooling. It's also never a bad idea, particularly for some configurations, where you're going to be using small heat sinks on the RAM or VRM components, to do a quick pass of those ones because there might be a little bit of oily residue left on them that would cause additional thermal adhesives that you put on afterwards to not stick correctly. Now, because we read the manual, we know to use the 0.7 thick thermal pads instead of the one thickness thermal pads because this one is for most cases, but because of manufacturing tolerance issues with some GPUs, you might need to add a slightly thicker thermal pad for, you know, these memory modules or these ones where this one doesn't quite make contact, but if you use this one in the first place, it could hold the block so far away from the card that the GPU itself doesn't get adequately cooled. Now, what we'll need to do is cut to size, so you can either measure this or hold it up against the right spot or just kind of eyeball it. Thermal pad strips. Remove the backing from both sides. This is very important because if you don't do that, then your parts will overheat. So there's one piece and a second piece. There we go. Then apply these to all of the parts indicated by the instruction manual. In this case, it comes on a separate piece of paper that indicates exactly where all the thermal pads go once you've cut them to size. In the case of this water block, we need thermal pads not only on the CPU block itself, but also on the aluminum backplate. Aluminum. Aluminum. Aluminium, as they say in some territories. Not in Canada. That's not even a Canadian accent. It truly begs the question, why did I say it at all? Next up is to apply new thermal compound to the GPU itself. You can use the included thermal compound. In this case, we will be. But you can get better quality aftermarket thermal compounds a lot of the time than the stuff that tends to get included with these blocks. My personal favorite thermal compound is IC Diamond. Uses like diamonds and stuff. For GPUs, I do tend to use a little bit of a different methodology than for CPUs. I tend to spread out the compound a bit more because they tend to be a bit larger. A bit larger, and I tend to put on a little bit more. This is a non-conductive thermal goop, so I'm not too worried about it getting sort of over the edges here and causing a short. For this next part, I recommend taking the water block and putting it on something that is raised a little bit above the surface of your work area. It's important to give room for the rear I.O. to overhang the surface that you're working on. Line up the block carefully with the mounting holes in the back of the card. See this? You can just visually check as you put it down. Then, once you have everything aligned, I'm just going to poke my head in here to make sure I've got it. There we go. I would press it down. Then, you're actually going to remove it. This allows you to check on the thermal pads to make sure that everything was making adequate contact, and it gives you a pretty good look at the spread of the GPU thermal paste. This looks all right. By the time we crank this down tight, that should be spread out just fine. So we're going to put that back on, and we're ready to tighten her down. The aluminum backplate goes on before we put on the screws, because many of them actually go through it. There we are. And this particular block comes with optional plastic washers to keep the screw heads from scratching the top of the aluminum backplate. However, I'm not too worried about that, and I would rather the clean look of the screws directly through the backplate to having those plastic washers in. Everything goes in lightly to start. Very, very lightly to start. We don't start cranking things tight until all the screws are in. I recommend starting with the GPU screws themselves in a cross pattern, before moving on to the ones all over the rest of the card. Now that everything's in loosely, we're ready to start tightening things down. You don't want to wrench it super tight. Remember, that's a fragile graphics card under there. But you also want to make sure that everything's making good contact with the thermal interface material on both the aluminum backplate and on the GPU water block itself. This next part is totally personal preference, guys, but you're going to have to get some fittings for your GPU block. Most of them, well, pretty much all of them these days, use G1 quarter threads, which means as long as you get G1 quarter fittings, you should be good to go. In our case, we're using some Coolant 3 eighths inch ID, 5 eighths inch OD compression fittings. And these, you have the option of either installing on the top of the card, so here, or you can take out the plugs on the bottom and install them here. You don't want to put them both fittings on one side because then it'll go right through without cooling anything, but as long as you put one either here or here and the other either here or here, the water will pass through the card. So this gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you connect the tubing to your graphics card. So there you have it, guys. Now you've installed the water block on your graphics card. This yields better temperatures and it can, with GPU Boost 2.0, yield better performance, as well as a different overall look in terms of the aesthetics of the card. Now whether you prefer the stock cooler on something like a GTX Titan or the water block look is totally up to the individual, but I personally don't find that there's much that's sexier than a couple of graphics cards or even more than that water-cooled next to each other in an SLI or Crossfire configuration. Thanks for checking out our ultimate video card water block installation guide. As always, guys, like the video, leave a comment under the video letting us know what you think and don't forget to subscribe.