Ghetto Mods

[TheinsanegamerN]

That's awesome... aluminum radiators are so much more efficient at heat transfer (and cheaper to make) than copper ones I'm not sure why the PC insists on copper unlike virtually every industry (automotive, appliances, etc.)

Because aluminum radiators are only more efficient in terms of size and space when using high pressure fluid, for instance automobiles.

An Aluminum or Copper Radiator for Your Car - Car Craft Magazine

Learn how to plan what cooling system to put in your car with the choices of an Aluminum Radiator vs. a Copper Radiator in Car Craft Magazine.

www.hotrod.com

In PCs, where the cooling comes from air and not fluid pressure, the superior thermal conductivity of copper can be used to full effect.

https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/which-metals-conduct-heat-best/

List of thermal conductivities - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Watercooling Myths Exposed - Overclockers

Nice compilation of common misconceptions - Greenman100 (Tim Elmore)

www.overclockers.com

"Myth: Aluminum absorbs/dissipates heat faster than copper.


Reality: All thermal properties of copper are better than
aluminum. Aluminum’s advantage is that it is lighter and easier to machine. So,
if one were given a pound of copper and a pound of aluminum, you
might make a better performing heatsink with aluminum, as it might have more surface area to dissipate heat than copper for a given weight. Considering footprint limitations for air cooled CPU heatsinks, however, copper is definitely favored."

 

[phanbuey]

Because aluminum radiators are only more efficient in terms of size and space when using high pressure fluid, for instance automobiles.

An Aluminum or Copper Radiator for Your Car - Car Craft Magazine

Learn how to plan what cooling system to put in your car with the choices of an Aluminum Radiator vs. a Copper Radiator in Car Craft Magazine.

www.hotrod.com

In PCs, where the cooling comes from air and not fluid pressure, the superior thermal conductivity of copper can be used to full effect.

https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/which-metals-conduct-heat-best/

List of thermal conductivities - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Watercooling Myths Exposed - Overclockers

Nice compilation of common misconceptions - Greenman100 (Tim Elmore)

www.overclockers.com

"Myth: Aluminum absorbs/dissipates heat faster than copper.


Reality: All thermal properties of copper are better than
aluminum. Aluminum’s advantage is that it is lighter and easier to machine. So,
if one were given a pound of copper and a pound of aluminum, you
might make a better performing heatsink with aluminum, as it might have more surface area to dissipate heat than copper for a given weight. Considering footprint limitations for air cooled CPU heatsinks, however, copper is definitely favored."

Aluminum radiators perform better because they have more surface area and potentially more channels due to manufacturing ease. if you look at cheap alu kits from EK they perform unbelievably well for their size.

WHY DO ALUMINUM RADIATORS COOL BETTER THAN COPPER? – DeWitts™ Direct Fit® Aluminum Radiators

Copper is actually a better conductor of heat than aluminum. The problem is a copper radiator is not ALL copper. The tubes and fin are copper however they are bonded together with lead, which has horrible heat transfer capabilities. The end tanks are brass and the side channels are steel. The...

www.dewitts.com

The aluminum radiator is 100% aluminum furnace brazed without any insulating solder. That is why aluminum radiators work better than copper ones. If you could build a copper radiator the exact same way we make the aluminum ones, it would work better than the aluminum.

 

[delshay]

This modification is for the R9 Nano. It's not been tested yet, but is expected to bring 2C+ to cooling the core.

This second photo opens the door for options (extra cooling), but there are other options available.

NOTE: Heatsink are soldered to the bracket for max transfer of heat.

 

[AsRock]

You sure that will not sort some thing out on the back ?, You could just use a 80mm fan just be carefull if it's sucking air from the card due to blade clearance can be different from fan to fan.

 

[delshay]

You sure that will not sort some thing out on the back ?, You could just use a 80mm fan just be carefull if it's sucking air from the card due to blade clearance can be different from fan to fan.

Ultra confident it is safe. It is soldered in such a way not to short anything out. The bracket gets ultra hot without the modification.

 

[phanbuey]

Ultra confident it is safe. It is soldered in such a way not to short anything out. The bracket gets ultra hot without the modification.

Did you try it yet? Does it work?

 

[delshay]

Did you try it yet? Does it work?

Yes it does work but it's going to need the option extra cooling, still far too hot. A new internal modification is also working. This new cooling solution is switchable between GPU core or VRM, even thou it's ment for the VRM..

 

[Dinnercore]

I just did two things, for one I revived my old friend the GTX670 in my first attempt at reflow soldering with my hot air station (lets hope it lasts a while) and second I decided to get rid of the terrible cheap blower cooler on it:



I had an unused old aftermarket cooler that I got quite a while ago and thought today is the day I try to revive my 670 and put this thing to use. The cooler is from Alpenföhn, model 'Klara'. It is not compatible with the 670, but I managed to get two screws in:



Seems to be enough, I did not bother to glue some heatsinks on the memory. The original heatsink never covered the memory modules anyway, and now they get even better airflow due to the top-down fan and are no longer trapped under a stupid plastic cover.

It is this card from Palit:

The only thing I could use for a quick test was the Cinebench R15 OpenGL thingy, as this bench has no access to the internet and is only used for CPU-benching. GPU-Zs render test told me it needed to download a file -.-



So far I´d carefully call it a success. It did initially boost up to the voltage limit, hitting above 1000MHz, and drop down due to missing load. Before that the card was dead, it died while playing Quake Champions, heavy artifacts into no screen output. After this the card was toast, windows error 43, drivers could not be installed and it only gave a video out when you had no driver installed and did not try to raise the resolution. Back in the day I tested it multiple times but could not get it back to work up until now

 

[lexluthermiester]

Seems to be enough, I did not bother to glue some heatsinks on the memory. The original heatsink never covered the memory modules anyway, and now they get even better airflow due to the top-down fan and are no longer trapped under a stupid plastic cover.

One of these should serve you well if you want to ensure that card will keep running;

EOL

www.arctic.ac

 

[Dinnercore]

On of these should serve you well if you want to ensure that card will keep running;

EOL

www.arctic.ac

Yeah I agree this one would be a much better choice... But that would mean I have to invest 60€ in this zombie card. Nah I´ll keep it the way it is now and see how long it will last. For science!

The way I did it I had to spend nothing and put some stuff to use that would otherwise just catch dust.

But if anyone wants to use aftermarket coolers on a GPU, e.g. to get rid of a loud blower style cooler, MAKE SURE that it is compatible with your card. Do as we suggest and not as we do, or sth. like that

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yeah I agree this one would be a much better choice... But that would mean I have to invest 60€ in this zombie card. Nah I´ll keep it the way it is now and see how long it will last. For science!

The way I did it I had to spend nothing and put some stuff to use that would otherwise just catch dust.

But if anyone wants to use aftermarket coolers on a GPU, e.g. to get rid of a loud blower style cooler, MAKE SURE that it is compatible with your card. Do as we suggest and not as we do, or sth. like that

Nice! Carry on then!

 

[Dinnercore]

Nice! Carry on then!

I did already, found the Half Life 2 techdemo level on the drive:





Seems solid for now. 1080p 300fps, this was not enough to simulate a full load but I´m getting there
The % value on top is not GPU load, but GPU power-target. At around 40-50% power draw it settles around 50°C with this cooler. That is okay-ish. The stock one would have done roughly the same but with much more noise.

 

[Grog6]

...
The aluminum radiator is 100% aluminum furnace brazed without any insulating solder. That is why aluminum radiators work better than copper ones. If you could build a copper radiator the exact same way we make the aluminum ones, it would work better than the aluminum.

Most aluminum fins on heat pipe coolers are swaged (i.e., stuffed thru the hole) in place; you can slide them up/down if you try hard enough.

The best thermal performance is Silver, but no one uses it for coolers, for some reason.

Well, there's this:

cuplex kryos NEXT 2011/2011-3/2066, nickel/.925 silver - Aqua Computer

cuplex kryos NEXT 2011/2011-3/2066, nickel/.925 silver: The cuplex kryos NEXT marks a new milestone in CPU water block development. Every detail has been analyzed, optimized and tested to achieve perfection in cooling performance, installation procedure and product features. The result is not...

shop.aquacomputer.de

 

[Mac2580]

Start to finish all Ghetto Build from spares that were lying around. It needs to last till next gen for a friend of mine whos Xbox One broke. Another friend loaned him his old pc. Phenom II 840, GT 440, 970a G45 board, and 2x2Gb ram. He loves FIFA so much so that he was playing FIFA 12 till the HDD crashed a few months ago. I took the PC under my care and popped in an old laptop HDD, 4x4Gb ram, and my old R7 260x. FIFA 19 lagged, so i decided to sell all the ram for a FX 8320. This is the finished product, FX 8320 downclocked to 3.2Ghz at 1.194V. 212 was added only because PSU is trash, AMD stock fan added because board is trash. Cable management ignored as 212 impedes the side panel.
FYI, FIFA 19 runs on Ultra at 1080P60FPS, with anti aliasing off.

 

[Samiam66]

Re purposing un needed parts ....Old z-400 with Xeon W3565 3.2 chip always runs a little warmer than most
didn't want invest any money on it ( sits in den rarely used ) So I grabbed the Amd Wraith Cooler that came with my Ryzen Chip
modified the bracket to hold heat sink made a cross over connecter to go from HP 5pin to universal 4 pin design ..
and issue resolved ... Now a cool 31c at idle 52c under heavy load

 

[Deleted member 185158]

12'ish years ago? Something like that. Here's one of my ghetto mods.

Enjoy.

 

[Samiam66]

12'ish years ago? Something like that. Here's one of my ghetto mods.

Enjoy. View attachment 131720

that is cool

 

[Komshija]

When you bought 2nd hand laptop and you can't find the right screws since the original is shorter than you have, so the solution is make your own washer using shampoo bottle

I grind them when they are too long. You'll need a manual pinch tool or whatever it's called in english and fine metal file no.3. It's very tricky because these screws are tiny and easy to damage but still doable.

 

[Ruru]

The bearing of the other fan of my Asus R9 290 DCUII became noisy. I have this bracket which supports 2x 80/92mm fans, first I got this to use with an universal GPU block, but since now I'm running my cards on air, I used it to cool down the heatsink.

 

[silentbogo]

Not really ghetto by any standards, but still....
I was playing some Quake last night and the next thing I notice is that the "S" key is stuck to my middle finger. Apparently my modded ZM-K500 is getting really tired and some keycap stems started to crumble. I don't have any spares, but then I remembered that I still have one cheap broken A4Tech "gaming" keyboard in the office. Thankfully they use Cherry-compatible keycaps on their Lightstrike optical switches, so it was a perfect fit. The only problem is that they are ugly AF, and should be backlit in order to see the legend. Plastic feels more like Lego pieces, but it's still better than not having a keycap or two )))

 

[lexluthermiester]

The only problem is that they are ugly AF, and should be backlit in order to see the legend.

A lot of people would think that is cool.

 

[silentbogo]

What's really sad is that the donor board which I used for red keycaps is more popular than my Zalman and it costs more, even though it's essentially a cheap-ass membrane KB with only 8 optical switches...
I used to have 2 boxes of malfunctioning A4Tech Bloody products, and to my surprise those were selling like fresh cookies after I fixed nearly all of it. I didn't know at the time, but apparently A4Tech mice and keyboards are very popular among self-proclaimed "competitive gamers" in CIS countries... especially Bloody mice, cause they can be hacked to unlock paid features, like "recoil compensation" macros for CS etc (basically for cheating).

 

[oobymach]

I usually prototype in cardboard and this is one of my latest (yes I know it's dusty), a ps4 pro aftermarket cooler with front mounted power switch, a silverstone fhp 141 fan and an analog 12v power supply. The ps4 pro breathes fire and this keeps it from melting. All electrical connections are soldered.

 

[micropage7]

When you bought cheap usb hub and realize the mounting is bad so you need to do some tweak

 

[Animalpak]

Since ive started overclocking my 4790K at its limits my VRM temps gets real damn hot ! So i have to do something more effective than that Noctua 90mm fan that was blowing on the middle of the motherboard.

So i picked up this 60mm originally mounted on a dual RAM cooler from Corsair 3000rpm it is connected to a potentiometer for single fans.

I used double sided tape to fix the fan up in that position.

Results are better ! VRM temps got dropped more than before, now the VRM section will not melt my fingers anymore.