mod GPU fan mod. Taking a page out of Linus's notebook.

[TetraSky]

Inspired myself from this video of Linus.

Not too sure if in the right place, but it does say "and other mods", so... Onto the thread.

 

My GPU’s fans have always been noisy, especially the one near the power connectors, it made a rattling sound as the speed went up during usage.
I was enduring it until now, but for some reason, today things took a turn and the noise became unbearable to me.

So I inspired myself from the linked video above and attempted to mod it with normal Noctua 120mm fans(good old NF-P12) that I had laying around from my old PC. Because obviously, instead of doing the sensible thing, which would be to just buy new replacement GPU fans for it on ebay like I had done once in the past already, it's much better to do it the Linus way.

 

Spoiler

Well first of all, disassembly, it was simple, just remove the rear IO metal slot bracket, or however it's called, to gain access to the two tiny screws holding the plastic shroud on that side and two other screw on the rear end. It comes off just like that, fans and all. (Picture above was already all unscrewed, had forgotten to take a picture so I put it back together for a quick pic, hence why it looks crooked, )

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Ain't she a beauty, with her top off like that?

 

Then I attempted to unplug the fans without removing the entire heatsink, as would be proper, in order to get a proper grip on the connector. Because who has time for that.

Spoiler

I fucked it up and destroyed it. No going back now boys! 

 

At this point, I found out that the fan holes of my fans... were slightly too small for my zip ties…  

(Heck, I consider myself lucky for even finding these massive zip ties... they literally were the last ones in the house... should've planned this beforehand)

Spoiler

 

Alright, no problem, lets take out the drill.

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As it turns out, the drill bit that I had initially taken out was too small to properly enlarge the holes of the fans for the zip ties.

So I took out the big and shiny, silver drill bit and enlarged the holes of those poor fans. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I didn't forget to clean out any left over residues on the fans with a metal brush. Wouldn't want that crap on the PCB or falling into a PCI-e slot.

Spoiler

Holes enlarged and primed for the zip ties, it is time to mount the fans onto the GPU. (Of course, I dusted the heatsink first, but I didn't replace the thermal paste. I would've, had I removed it at an earlier step to disconnect the fans... But as you know, I didn't )

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I think I've done a good job with that, no?

Their holes had been loosened enough for two zip ties to fit in the same hole at the same time, so I just linked the left fan to the right fan in the middle, instead of having a zip tie go under the card and potentially interfering with the pci-e slot's locking mechanism. It's holding up just fine and is quite tight.

 

All that remained was to shove it back into the case, link up both fans with a Y fan connector from Noctua and off to the races we go!

Spoiler

(Yes, lots of beige and poop brown in this computer, what can I say...  aesthetics don't give better performances, it's functional and that's all that matter to me. I wouldn't have put that ugly foam noise dampening on the side panels if I cared for aesthetics, too)

 

I must say, it worked nicely. My PC is now quieter than ever, since the loudest component in there had been the GPU ever since I built my current PC and reused my old GPU.

I plugged them in the Sys_Fan2 header on the motherboard, also made sure to disable any sort of fan control on it in the BIOS.

Initially I had used a low noise adapter, but boy was that a mistake, temps were super high super quick. 

After removing that adapter, temps are actually slightly better than they were with the stock fans.

Before, at IDLE, it was sitting at about 53˚C. Now it's 47˚C.

 

 

I do have one, tiny, insignificant issue with it now, though. You see... 3 minutes of furmark results in temps of 96˚C. (used the stopwatch on my phone to precisely know how long it took to get there)

And that wasn't the peak either, I just stopped it there because I didn't want to risk damaging it.

 

Now, I know furmark isn't an indicative of real world scenario. But still, barely 3 minutes of a stress test... of which it could easily do an hour before without any issues.

 

As such, I went and actually played three game for about 5 to 10 minutes each.

Temps are much better. Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel leaves the GPU at a nice 66˚C even after 10+ minutes.

Minecraft Java Edition with a ton of mods (MCeternal) barely reach 62˚C... Turns out, not a GPU intensive games without graphic mods, who knew. 

Temps went up to 78˚C in Final Fantasy 15, from just walking around on my Chocobo for a few minutes in an open area. Then the game crashed when I alt-tabbed to check the temps so fuck that game. A buggy Square-Enix PC game you say? No way, can't be. 

 

Honestly, I don't know if I can call this a success or not.

Noise levels are down significantly compared to before and sure, I can't run stress tests on it anymore... but from testing the few games I played on it, temps seems to be fine for gaming.

But it remains to be seen for when I actually do play for longer periods of time than just 10 minutes. That said, I don't play much games these days, I honestly hadn't launched FF15 since 2018 according to the last achievement I got on it (yes, it was fully updated on Steam). 

 

All in all, I would probably do this mod again if given the opportunity. It's basically free to do if you have old fans laying around. And if it ends up failing, well, it will give me an excuse to finally go out and buy a new graphic card.

[thrasher_565]

so if you disabled bios controlling for the gpu fans what controlling it? the fans would ramp up based off the cpu temps i would think?

 

furmark is a 100% gpu test witch should mean your fans also should be at 100%

[TetraSky]

8 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

so if you disabled bios controlling for the gpu fans what controlling it? the fans would ramp up based off the cpu temps i would think?

 

furmark is a 100% gpu test witch should mean your fans also should be at 100%

The two fans on the GPU are at 100% all the time based on my BIOS settings.

 

Considering how quiet Noctua fans are, there was no real point introducing a fan curve into the mix for the GPU itself. (other fans do have a curve based on temperature, just these two)

Not only would it have been a pain in the butt even attempting to make it so the Sys_Fan2 fan header on the motherboard follows the GPU's temperature, but I'm not even sure if it's possible. In BIOS, my options were CPU, System and two other things, none were about the GPU.

 

Which means, while furmark 100% the GPU, the fans on it were already at 100% and doing their best to handle the newly incoming heat.

[thrasher_565]

49 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

The two fans on the GPU are at 100% all the time based on my BIOS settings.

 

Considering how quiet Noctua fans are, there was no real point introducing a fan curve into the mix for the GPU itself. (other fans do have a curve based on temperature, just these two)

Not only would it have been a pain in the butt even attempting to make it so the Sys_Fan2 fan header on the motherboard follows the GPU's temperature, but I'm not even sure if it's possible. In BIOS, my options were CPU, System and two other things, none were about the GPU.

 

Which means, while furmark 100% the GPU, the fans on it were already at 100% and doing their best to handle the newly incoming heat.

ok i mean your fans shouldn't be silent when your gpu is at 100% imo what rpm are they at? 93dgress seems hi for a 3 min test of cores in games you never max the gpu at a 100% i mean if your happy then your happy.

[TetraSky]

7 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

i mean your fans shouldn't be silent when your gpu is at 100% imo what rpm are they at

According to HWMonitor, they are at 1292 rpm right now. Which is within the margin of error for these fans.

https://noctua.at/en/nf-p12/specification

What can I say, Noctua fans are quiet. While it isn't that accurate, this Sound Meter app on my phone says I'm sitting at about 35 dB.

Spoiler

 

And of course they are still near silent even if the GPU is at 100%, that's their maximum speed. They don't go faster, they can't be noisier.

The fans are not connected to the GPU. They are connected to the motherboard. They have no clue that they are stuck on a mini furnace. They don't know when the GPU is at 100% or not. So they just operate at maximum speed whenever the PC is open.