I have my cards overclocked to 900mhz.  The EVGA backplate accessory is really hot, too hot to touch.  Is it actually pulling heat away from the card, or is it trapping heat against the back of the pcb and components?  
 
I have a 200mm fan on the side panel blowing onto the cards and when I turn the fan off, the temperature increases right away, so the backplate must be helping a bit, but the back of the card never got that hot before without the backplate.

We have not seen the backplate impact temperatures in any significant way. It is normal to be hot to the touch, a fan to dissipate the absorbed heat helps.

This is normal
Double check your videocard temps with Precision or Afterburner, if they are fine then there isnt a problem

I found that my temps dropped a bit when i had a 120mm fan in a GPU shroud blowing across the backplate.

Temperature on both cards is about 83C after half an hour of Heaven Benchmark.  If I turn the side panel fan off it goes up to about 86C.  I was more worried about other parts like the vrm heating up rather than the gpu, but if they will be fine then I won't worry about it.

 
this set up on top of a high flow braket lowered my peak temps by about 11c. the hottest I've seen the 480 get even with the voltage at 1.138Vcore was 71C

Yeah I made the mistake of touching the one on my GTX 570 wondering "is this hot?" and yeah it burned my finger. Definitely let it cool down before you touch it! lol

blacksapphire08


Yeah I made the mistake of touching the one on my GTX 570 wondering "is this hot?" and yeah it burned my finger. Definitely let it cool down before you touch it! lol

That's what you get *THESE* things for, yo!  Any hardware store will have them!
 
(Bonus: when cooking with oil, say, to fry something...it can also be used to get the temperature of the oil, too => handy!)

What is the purpose of the backplate anyway??

=TRA=T-Bone


What is the purpose of the backplate anyway??

Looks, and sometimes it can make the card more sturdy. For some it can help lower temps by a few degrees, but that is not really the main reason.

main reason is for aesthetics. some people dont like the psb look. it can help a card from flexing from heating up and cooling down aswell. imo reference and non reference air coolers are just barely getting by with the heat these gpus put out these days. watercooling em will eliminate a huge amount of heat from your board if u go full cover. my pcb is just slightly warm to the touch where my vrms are at and im giving my cards 1.1v

i only purchased plated for looks
 

Interesting.. My 580 is only clocked to SC speed/voltage and the backplate is luke warm to the touch. This is when the gpu reports 70c during a multi hour gaming session.
 
I wonder why mine is much cooler than others.

=TRA=T-Bone


What is the purpose of the backplate anyway??

 
look like a boss.

backplate looks sweet. If I have to tear down my rig again, I think I might go with the upside down mobo (reverse) install, so you get the good looking side of things "face-up".
 
I often wonder why the graphics on all hardware is facing down...anyone???? the pcb look of things sure ain't the prettiest...

Hot air rises, so theoretically if the graphics card was facing up fan side, it should provide a cooler environment for your case, and lower temperatures. Instead of blowing downwards and making everything hotter.