Surely, many of you have heard of backplates , especially when it comes to coolers for CPUs and graphics cards . Is it a merely aesthetic element? Does it serve to lower the temperature ? Does it really help? Is a graphics card that has it better than another that doesn’t? In this article we are going to define what this component is, but more importantly we are going to tell you what its function is and what characteristics it has.
Who else and who least knows what a backplate is: that generally metallic piece that covers the back of graphics cards. In the field of processors, the piece that is installed behind the socket is also called backplate and that serves to distribute the weight of the heatsink so that it does not damage the motherboard, but in this case its function is very defined and not let’s get into it.
What is the true function of a backplate?
The answer to this question is that it depends. Initially in many models the backplate had a double function: on the one hand, an aesthetic function (and this is still present today as is obvious), but also to give the whole graphics card greater rigidity , something especially useful in very long graphics to avoid bending. In the latest models of graphics cards, which have memory chips installed in the back, the backplate has acquired a third function, which is none other than to help cool these components on the back of the PCB, albeit passively.
For this reason, when unscrewing the backplate of a modern graphics card we can see that it has thermal putty (not paste), a solid and rubbery compound that serves to promote heat transfer precisely from the chips to the backplate, which being Metallic and with a large surface, it significantly improves the temperature.
In the latest graphics card models this has gone further, since even with short PCBs the manufacturer has made the heatsink longer so that it protrudes from behind so that a fan does not “collide” with the PCB and directly cool that portion of the PCB, thus lowering its temperature and promoting better heat dissipation from the chips. We have seen this without going any further in the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Founders Edition.
Thus, although initially the function of the backplate was simply aesthetic and to give the graphics greater rigidity, in recent generations of graphics cards the function of acting as a passive heatsink (and active in some such as the RTX 3090, remember), so its importance has been accentuated.
In some cases, in fact, the backplate only serves to screw in the graphics card heatsink, or at least make it sit better if it is too big.
Is a graph with a backplate better than without it?
Generally, any graphics card from the mid-range already has a backplate installed precisely for all these functions that we have described above. The graphics that do not have it is not that they are worse for not having it, it is that they do not need it and therefore can live without it. Would the same graph be better if it had a backplate? Probably yes, since it would have a greater resistance to torsion due to the weight and also if you have chips on the PCB at the back, these would be at a better temperature.
However, there are still many graphics cards that do not need a backplate and yet carry it, merely to give the graphics another aesthetic, as we saw for example in the MSI GTX 1070 GamingZ, as you can see in the gallery above.