Nvidia THE mod

[vlatkozelka]

I was just doing my periodic PC cleanup and thought I'd share this with you.

Anyone here that has a high end graphics card knows that these things are mostly loud as hell to the point you would think they are blow dryers with the side effect of rendering cool graphics :p

I had this problem with my GTX970 from MSI wich has a reference design blower style cooler. Those are hotter than aftermarket coolers like Gigabytes WindForce and MSI Twin Frozr for example.

No matter what Fan speed I set, It always got up to 80 degrees. And at 80 it would throttle so games start stuttering as the clock gets lower. Not to mention it litterally sounds like a blow dryer at anything above 70% fan speed.

 

I eventually thought about watercooling. But the problem is for graphics cards. The parts are VERY expensive. The water block* alone costs 100~150$ . Add the pipes, pump, reservoir, liquid, silver (to keep bacteria from growing) ,etc... you're looking at 300+$ system that is VERY hard to maintain .

*The fans on CPU/GPU have this metal piece below them that dissipates the heat . A water block is similar , it is the metal part that contacts the CPU from one side, and water from the other. Dissipating heat into water instead of air/metal

 

But there is a cheap solution or mod that allows you to mount an AIO water cooler to a GPU. That is an all in one liquid cooler that usually goes for CPU.

The beauty of AIOs is that they come in a small package that is pressure and leak tested for you . But the problem is that to mount the water block ,you need it to be custom made for your graphics card for the screws to fit the holes. So , we use plastic zip ties :p These are awesome because they are very flexible so they can fit anywhere, but yet they can hold a very good grip :)

 

The copper part I added on the right is a radiator I took from an really old laptop I had dead in the drawer. Since I had to strip the card apart , the VRM (voltage regulation modules) are left with no way to cool them . Thus the need for that copper part (notice the thermal pad under it in white )

 

The result: Now I got a VERY SILENT graphics card. I can no longer hear it at all. And the temperatures dropped from 80 degrees C, to below 50s without even having to stress the radiator fan. Which gives me a really great room for overclocking :)

And it all cost me 47$ !

If any of you is interested in this , you can find the tutorial here http://www.overclock.net/t/1203528/official-nvidia-gpu-mod-club-aka-the-mod