Got a reference RTX3090 that was working fine out of the box but after I put on an EKWB waterblock and backplate, all I got is static on the screen, its bricked, isn’t it?
Anything I can do to salvage the situation?
I still don’t really know what I did wrong, feeling sad.
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Im pressing F for this
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put the reference cooler back on and see if it works then
also F
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Was your GPU even dry when you turned on the PC?
Yes
+1 on putting the reference cooler back on. Make sure you’ve cleaned all surfaces, don’t put too much or too little paste on the card and the cooler doesn’t touch anything on the card it shouldn’t.
Valuable lesson learned (I hope): if it ain’t broke, don’t “fix” it 
Reach out to ek on this one. Their stuff shouldn’t cause issues but maybe there’s something they missed.
I wonder if it shorted a pin or something somewhere. Was there spacers to put on, I have never done a water block so don’t know the process.
Or could some piece of something got in between the plate/block and shorted a pin.
What’s worth a shot is, after you take the plate/block off, clean off the thermal paste, and look around to see if anything is out of place or missing, like a surface cap or something. Get a soft tooth brush and some isopropyl alcohol and gently clean the card off all over the PCB, the bursh and alcohol won’t hurt it, just let it dry off before testing, and then see if it "Just Works"™
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I’m gonna say you either shorted some surface component like zibob said, or maybe it’s not mounted correctly and there’s some weird/bad PCB flex going on.
The block its self even without coolant should be enough of a heatsink to at least get you into the bios. I’ve done that plenty of times just to boot test the system and make sure I haven’t goofed somewhere.
Not dead till a doctor calls it.
Disassemble it. Depending on your skills. Either look for problems or put the air cooler back on it and retest.
Some shorts / problems dont kill electronics. Only stop them working.
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