If there is anyone out there who wants to get more competitive when benching his Nvidia GTX 1080 card, it may well be a good idea to check out this PCB breakdown video from Buildzoid. In his trademark fashion Buildzoid takes a Palit GTX 1080 GameRock card, stripped of its heatsink and cooling apparatus to detail pretty much every inch of the naked PCB.

In terms of the card’s power delivery, a close inspection reveals an 8-phase VRM that uses Vishay powerstage ICs that deliver 45 Amps each, which means the GPU can enjoy a fairly generous total of up to 360A, rated at 125 degrees Celcius. There is also a look at the back of the card where we find the voltage controller, UP9511P chip from UPI. Overall it’s a pretty capable VRM that should offer sufficient power, even under LN2. Let's just say that Buildzoid seems pretty impressed.

As with most Nvidia cards, the easiest hard mod to implement is removing the power limit of the card. Buildzoid highlights the two shunt resistors near the 6-pin and 8-pin power sockets on the upper right corner. A simple coating of liquid metal will lower the resistance of the shunt, thus lowering the current that the GPU measures and therefore fooling the GPU into thinking it’s pulling less power than it really is.

For any Rookies or Novices who need schooling in the PCB design principles currently used by Nvidia and vendors like Palit, this video is real master class. Check it out here on the Actually Hardware Overclocking YouTube Channel.