RX 5700 XT Frankenstein cooling (Scythe Mugen V)

[JakeOfOz]

Inspired by the Frankenstein GPU Cooling video I decided to make my own version with the RX 5700 XT I already had, and a Scythe Mugen V CPU cooler.

Since I had the room in my case I figured that it would be a nice option to keep it quiet.

 

TL;DR?

scroll all the way to the bottom to the last picture. That's the final result

 

My system

I have the following parts (currently)

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
  • Scythe Ninja 5
• Motherboard: MSI X570-A Pro
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V F4-3200C16D
• PSU: Corsair RM650 (2019)
• SSD: Kingston A2000 500GB
• GPU: MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X
• Case: Corsair Graphite 600T

The plan

I like big air coolers (and I cannot lie), hence the Scythe Ninja 5 on my CPU. So the goal was to get quite a big CPU cooler on the Graphics card as well. Also works magic for heat capacity and dissipation.

To keep cost a little bit in mind, I settled on a Scythe Mugen V PCGH edition. I've used Scythe coolers for a long time now, they've never disappointed me.

 

Prep

Get all the stuff together. I figured I needed some heatsinks for the VRM and vRAM, so I ordered those in advance. Together with thermal compound, isopropyl alcohol, gpu-pwm fan cable adapter and thermal adhesive tape. That last one is to stick the heatsinks to the VRM and vRAM.

 

Also: I have a bit of a workshop in my garage. You'll want a drill press, angle grinder, vise, and ideally a bench grinder.

 

The magic

Well, The start is basically pulling your GPU apart. Not very difficult thus far, mostly interesting to see how they built and cooled this thing.

Her it is without cooling, a MSI RX 5700XT Gaming X:

 

 

Then to fit the bracket:

 

The bracket needed new mounting holes, as well as the cross bar that pushes down the cooler on the die. Relatively easy with a bench press, although the metal used is quite durable I must say. Good quality from Scythe

 

After that it's basically fitting and glue-ing the heatsinks to all the chips (TIP: check where the default cooler had thermal pads to see what needs cooling):

 

And slap the fans on, with the adapter to the GPU-fan plug:

 

Final installation

Note that the fans are on sideways. This is intentional (well, now it is at least) since it wouldn't fit against the motherboard otherwise. It would then effectively block all other fan headers on the board, and the fins would touch all sorts of stuff which made me fear shorting something.

 

It's quite a big thing now:

 

By moving the PSU to the (unused) drive bay, there is space for this huge cooler now:

 

Upgrade 1: vRAM cooling

Probably not really necessary, but I wanted to cool the vRAM the same as the other chips, so I bought more copper. removed the top cooling plate and custom cooled the vRAM:

(bending the pins was needed for space)

 

 

Upgrade 2: make my own 'case'

As you can clearly see, there is a lot of cooling tower in that case. I went through all the trouble of building it, so why not show it off more?

Also: the CPU cooler is still hanging from the motherboard, clinging on for dear life. I'd like both coolers in the same orientation. So I decided to build my own rig to make it better. Added in a PCI-e riser cable to make it work, and ended up with this:

 

Results: Silence and performance!

I currently run the highest that AMD let's you overclock this thing. Which is 2150 MHz at a power limit of +20%. VRAM is at 1800 MHz, since I get a screen flicker above that.

The temps never exceed 75 degrees (Celsius) at any load. (except junction temps when it's boosting, but that seems to be OK)

 

But the best thing is the silence! I have it on my desk, next to my head, and all I can hear is a bit of coil whine. But NO FANS whatsoever!

 

The End

Let me know what you think!

[Aereldor]

The kind of shit I love to see. I remember DIYperks doing this with a GTX 670 and a Hyper 212 EVO in 2015... Send us benchmarks. OCed this far it should be in RTX 2080 territory

[Drama Lama]

Interesting I guess it was not possible to face the cooler in a position that allows direct optimal airflow from the front 

[JakeOfOz]

22 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

The kind of shit I love to see. I remember DIYperks doing this with a GTX 670 and a Hyper 212 EVO in 2015... Send us benchmarks. OCed this far it should be in RTX 2080 territory

I just did one in 3dMark:

The graphics score for a regular 5700XT is 9182, I got 9867. Not really 2080 territory yet (11185 to be had), but my temps this time never even got to 70. Though the junction temps were usually at around 108 degrees during the benchmark...

 

Wonder where I could improve further, I'm not really experienced in overclocking to be honest.

 

[JakeOfOz]

16 minutes ago, Drama Lama said:

Interesting I guess it was not possible to face the cooler in a position that allows direct optimal airflow from the front 

Well, it didn't fit with the motherboard. The fins of the cooler would hit pins on the board. That made me decide to turn it. But with the DIY case I made I switched it back for the good cooling though!

[Drama Lama]

1 hour ago, JakeOfOz said:

Well, it didn't fit with the motherboard. The fins of the cooler would hit pins on the board. That made me decide to turn it. But with the DIY case I made I switched it back for the good cooling though!

Ok would you say it’s worth buying a cheap custom design and then just put on a cpu cooler instead of buying an expensive custom design ?

[JakeOfOz]

7 hours ago, Drama Lama said:

Ok would you say it’s worth buying a cheap custom design and then just put on a cpu cooler instead of buying an expensive custom design ?

Well it depends of course (it usually does ). If you stick with the more renowned brands, you have a higher chance of getting better quality components. On the other hand you're throwing away any form of warranty with these sort of projects, so then a penny saved is a penny earned. You could also say that with better cooling, even lesser quality components will last longer.

In the end it's your own choice. I happened to already have this card before I decided to mod it. If I'd have to do it again I'd stick to a known brand, but perhaps a cheaper one.