Watercooled graphic card mod project

[Beardroid91]

Graphic card water / air cooling hybrid setup - build log

Okay now after countless hours of research i believe im getting to the point where im ready to start making this project a reality.

But once i have started, then there is no turning back..!

The parts i would need is quite expensive - as you'll see, but i believe that this is the way to go, as my graphic card - much as i've already done still runs way to hot 85*c and that raises the overall temp in my case and that is bad news for the CPU, which gets 67'ish hot.

Going with a air cooler wasn't an option, as my case can't supply a 4-5 pci slot graphic card cooler with fresh air, not mention a cooler like would be heavy and bend the PCB...

4-5 pci slot cooler in a Antec P183

___

So just to clarify, this project is about ditching the stock air cooler on graphic card and going for a water / air hybrid cooling solution. A Corsair H75 cpu cooler will cool the graphic card core die with the use of the NZXT Kraken G10 pumphead mount.

In addition to that i'll remove the heatsink on the stock cooler, the one which the fans blow on from the aluminium coolplate that cools the VRAM and VRM chips on the PCB, and maybe put some additional heatsink fins on the PCB coolplate, i plan on doing pretty much the same as this guy does in this (Tutorial).

I've see / heard about others on the modding forums Overclockers.net who has done something similar with great success, they call it "The Red Mod" (Being that it is mostly done on AMD cards as they run hotter than Nvidia does),

XFX HD 7950 PCB and cooler

It should by easy enough .. i hope, but even if i can't separate the heatsink and the backpanel - then it is no big deal, i'll just put some aluminum or copper heatsinks on the vram and vrm chips

The parts i'll be using:

A Corsair H75 cpu watercooler, the NZXT Kraken G10, a mandatory copper GPU die raiser from EK, thermal adhesive to glue the heatsinks to the coldplate / chips, some replacement top shelf thermal pads called Fujipoly Extreme and some trusted thermal paste NTH1 from Noctua and lastly a GPU to PWM fan adapter

The listed parts are nearly 190 € but the cooling setup can be used on my future AMD / Nvidia graphic cards so that justifies it abit, and the fact that this is a really interesting project means that i don't really care about the price .. i just want to do it

But anyway now you know what i plan on doing this summer, if i doesn't get sidetracked by other things
__

When completed i might look something like this

[Beardroid91]

Just an update:

All parts are ordered and on the way, but the thermal pads had to be ordered from FrozenCPU.com in the US, soon that will still be a good 13 days before i see them.
__

Today i got started on making / sawing out some heatsinks out of a big aluminium heatsink from i believe it was a Intel Pentium 2 cpu cooler

My heatsinks

[MadManCK]

That is a big project, but also very cool. Good luck with it, and may it bring coolness to your graphics card and case.

I will follow this with great interest as i maybe will do something similar when i will get a GTX780.

[Beardroid91]

I struck gold doing my research!

Looking through nearly 2000 posts finally payed of, i managed to find a guy that have the exact same graphic card as me, he had used a Corsair H55 on and got idle 29*c and under extreme 60*c even with a overclock and at 20*c room temp

Link to original post on Overclock.net

So now i have something to look forward to

And even better is the pictures of the cooler disassembly showing just what i needed to know about it vram / vrm coolplate

XFX HD 7950 vram / vrm coolplate

_______

I also found a build guide, showing have sip tie a cpu watercooler to your graphic card, could be useful for some - but bracket / mount is the best option

[BBvideo 640,360][/BBvideo]

[Beardroid91]

Succes

With the watercooling setup i now have these temps idle 30*c and load 56*c after a 15 min. burn-in in Furmark at 1920x1080, i did the same test with the stock cooler and had these temps idle 34*c and load 82*c

So i got a massive temperature drop of a whopping 26*c doing benching load !!
__

I got the Corsair H75 and Kraken G10 mount today, and i went to work on fitting it strait away. This proved to be a tricky matter - first came the thought process and the fabrication and the mod of case and the Kraken G10.

Firstly i worked on mount the H75's radiator on a removable harddrive / fan tunnel, this was just saw the aluminium, but it proved to a big hassle .. because the aluminium was flapping around as i was sawing - not to mention the headache that came from the loud noise the fin metal saw tent to have... Anyway that was about 3 hours of work this in the result, which im pretty pleased with

Mount for the push / poll configed rad

Radiator mount mounted in the pc

Next i put the a few heatsinks on the vram / vrm coolingplate - but the one i had where to big for it, so i think im going to order some lower copper heatsinks

Okay next i mounted the pumphead on the graphic card, which again was a annoying hassle, as the Corsair H75 have some stupid plastic styling fins - which made mounting it impossible... but luckily it was only styling (meaning of no importance), so with a sharp knife and alot of patience i could cut them of and it fit perfectly in the mount.

Pumphead and radiator setup

As can see there is no fan on the card, that is because im still working / figuring out how to mount a set of twin 70mm PWM fans from two old AMD cpu coolers

And now i think i have kept you guys waiting for long enough now, here is my rig with the watercooling setup fitted

My rig with the watercooler setup 1

My rig with the watercooler setup 2

My rig with the watercooler setup 3

So there you have it, watercooling to graphic card took the better part of a day (10 hours strait work), but i in the end it was well worth it

But the temps speak for themselves

[MadManCK]

Very nice. Not much left of the Kraken... Maybe you could have drilled a plate yourself.

Those temperature drops are a very cool result. No more overheated graphic card.

One thing though...
With your current setup, the hot air from the radiator is blown into the case, or not?*

The result looks very nice too. Good job !



Edit:
*It is better if the hot air from the radiator is blown outside the case so you can turn around the fans on the radiator and turn the front intake to outtake. Always best to get rid of the hot air in the case.
And to compensate for the loss of fresh air into the case, you can use the top fan to blow air into the case, instead of taking it out. And even mount a smaller intake fan on the slots.
Creating a good airflow in your case with watercooling installed will take some effort.

[Beardroid91]

Thanks Mad

Yes the radiator is blowing the hot air into the, this was the best option for my case...

But counter this hot air problem im to have the 92mm fan from the kranen siting in the phi slot gril polling air out and either the twin 70mm fans or the second fan from the corsair H75, and make a mount that can cool the cards

And yeah the kraken G10 didnt allow for big heatsinks, that why i cut to size

But for I will see how the system runs now, figure something out where it is needed

Edt.
I know Mad, but I had to work around my case's and my rooms limitations

[Bez]

Nice project Bear I've been following it with interest, looks like you've done a fantastic job with the installation and good temp drops too.

[Beardroid91]

Thanks Bez
__

Just an update, i ordered some copper heatsinks, two packs with 8x (1,4 x 1,2 x 0,6) cm which was only 6 $ a per at DX.com (deal extreme) plus the slow but free shipping (14-21 days)

You can't but love the Chinese prices

Here is a picture and a link to / of them
RHS-03 Copper Memory Heatsink Pads



These should be up to the task of cooling vram chips with a fan blowing on them ... now the OC can begin

[Beardroid91]

This is a after mod to the graphic card

I just an idea i had while i was taking the old graphic cooler completely apart, and found out that i in theory could copycat Nvidia Geforce's green (Nvidia Geforce GTX) writhing on the side of their cards, but mine would back illuminate the sticker on my graphic card where the writhing that says (XFX R7900 Series) it is "nearly see through" but i would of cause make it back illuminated in red, as that is Radeons colors

Red / white would work equally fine, which color would guys pick ?

Back illuminating sticker mod

To make it i would have to drill or saw it the aluminium the sticker sad on, and put a few leds behind to shine out through the sticker.

What do you guys think, should i do this?