Decrease your GPU temps with 10 C - is cheap and easy to do

[rusty caterpillar]

Anyone going to do this? I don't care much about temps as I do noise. I'd rather not have the fan noise of a 92mm fan inside my system. My video card stays cool right now as it is.

Anyone going to try this?

Is not noisy at all at 1000 RPM, noise in my case was coming from GPU fans - NF-A( @1950RPM and the exhaust 120mm fan running at 1650 RPM.
But even on 600 RPM the 92mm will do some good pulling of the heat.

Well you could always do this (pick and choose your battles)

Delta 92mm High Performance Dual Fan GFB0912EHG | 12V, 2.10Amps

https://www.delta-fan.com/Download/Spec/GFB0912ES-E.pdf

youtube.com

Delta Server Fan Test TFC1212DE

youtube.com

Antec had a fan where you could mount and position it anywhere in the case

You don't need performance noisy fans, just fans to pull up trapped heat that is not managed by exhaust fan which is the closest or the airflow in your case.

 

[Knight47]

Yes I have a question. How do I do this with a dual tower cpu fan?

 

[ARF]

Is this like a "how to get fired" recipe?

If the corporate culture is that toxic, then it would be a bless for the freed employee

Yes I have a question. How do I do this with a dual tower cpu fan?

I was going to ask the same.

 

[rusty caterpillar]

Good points above. But are backplates painted, I thought they're anodized?

Also agree that ROHS solder is a death sentence for electronics when compared to traditional leaded solder.

You still lose thermal conductivity and manufacturers should not make a trend out of it. Unless the CPU and GPU rad are used in a server room with high humidity where those rads need environmental protection against oxidation and corrosion, plating, anodizing or painting should not be the norm for general use.

Humor me and ask Kingpin why he didn't plated or anodized the radiator fins or the cold plate on his designs, why bare copper? Same with the water blocks. Doesn't liquids can bring corrosion more than humid air? Yes, but you create a coolant that prevents that.
Some Copper alloy will oxidize faster than others, they just have to use the right one and not cut costs all the time.
Now days around 80% of all cold plates are plated with NiZn but, how many users will lap or at least scratch the cold plates to see how much Copper is there if any or is just Aluminum.

On the other hand end users bite out hard in the color schemes created by hardware manufacturers, in the first place, and now in some cases is the end user asking for colored radiators.
See: Be Quiet Pure Rock 2 which was bare metal at the start, user start to ask for black and white rads the Pure Rock 2 FX which got heat pipe modifications for more RAM clearance, comes only painted(electrophoresis coating) while only old Pure Rock 2 comes bare metal.

Just a glance why cold plate shouldn't be plated.

NiZn alloy 21 to 33 W/m. K
Ni 60.7 -90 W/m-K
Copper alloys 400 w/m-K
Aluminum ~230 w/m-k

Yes I have a question. How do I do this with a dual tower cpu fan?

When you choose CPU cooler you have to see the clearance from GPU backplate.
If are too hot CPU will throttle down, GPU will throttle down, VRAM will fry and you have to rely now on integrated GPU till you replace/repair your main GPU - is worth it?

When I built last system I went for Pure Rock 2 instead of Pure Rock FX, just in case I need the clearance for a fan. Also PR2 is bare metal while FX is coated. PR2 will be enough as can go up to 150W and CPU will go max to 90W.
Are you willing to change you CPU cooler for 10C less on your GPU? maybe more or maybe less than 10C, I would but that's me.
On the other hand are slimmer fans 10 mm or 15 mm(which might fit in your setup), less effective but, better than nothing.

Apply for a job at Sapphire, XFX or MSI.
Ask them why they keep sabotaging the coolers on the graphics cards, and why they don't use similar approaches to fix the high GPU temperatures...

Back in time I had this GPU with a bad designed cooler, I found my self another cooler.... and than I emailed Power Color not being confident of Zerotherm cooler will fit on their X1950XT card knowing ZeroTherm was new on the market.

In plenty cases users showed to be more interested and had better ideas in finding solutions, design or improve existing designs than the manufacturer who is blinded by profit margins or can't care less.

Do what you will with this. I have no interest to show you wrong data on cooling solutions but, a manufacturer will have interest to tell you their cooling is enough, isn't it?

 

[ARF]

Back in time I had this GPU with a bad designed cooler, I found my self another cooler.... and than I emailed Power Color not being confident of Zerotherm cooler will fit on their X1950XT card knowing ZeroTherm was new on the market.
In plenty cases users showed to be more interested and had better ideas in finding solutions, design or improve existing designs than the manufacturer who is blinded by profit margins or can't care less.
Do what you will with this. I have no interest to show you wrong data on cooling solutions but, a manufacturer will have interest to tell you their cooling is enough, isn't it?

Nowadays, all GPU coolers, except some rare turbines, are garbage - they never throw the hot air out of the case, but instead the fins orientation is such that they intentionally block the hot air inside the case - over the CPU, the M.2s, etc...

Wrong, garbage:

Right, better:

 

[rusty caterpillar]

Nowadays, all GPU coolers, except some rare turbines, are garbage - they never throw the hot air out of the case, but instead the fins orientation is such that they intentionally block the hot air inside the case - over the CPU, the M.2s, etc...

Wrong, garbage:

View attachment 357465

Right, better:

View attachment 357466

On that X1950XT was very bad, the only exhaust was towards the MOBO, now days exhaust of hot air are on both sides of the GPU which is better but, not ideal. My side panel glass warms up because of fin orientation and glass doesn't lose heat fast as a metal side panel. They could have cut a small portion of the glass side panel and mount a mesh for airflow but, than that mesh will block the view of the stupid GPU leds and to the self embellishment logos

 

[Knight47]

When you choose CPU cooler you have to see the clearance from GPU backplate.
If are too hot CPU will throttle down, GPU will throttle down, VRAM will fry and you have to rely now on integrated GPU till you replace/repair your main GPU - is worth it?

So basically every 140mm cpu fan will kill your gpu aside from the ones that have offset like D15S or D15G2?

 

[eidairaman1]

You still lose thermal conductivity and manufacturers should not make a trend out of it. Unless the CPU and GPU rad are used in a server room with high humidity where those rads need environmental protection against oxidation and corrosion, plating, anodizing or painting should not be the norm for general use.

Humor me and ask Kingpin why he didn't plated or anodized the radiator fins or the cold plate on his designs, why bare copper? Same with the water blocks. Doesn't liquids can bring corrosion more than humid air? Yes, but you create a coolant that prevents that.
Some Copper alloy will oxidize faster than others, they just have to use the right one and not cut costs all the time.
Now days around 80% of all cold plates are plated with NiZn but, how many users will lap or at least scratch the cold plates to see how much Copper is there if any or is just Aluminum.

On the other hand end users bite out hard in the color schemes created by hardware manufacturers, in the first place, and now in some cases is the end user asking for colored radiators.
See: Be Quiet Pure Rock 2 which was bare metal at the start, user start to ask for black and white rads the Pure Rock 2 FX which got heat pipe modifications for more RAM clearance, comes only painted(electrophoresis coating) while only old Pure Rock 2 comes bare metal.

Just a glance why cold plate shouldn't be plated.

NiZn alloy 21 to 33 W/m. K
Ni 60.7 -90 W/m-K
Copper alloys 400 w/m-K
Aluminum ~230 w/m-k


When you choose CPU cooler you have to see the clearance from GPU backplate.
If are too hot CPU will throttle down, GPU will throttle down, VRAM will fry and you have to rely now on integrated GPU till you replace/repair your main GPU - is worth it?

When I built last system I went for Pure Rock 2 instead of Pure Rock FX, just in case I need the clearance for a fan. Also PR2 is bare metal while FX is coated. PR2 will be enough as can go up to 150W and CPU will go max to 90W.
Are you willing to change you CPU cooler for 10C less on your GPU? maybe more or maybe less than 10C, I would but that's me.
On the other hand are slimmer fans 10 mm or 15 mm(which might fit in your setup), less effective but, better than nothing.


Back in time I had this GPU with a bad designed cooler, I found my self another cooler.... and than I emailed Power Color not being confident of Zerotherm cooler will fit on their X1950XT card knowing ZeroTherm was new on the market.

View attachment 357463


View attachment 357464


In plenty cases users showed to be more interested and had better ideas in finding solutions, design or improve existing designs than the manufacturer who is blinded by profit margins or can't care less.

Do what you will with this. I have no interest to show you wrong data on cooling solutions but, a manufacturer will have interest to tell you their cooling is enough, isn't it?

The top cooler is an Arctic Cooling Accelero, the lower is a Zalman Design, which I believe was also on some MSI cards...

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Well you could always do this (pick and choose your battles)

Delta 92mm High Performance Dual Fan GFB0912EHG | 12V, 2.10Amps

https://www.delta-fan.com/Download/Spec/GFB0912ES-E.pdf

youtube.com

Delta Server Fan Test TFC1212DE

youtube.com

Antec had a fan where you could mount and position it anywhere in the case

I remember that fan mount. Back in the day, I just took a PCI expansion filler from the case and reshaped it, mounted a fan to it, and then mounted that back into the case. Really helped with custom air movement, especially when I had one of those Zalmann flower coolers.

 

[Noname1234]

I have that cooler on my Radeon 9800 card

here it is...

 

[eidairaman1]

here it is...


View attachment 357524

Yeah so much creativity back then, it's non existent now, heck Arctic makes no vga coolers now...

 

[Zazigalka]

I once cut the side of my aerocool case to put a 120mm prolimatech fan there, directly blowing at the card. Cooled a 300w 980Ti MSI Gaming OC'd to 1500mhz wonderfully, the factory cooling could handle stock but OC shot past 80 in a matter of minutes without the additional fan.

 

[eidairaman1]

I once cut the side of my aerocool case to put a 120mm prolimatech fan there, directly blowing at the card. Cooled a 300w 980Ti MSI Gaming OC'd to 1500mhz wonderfully, the factory cooling could handle stock but OC shot past 80 in a matter of minutes without the additional fan.

Im fortunate to not require side panel fans, my case is cavernous and has 2 230mm fans and 2 140s.

 

[ARF]

On that X1950XT was very bad, the only exhaust was towards the MOBO, now days exhaust of hot air are on both sides of the GPU which is better but, not ideal. My side panel glass warms up because of fin orientation and glass doesn't lose heat fast as a metal side panel. They could have cut a small portion of the glass side panel and mount a mesh for airflow but, than that mesh will block the view of the stupid GPU leds and to the self embellishment logos

The GPU coolers are designed for vertical orientation, with bottom intake fans in parallel with the graphics card's fins, and top exhaust fans to throw the hot air out of the case, as shown on the following image:

 

[rusty caterpillar]

So basically every 140mm cpu fan will kill your gpu aside from the ones that have offset like D15S or D15G2?

I wouldn't know how much is influencing VRAM temperatures of a GPU by a big 14cm Air Cooler if I don't test it. How could I?
Basically the closer to your GPU backplate the worst. Some of the CPU cooler throw more hot air than others towards the BP even if let's say are all 14cm fans. Sometimes will suck air from BP but, too little and too slow. The obstruction caused by massive CPU rads for BP heat rising to upper chamber or be sucked by an exhaust fan can be nasty factor. It needs to measured in each case though.

Personally I don't see many people to taking off their massive 14cm fan coolers after the test, mount a stock one or an AIO and than test again...

The GPU coolers are designed for vertical orientation, with bottom intake fans in parallel with the graphics card's fins, and top exhaust fans to throw the hot air out of the case, as shown on the following image:

View attachment 357531

Aham, vertically in servers and some old Desk Tops but than... they change it to what we have today while cooling designs was not modified accordingly, was it?
Now we have to buy PCIE risers and stands because they don't want to redesign or invest in cooling designs for horizontal standing GPUs?
Or we have to buy the PCIE risers and stands because the cutting corners PCBs cracks while free lead soldering fissure??

Yes I have a question. How do I do this with a dual tower cpu fan?

Which one you have? do you have at least clearance for 15mm fan?

This?

View attachment 357421

Me and many of my friends used the VF700 series' coolers on our cards in the mid-2000s

Yeah problem with that design - not all PC cases panels was closing after fitting that inside

 

[ARF]

Aham, vertically in servers and some old Desk Tops but than... they change it to what we have today while cooling designs was not modified accordingly, was it?
Now we have to buy PCIE risers and stands because they don't want to redesign or invest in cooling designs for horizontal standing GPUs?
Or we have to buy the PCIE risers and stands because the cutting corners PCBs cracks while free lead soldering fissure??

Class-action lawsuits should follow.

In plenty cases users showed to be more interested and had better ideas in finding solutions, design or improve existing designs than the manufacturer who is blinded by profit margins

It's all about making the graphics cards as least reliable as possible, in order to artificially boost the sales, because of millions of failed earlier than their lifecycle GPUs, M.2s, mobos, etc..

 

[Hyderz]

Yeah so much creativity back then, it's non existent now, heck Arctic makes no vga coolers now...

same with prolimatech, i used to buy one for my HD7970 and boy was it cool to touch....
but i guess these coolers dont sell now because i believe its the aesthetic looks it gives to the pc...
it looks out of proportion in terms of style and design, peeps rather have a aesthetically pleasing pc...
for us older folks we didnt care back then if our pc looks hideous as long as it overclocks well and runs cool.... after all its about performance....

 

[rusty caterpillar]

same with prolimatech, i used to buy one for my HD7970 and boy was it cool to touch....
but i guess these coolers dont sell now because i believe its the aesthetic looks it gives to the pc...
it looks out of proportion in terms of style and design, peeps rather have a aesthetically pleasing pc...
for us older folks we didnt care back then if our pc looks hideous as long as it overclocks well and runs cool.... after all its about performance....

Yes they like leds and same color fans and doesn't matter if their GPU throttles down they will just see the leds.
I didn't care how it looked back than and now even less.

 

[ARF]

Yes they like leds and same color fans and doesn't matter if their GPU throttles down they will just see the leds.
I didn't care how it looked back than and now even less.

LEDs are nasty, because they are additional sources of heat.

 

[rusty caterpillar]

I once cut the side of my aerocool case to put a 120mm prolimatech fan there, directly blowing at the card. Cooled a 300w 980Ti MSI Gaming OC'd to 1500mhz wonderfully, the factory cooling could handle stock but OC shot past 80 in a matter of minutes without the additional fan.

Butchering cases sometimes does wonders

 

[Zazigalka]

Butchering cases sometimes does wonders

Well, the side was clear acrylic in the center so it was easy work

 

[rusty caterpillar]

LEDs are nasty, because they are additional sources of heat.

Yeah, but the trend works and people spends a lot of money on it

 

[eidairaman1]

same with prolimatech, i used to buy one for my HD7970 and boy was it cool to touch....
but i guess these coolers dont sell now because i believe its the aesthetic looks it gives to the pc...
it looks out of proportion in terms of style and design, peeps rather have a aesthetically pleasing pc...
for us older folks we didnt care back then if our pc looks hideous as long as it overclocks well and runs cool.... after all its about performance....

The vga silencer added aesthetics to my P4 and Athlon XP Rig

 

[rusty caterpillar]

same with prolimatech, i used to buy one for my HD7970 and boy was it cool to touch....
but i guess these coolers dont sell now because i believe its the aesthetic looks it gives to the pc...
it looks out of proportion in terms of style and design, peeps rather have a aesthetically pleasing pc...
for us older folks we didnt care back then if our pc looks hideous as long as it overclocks well and runs cool.... after all its about performance....

The Prolimatech Mk-26 is meticulously crafted. Designed and engineered for maximum cooling capabilities and efficiency. Compatible with most popular graphics cards, the MK-26 provides a quieter alternative to other inferior VGA coolers.


Technical Details:
- Dimensions: 257.1 x 47.1 x 146 mm (W x H x D)
- Material: Nickel-Copper (base plate, heat pipes), nickel-plated aluminum (blades)
- Weight (without fan): 590g
- Heatpipes: 6 x 6 mm Ø
- Fan (optional): 2x 140/120 mm
- Compatibility:
AMD Radeon (reference design):
HD 3850/3870
HD 4830/4850/4870/4890
HD 5830/5850/5870
HD 6790/6850/6870/6950/6970
HD 7750/7770/7850/7870/7950/7970


Back than 2012, they started plating with stupid Nickel, but not all, just few. Now days almost all.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

You still lose thermal conductivity and manufacturers should not make a trend out of it. Unless the CPU and GPU rad are used in a server room with high humidity where those rads need environmental protection against oxidation and corrosion, plating, anodizing or painting should not be the norm for general use.

Humor me and ask Kingpin why he didn't plated or anodized the radiator fins or the cold plate on his designs, why bare copper? Same with the water blocks. Doesn't liquids can bring corrosion more than humid air? Yes, but you create a coolant that prevents that.
Some Copper alloy will oxidize faster than others, they just have to use the right one and not cut costs all the time.
Now days around 80% of all cold plates are plated with NiZn but, how many users will lap or at least scratch the cold plates to see how much Copper is there if any or is just Aluminum.

On the other hand end users bite out hard in the color schemes created by hardware manufacturers, in the first place, and now in some cases is the end user asking for colored radiators.
See: Be Quiet Pure Rock 2 which was bare metal at the start, user start to ask for black and white rads the Pure Rock 2 FX which got heat pipe modifications for more RAM clearance, comes only painted(electrophoresis coating) while only old Pure Rock 2 comes bare metal.

Just a glance why cold plate shouldn't be plated.

NiZn alloy 21 to 33 W/m. K
Ni 60.7 -90 W/m-K
Copper alloys 400 w/m-K
Aluminum ~230 w/m-k


When you choose CPU cooler you have to see the clearance from GPU backplate.
If are too hot CPU will throttle down, GPU will throttle down, VRAM will fry and you have to rely now on integrated GPU till you replace/repair your main GPU - is worth it?

When I built last system I went for Pure Rock 2 instead of Pure Rock FX, just in case I need the clearance for a fan. Also PR2 is bare metal while FX is coated. PR2 will be enough as can go up to 150W and CPU will go max to 90W.
Are you willing to change you CPU cooler for 10C less on your GPU? maybe more or maybe less than 10C, I would but that's me.
On the other hand are slimmer fans 10 mm or 15 mm(which might fit in your setup), less effective but, better than nothing.


Back in time I had this GPU with a bad designed cooler, I found my self another cooler.... and than I emailed Power Color not being confident of Zerotherm cooler will fit on their X1950XT card knowing ZeroTherm was new on the market.

View attachment 357463


View attachment 357464


In plenty cases users showed to be more interested and had better ideas in finding solutions, design or improve existing designs than the manufacturer who is blinded by profit margins or can't care less.

Do what you will with this. I have no interest to show you wrong data on cooling solutions but, a manufacturer will have interest to tell you their cooling is enough, isn't it?

No.


I want to be more descriptive...but you need some basic thought processes checked before I can help you. First off, the area of a fin is what transfers heat...right? This means the "perfect" fin would be infinitely long and thus have a functionally infinite area of heat transfer. Unfortunately though, we live in reality. In reality the fins have finite dimensions, and thus their surface area is represented as basically 2(thickness*height)+2(thickness*width)+2(height*width).

The thing is, volume is generally a function of cubes while area is a function of squares. Great. That means if I blow a human up from child to adult, 3' to 6'. they'll have double the dimension of any one thing, quadruple the skin coverage, and weight eight times as much. That's great...but that also mean mathematically there's a sweet spot where I can basically increase the surface area of the fin by more than the weight. IE, at a couple microns thick the increased surface area of the nickel plated copper actually beats out the surface area of the pure copper. That's great...it means that I have a great reason to passivate the surface, and I can actually get better performance. Nickel has lower thermal conductivity, but again this is a matter of like 3% versus 2.5%. You should keep that in mind, because it's important.


So...let me also answer your ignorance. I say that in a potentially infuriating way, because you are not right but have landed on complex issue that seems to prove your point... Let me suggest that building a layer of passivating nickel requires building the copper, then blasting it clean of oxides and contaminants (usually an acid bath), cleaning its surface, then dipping the copper into a solution with semi-free nickel. Run a charge through the nickel, and you can get elemental nickel to electrodeposit on the copper surface. Congratulations, you've electro-plated your copper in nickel.
Now...why would you do this and why wouldn't you? The simple answer is one word, "control." If I can create a consistent x micron thick surface of passivating nickel around the copper I can see that 0.5% performance increase of plating, while not having to deal with any real oxidation concerns. The problem is most plating is on an industrial scale. Yep. The issue is that because some areas would have double the plating of others the cooling performance using their plating process sucked. This meant that for a time, high end product would generally accept that they had to have higher quality copper and rely on its relatively high resistance to oxidation....while pretending this was fine.

Why is it actually a problem? Well, the reason just having copper was not enough was international shipping. If you were around for those ancient beastly copper coolers you'd remember they drew blood everywhere, and that they were generally sealed to prevent oxidation in transit. That's a cost.
How do I know this? I sent expanded metal to China...or more accurately I had to deal with a customer who did this. Never had an oxidation issue in decades...but had one now. Yep...zinc coated steel arrived in China after a month on the seas as a pile of red rust. It's because they took a wooden pallet of our stuff, secured by a pair of nylon straps, and shoved it into a shipping container. Stuff that I watched customers sit under a tin roof outside, that lasted 2+ years without visible rusting, couldn't make it from the east coast of the US to China. So...no. Your argument about not needing passivation doesn't hold water....pun fervently intended.




Let's also touch on metallurgy for a second...as a general point of education.
1) All metal oxidizes
2) Some oxides are harder to detect than others
3) Some oxides don't expand during creation...meaning the outer oxide layer actually acts to passivate against future oxidation.

Thermo Book - Page 78. This is the basics of heat transfer...I wanted to find the ski pole problem, as there is actually a thickness where a thin plastic surface increase the energy transfer rate above a pure steel tube just based on the increased surface area...but could not find anything in the attached book edition.

Another point of thermo:

R = resistance
l = distance
A = area
p =specific resistance
This is really scary when you've got one p at 21 versus another at 400...until you look at units. 400 per meter...and a coating thickness of 1*10^-5 meters. Wow. When you look at things in context that really changes whether you're looking at a bear...or a mole. This one seems more mole to me...as lapping off those few microns of cheap passivation material will not statistically change your measured results.