The other two cards are MSI Gaming 1070s. Notice that they're sitting at about 70% fan utilization? They'd be cooler if the Zotac cards cooled better and had more airflow around them to push heat away.
THE HEAT IS DRAWN AWAY BY THE BACKPLATE--
The air is drawn to the backplate, cools, and condenses, and flows out the edges and vents of the backplate. This is fluid dynamics. It is not entirely passive, as the three fans are ducted at the edges so active airflow enters the airspace and gives impetus to the cooling and condensing of the air at the backplate. As the air cools, it occupies less volume (condenses), and this vacuum draws warmer air to the heat conducting metal backplate, where the heat is rapidly transferred to the back side of the backplate and dissapated byy air on the other side.
--scryptr
There is absolutely no condensation happening. If there were, you'd see water droplets... and of course your GPU would have a rough time.
There is no flow. Just because there are holes does not mean that the air freely flows out of it. Air needs room to move and if there isn't enough room, the air stagnates and doesn't move at all. As I mentioned the majority of the airlflow comes out of the front vents by the monitor ports.
The fans from the front have absolutely no impact on the backplate. They do not push air past it. However, the backplate covers parts of the the edges which helps to severely hamper the airflow from the front. That mixed with the shroud wraping the edges tighter then it should (striped white pieces on the side), leads to almost no airflow. Put a piece of cardboard infront of a fan and see how much air moves out of it, poke some small holes in it, see how much air moves out of them. There is some, but not nearly as much as if you weren't covering parts of the fan.
This is not a blower cooler, the majority of the airflow is not designed to come out the backplate. The heatsink inside is not angled properly to flow out the back either (it's vertically oriented instead of horizontally oriented).
You're comparing a heatsink to a air conditioner. They're two different things and definitely operate differently.
THE AIR CONDENSES AS IT COOLS--
Nothing was said about water. The condensation of air causes flow towards the backplate. There is plenty of air movement, passive due to thermal currents, and active due to fans
Look, facts lie. They just lie around, directly in front of you, especially if you are looking at your graphics cards. They don't jump up and down, and you don't seem to see them well. --scryptr
"Condensation is the change of the physical state of matter from gas phase into liquid phase, and is the reverse of evaporation. The word most often refers to the water cycle."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CondensationWhen it comes to cooling, this happens with air conditioning and swamp coolers, neither of which a heatsink is...
Only half of what you're saying is correct dude. Heatsinks work extremely poorly without airflow, hence the current problem with the Amps.
CONDENSATION IS A NOUN--
"To condense" is a verb. When air loses heat, it occupies less volume, it condenses. Heat is transferred (lost) to the backplate, the back plate transfers (sinks) the heat to the exterior side. There is both active and passive air flow, as I explained, in the gap space between the hot components and the backplate. The backplate is engineered to both protect the components and to act as a heat dissapating element. It sinks heat. No water vapor neads to condense for it to work in this manner.
The video card industry would not sell backplates for $15-25 dollars a pop if they retained heat. --scryptr
And you can't have air condense in this case without condensate forming, also known as water droplets due to humidity in the air (which is why this doesn't happen). It does happen in the case of air conditioning, peltiers, or swamp coolers, but not with a heatsink as the heatsink is never cooler then ambient temperature. What you're cooling would have to be cooler then ambient... in which case it's no longer a heatsink.
It doesn't work that way dude. As explained in the article I linked, there isn't not enough airflow for it to function as a heatsink. The air is trapped and it functions as a insulator because there is no movement.
Or as I explained earlier, they could just stack backplate on backplate on backplate and it would cool the card better then just one, right? Why doesn't it work that way? Because it's a insulator. The only thing a backplate helps with is dissipating heat from something it make direct contact with (the memory chips, if that).
It really just sounds like you're quoting a article you read and they don't have any idea what they're talking about. If air is such a good conductor of thermal energy, you wouldn't need thermal paste or TIMs.
A tiny piece of flimsy aluminum does not cost them $15-25, more like $.10. It's about selling their cards for $15-25 more then they would without it. You think LEDs cost $15 a pop too? They add them because they sell and they think people will buy them, functionality has little to nothing to do with it. Hence the situation we're in right now where the AMP cards perform like crap because they sacrificed utility for bling.
But this is circular. Start sourcing your information.
BOYLE'S LAW--
Water will not condense out of the vapor phase unless the temperature drops below the dew point. It remains as a component of the ai as water vapor, dependiing on the humidity of the day. --scryptr
Literally what I just said... I just googled boyle's law and it seems as though it has nothing to do with condensing, especially in this case as it talks about a pressurized system (there is no circulation with the outside air).
Heatsinks transfer heat with conduction, not condensing as well as a FYI. Although at this point it seems as though you meant conduction the entire time, not condensing. Conduction still does not work without air movement and depending on the amount of flow it wont work at all and turns into a insulator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_sinkPeltiers, air conditioning, and swamp coolers all operate differently and do have condensing as part of their cylces (and generate condensate).
The backplate also allows the air from the fans to flow over the gpu chips to aid in cooling.
The air can't flow over the backplate as there is no where for it to flow 'to' from the fans on the card.
You're specifically talking about the memory chips though and as I've mentioned they don't really need to be cooled as they never get that hot. There isn't a relationship between memory cooling and OCability as well. It's entirely possible for the backplates on cards to transfer more heat to memory chips then they're taking away as well. If the backplate is functioning as a insulator and traping heat, it can effectively trasnfer the heat from the entire card that would normally radiate off the back to the chips.
We aren't talking about heat pipes or vapor chambers. Backplates are solid pieces of metal (aluminum). Heat pipes are also closed systems, meaning the inside never makes contact with the outside air.
The 1080 does use a vapor chamber in the FE model to move heat. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference compared to the 1070 heatpipe FE.
WHEN GAS CONTRACTS IN VOLUME IT IS SAID TO CONDENSE--
As it cools, it becomes more dense, and closely spaced molecules occupy less volume. Boyle's law applies to open and closed systems. No liquid needs to drop from the vapor phase. There is active circulation in the gap between the components and the backplate, ducted from the three fans by the wrap-around metal backplate. If it is aluminum, it is an even better conductor of heat. Convective currents transfer heat via the air to the backplate. When the air touches the backplate, heat is transferred, and rapidly conducted away from the air. The cooled air will occupy less volume, drawing warmer air to the backplate as the warmer air pushes the cooled air out the multiple vents in the backplate. The aluminum cooling vanes of the main heatsink direct fan pressure into the rear gap space of which we argue. So, both active air flow from the fans, and passive air flow from the convective air currents that develop in the gap space (fluid dynamics) occur simultaneously. The backplate acts as a heatsink for the heat transferred by convection within the gap space. On the exterior of the backplate, heat is simultaneously radiated and convected away. The rapid, conductive tranfer of heat through the backplate is faster than convective heat transfer through the air, and more efficient.
If you reduce the heat of a gas, it will occupy less volume. Unless you are in a radically extreme system, e.g. the vacuum of space, this will be generally true. Boyle's law can be applied to closed systems with simple mathematics. Room air will behave in a similar fashion, but is acted on by exterior random factors that make the system not perfect. --scryptr
There isn't active circulation, as was already mentioned. There is no room for airflow and there is nothing actively pushing air through it.
You don't even own the card, the backplate wraps the sides tight... Meaning there is no 'ducting'. There is no room for exhaust and no room for air to be 'pushed' through anywhere, nor are there fans doing it. Not only that, if there were a couple mm of space, it still wouldn't be enough to circulate air without a lot of pressure. You're once again completely wrong.
When air is trapped between two layers, even if there is a little bit of air movement, it starts functioning as a insulator. If what you were saying worked, once again, you could just stack backplate on top of backplate on top of backplate and it would work infinitely better. Which you never address... The only reason heatsinks work is because they make direct contact with whatever they're conducting heat away from and increase the surface area. The surface area the air contacts with on the back of the card is exactly the same as the surface area on the other side (which isn't even what you're trying to remove heat away from, the card not the air around the card) and in this case, there is no direct contact with the card, with the exception of the memory chips. And due to this, the memory chips can actually end up warmer then they would normally (as they don't generate a lot of heat).
Aluminum or copper does not inherently increase heat transfer. It WONT function like a powered unit or a sealed system (such as a heatpipe or air conditioner). Now that would violate some laws of thermodynamics if we had a magic metal that just removed heat from a area, which is what you're implying.
Air is used as a insulator in a lot of applications. Have you ever seen a heatblanket for a pool with tons of little bubbles? Double pane windows as was already mentioned.
The wikipedia article literally talks about conduction and not 'condensing', because heatsinks don't function that way. And I'll definitely believe a wiki article over what some random is saying online (I noticed you stopped saying 'sinking' as if that were the scientific word for removing heat from a area with a heatsink). Start posting your sources dude as I've already mentioned. Not 'your take' or 'how I think this works', because we've already found numerous holes in what you're talking about. Literally, anyone else that can corroborate what you're saying.
Completely putting aside what I've been saying, in practical terms you can google around and most people say exactly what I'm saying or 'there is no benefit' to using them.
There are literally zero hits on google talking about backplates and 'condensing gas' or heatsinks and boyle's law. Not even scholarly articles. Once again I think you're confusing air conditioning, heatpipes/vapor chambers, peltiers, or swamp coolers with what we're talking about. You can't just take laws of thermodynamics and apply them to whatever you think they work on.
Not only have I shot down your 'logic' I've also proved this with photos, earlier in the thread which you neatly discarded after deciding they were wrong.