Thank you for the kind words, this mod gets a lot of bad publicity and I aim to change that.
1) Yes, this is assuming you are using a CLC to cool the GPU. If you were using a 240mm radiator CLC or larger to cool the GPU, it would not bad as bad, but with a 120/140mm AIO, that is 230TDP that needs to be dissipated by a relatively small surface area. TDP is the measure of heat, a CPU is around 88TDP, while your GPU is 230TDP, it is a lot more heat that needs to get dissipated. The air is going to be hot if you use a smaller sized radiator, while the core temperature might be slightly cooler, the computer's internals will be much hotter, things like motherboard and VRMs. It is much better to have a 2C hotter GPU core, than 10C hotter VRMs and motherboard temp. Now, you do have a nice and large chassis, but I would still advice against it. This kind of segways into question number two.
2) For your CPU, you want a 240mm radiator or larger. I don't know the science behind it, that is just how it is. It is completely backwards, but this is tried and true. These 120/140mm AIO coolers are not cutting it for CPU cooling. Well, they are cutting it, but air tower counterparts that cost the same or less are doing a much better job, which is why if you want to CLC cool your CPU, you want 240mm radiator at the least. You can pick them up for $80+ at most places. Your CPUs AIO can be intake, it is just the GPU that needs to be exhaust. What I envision, is a 240mm AIO for your CPU in the top as intake, and the 120mm AIO as exhaust out the rear. This will give you positive air pressure, and this is what I do in my chassis, which is also a full tower. You could also set it up the top AIO as exhaust, this should still give you positive air pressure, with the side fan as intake. Its good to have a side fan as intake in your situation because it will cool down the GPUs VRMs.
3) I'm confident in saying that the X31 performs slightly better than the H55, but not by a meaningful margin. I am slightly worried you will have issues controlling the speeds as you want them via a fan hub, but I could be worried about nothing. If you need help when the time comes, I'm happy to help. Just know that if you get a kind of ticking or grinding, you will likely need to control the fans and pump via motherboard. The X31 was just slightly too loud, the pump mainly. The fans I have are some aftermarket Blade Masters, that I have connected via Y splitter, and I keep them at a relatively low RPM so they don't bother me. The included fan was not to my liking.
4) Ok, digging deeper on your card the Zotac GTX780 Ti OC. I could not find a picture of the PCB, could you take a picture of it and show me please? I am going to assume that the AMP! edition is the same PCB and layout as the OC edition. If that is the case, no copper shim is needed.
I personally own an EVGA GTX 780 SC w/ ACX Cooling. I did the G10 mod to it, and I am incredibly happy with the results.
I'm going to answer your questions out of order.
Does the GPU need additional heatsinks for the VRAM and VRMs? In short, no. The whole "insufficient VRAM/VRM cooling" began with a review of the G10 by Puget Systems. This review is probably the most critical review of the G10 out there. While it makes an interesting point, I have to discredit it to some extend. For starters, in their gaming benchmark/temperature test, the temperatures are perfectly fine, they are even lower with the G10 than with the stock heatsink. The only time when we see the VRM temperatures higher with the G10 than the stock heatsink are when they run Kombustor.
Kombustor/Furmark is a program that should NEVER be run. It puts unnecessary load on the GPU that is completely unrealistic. It is a card killer. It is uncommon, but happens enough that it needs to be mentioned. Kombustor can and will brick your card unexpectedly without warning. It happened to me earlier this year. I like to give my components 2 weeks of break in time before overclocking to make sure everything is working properly. This is what I did with my brand new, MSi GTX 770 Lightning. I had used the card for 2 weeks, no problems, everything going fine. As you know with a Lightning, this is a card built specifically for overclocking. Without knowing what I know now, I ran Kombustor at stock settings to get a baseline for my overclocks. It took all of 3 minutes running Kombustor on a brand new, not-overclocked card for my card to die. I am not the only one this has happened to, so I always tell my story whenever I get a chance because Kombustor is a dangerous program, and should not be used.
Back to the Puget review. They ran Kombustor during their review/test, which as a reviewer, they should try and test the card in all scenarios in order to give the reader an idea of what to expect. My problem with the review is that it is an unrealistic scenario, one which I would not recommend anyone to do at home, and you are unlikely to encounter that type of load during regular use. In their Unigine test, the temperatures are perfectly fine, even lower with the G10. Another thing I forgot to add, VRAM temperatures are not really an issue, it is the VRMs that you need to be concerned with.
To give you an idea of what VRM temperatures are like for those of us at home, we asked members of the OCN G10 Owner's Club, who have cards that can monitor the VRM temperatures to run some tests. Simple before and after tests. There are two reviews that I will point to. The Asus DCUII GTX 780Ti, Post #1147 and a reference R9 290 Post #1486 & Post #1500
You will see that the guy with the Asus GTX 780Ti was getting DCUII temperatures of 86C on the Core and 104C on the VRMs, his card was overclocked. You can look at the link to see specifics of his OC, nothing major, very average. Once he did the G10 modification without extra heat sinks, he was able to further overclock his card, and temperatures dropped to 49C on the Core, and 81C on the VRMs. This tells us two things. #1, the VRMs can withstand a lot of heat, #2 the G10's Fan does an excellent job of cooling the VRMs on its own. Please keep in mind that this model of 780 comes with a mid-plate to help passively cool VRMs and VRAM.
There was another test done with an R9 290. They went as far as to do a before and after test with heat sinks on their G10. They went from 90C on the core with the reference cooler all the way down to 55C with G10 + H55. VRMs went from 110C down to 75C. Most importantly, when they added heat sinks the VRM temperatures dropped from 75C to 60C. So adding heat sinks does help out if you are concerned about VRM temperatures. This was with a reference R9 290, so it was a naked card without mid-plate to passively help cool VRAM and VRMs. These are just two examples, if you read through that thread, there are many more.
In summation,VRM temperatures are not a concern as long as you don't run a dangerous program like Kombustor/Furmark. For awhile now people have been thinking that its a hardware problem, when in reality, its a software problem. You will be perfectly fine buying just a Kraken G10 + AIO of your choice without extra heat sinks. Any extras you decide to buy are optional.
Like with your EVGA 780 SC, and mine, these cards come with build in mid-plates that passively cool the VRAM and VRMs. Because of this, adding additional heat sinks on the VRAM and VRMs are not necessary, but you will find a lot of people adding them anyways. Myself included. It would be more beneficial to add it to a non-reference card, that doesn't come with a mid-plate, but for our cards, it is optional. I personally added a few tiny aluminum heat sinks to mine to cover just the VRMs. It is a $6 part for extra peace of mind, and you get a lot of extras to use maybe elsewhere in your build. Cosmos Aluminum VGA Heat Sinks. In order to apply these heat sinks, you will need aftermarket thermal tape. The included thermal tape is not strong enough to keep the heat sinks from falling off. You have to first peel off the included tape on the heat sink, and then apply your own double sided thermal tape to make it stick.
Adding heat additional heat sinks is entirely up to you, it is not required, but it does help. I recently bought an NZXT Sentry 3 which has a temperature probe, and I have the probe directly on my VRMs. Unfortunately, I never ran a before test because I bought the fan controller after I already did the G10 modification, so I am unable to tell you what kind of temperatures I was getting on the VRMs with the stock heat sink or without extra heat sinks. Also, I don't want to remove the aluminum heat sinks to do a before/after temperatures to see how much the heat sinks lower temperatures. What I can tell you is that I have never seen the temperature probe report over 54C, but I have incredible airflow in my case. I also use a VGA to Fan adapter so that I can plug the 92mm fan directly into my video card and not take up a motherboard fan header. I then control the 92mm fan through MSI AfterBurner. I just set it to a constant 75%. You don't want it on a fan curve because the temperature is measured from the core. This fan is for the VRMs, so set it to a constant RPM. Also, my card is not overclocked because it does a healthy +100Mhz on the Core and +250Mhz on the Memory at stock voltage. If I were to increase the voltage, temperatures would probably increase all around.
One thing about the Kraken G10 and our specific card is that the mid plate interferes with the mounting of the G10. There are two ways to get around this. The first option, which I don't recommend because it will void your warranty is to cut off the 4 "prongs" that extend towards the GPU die. The link I posted is to someone who did just that, it worked for him, but he voided his warranty in the process.
The 2nd way, which is what I advocate, is for you to buy a Copper Shim which will help transfer the heat from the GPU Die to the AIO. You will need to buy a 20mm x 20mm x .8mm Copper Shim. This is not an optional piece. You will need to apply thermal paste to both sides of the shim. This will not negatively impact performance, at least it has not for me. If you don't already own some thermal paste, I highly, highly recommend Gelid GC Extreme. It works wonders on both my CPU and GPU. For my CPU, it dropped temperatures by 2-3C depending on voltage, and on my GPU(before G10 mod) it dropped my temperatures by 4C.
To answer questions #1 and #3.
I recommend that you buy a Corsair H55 and mount it as rear exhaust, it should cost $50-$60. It is far and away the most popular AIO to use with the G10. It is the least expensive AIO, and offers the best price:performance. After 120mm, you start experiencing diminishing returns. These guys with full 240/280mm AIOs are only getting 4-6C better temperatures, and often have a hard time finding places to properly mount their radiators. Get the H55 and buy a 2nd fan to run in push/pull. It is reliable, comes with a long warranty, and Corsair has a good history of replacing components if for whatever reason there was a leak. A leak is highly unlikely, but good to know that Corsair has your back if anything were to go wrong. Remember to always test your AIOs out of the system before putting it inside or around components.
When I was buying my AIO, it was between an X31 and an H55. I went for the X31 because I had heard such good things about NZXT AIOs, and because I have a full tower case, so if I wanted to mount it elsewhere, I would have longer tubes. 16in on the NZXT compared to 12in on the Corsair. I ended up mounting it as rear exhaust, so the additional tube length is not necessary, and actually looks really silly. The X31 is falsely advertised. It claims to have a variable speed pump, which is not really true because you control the pump through fan header just like every other AIO. The CAM software that comes with it is a joke, I uninstalled it after the first day. Worst of all, the pump makes a lot of noise.
You want to mount your radiator as exhaust because the air the comes out of the rad is HOT. This is a 230TDP GPU that is using a 120mm heat exchanger. It does the job very well, but the heat that is blown out of the rad is very hot. You want this air going out of your system, not into your system. Especially with an H440 because this case is known for poor airflow. Users in the OCN G10 Owner's Club have reported temperature drops by as much as 10C just by switching the radiator from intake to exhaust. 10C is an extreme, usually you will expect 3-5C. Bottom line, you want it as exhaust.
Here is a list of components you should get:
Corsair H55 - $50
NZXT G10 - $25
Copper Shim 20mm x 20mm x .8mm - $2.50
Optional:
Cosmos Aluminum Heat Sinks - $6
Sekisui Double Sided Adhesive Thermal Tape - $2.75
VGA to PWM Fan Adapter - $5
Gelid GC Extreme Thermal Paste - $11
Cooler Master Blade Master 120mm PWM Fan - $11
Here is what my system looks like:
Here are my temperatures during a 5 hour long BF4 Session:
Ambient temperature is 23.8C/75F, but my computer case is right underneath an A/C vent, so that cold air is siphoned directly into my system. I run my X31 with 2 fans in push/pull @ 1500rpm(60%), Pump at 1500rpm(90%). I highly recommend the Cooler Master Blade Master 120's. They are fantastic static pressure fans that don't get enough love. They are inexpensive, and perform incredibly well.
Figure I post my CPU specs as well:
i5-4670k, 4.5Ghz @ 1.160v.
Cooler Master Seidon 240M, Pump @ 1350rpm(90%), Fans @ 1250rpm(50%)
If you have back plates for your 780s, you can get them to fit. You will have to thin down or completely remove the foam pad that comes with the G10's back mounting piece.
My personal suggestion is to go second hand. You'll get better bang for buck and if you can negotiate well then you'll get a bloody good deal. I'm down to less than $200AUD for my rig by buying and selling parts and it's got a quad core CPU and a 660ti.
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