Liquid Cooling Options for a 980 Ti

gsheph252 · February 22, 2016

I am looking for liquid cooling options for my Asus Strix 980 Ti as the fans on it, when playing under load, are so loud its obnoxious. They completely destroy immersion because it sounds like I am gaming on the wing of a 747. Don't get me wrong the fans can take the card from 80 degrees to 40 degrees in like 12 seconds at full speed. The problem is the card is barely under 70 the entire time I'm gaming and the fans are set to ramp up to max at 75 degrees (ai suite wont let me set the ramp to 100% speed at 78 degrees). I heard about the EKWB block but its like, what, 130 bucks I am not entirely sure what parts I would need to buy as well. Obviously, I'll need a pump, a radiator block, some tubing, some fittings and a drain system. But I have no clue what to buy. If I am going this route i might as well cool the CPU with it. So any and all advice is welcome.

System specs below (just in case you need them)

Case: Corsair 750D Air Flow Edition

CPU: i7-6700k

MOBO: Asus Maximus VIII Hero

Ram: 2x8g 3200 Mhz G.Skill Series V

GPU: Asus Strix 980 Ti Factory OC

Currently, budget is around 2 grand but I do need to buy new monitors with that as well so I am trying to keep it within reason.

Ryoutarou97 · February 22, 2016

If you want to do a loop on the cheap, I found that xspc is pretty good for that. Here's a list of what you will need:

Waterblocks: (duh) Can't really skimp out on those. For cpu XSPC raystorm was the cheapest i saw, but others aren't much worse.
Fittings: Barb or compression assuming you're going with softline tubing. I ordered mainly off amazon, so again XSPC beat bitspower by a bit on pricing with their 4-packs. If you buy something like 5 items or more titan rig has a code on amazon that's listed on each part's page for 5% off IIRC. It's listed somewhere above reviews on all products they sell (AKA most of XSPC's stuff, IDK about other vendors. This is a good way to get a lot of items in there if you need them. Barb are cheaper.)
Tubing: Make sure it's the same size as the fittings.
Radiator: I really like XSPC because the ex360 ran me something like $65, and is a pretty good rad (I got my loop to make it completely silent, so went totally overkill on the rads, but one of these w/ faster fans should be good. You can also get a second and have it really quiet.)
Reservoir: Not strictly necessary, but pretty much any one will work. Make sure it's right before the pump in the loop. Bay would be cheapest, probably.
Pump: D5 (controllable) is what I would recommend b/c it's really quiet, but if you're trying to save money a ddc might be better.

$2k is more than enough, you can probably do both CPU and GPU on $400 easy. There are also pinned topics that I'll post below full of great information.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1755-water-cooling-101-a-good-place-for-newbies-to-start/

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/5435-watercooling-faq-some-basic-qa/

gsheph252 · February 22, 2016

Thanks man I will read this in detail!

lazar.d · February 22, 2016

There is a simpler solution from Corsair:

You can use The Hydro Series HG10 N980 GPU cooling bracket and some of liquid CPU coolers.

Just check compatibility with your GPU model.

http://www.corsair.com/en/hydro-series-hg10-n980-gpu-liquid-cooling-bracket#

gsheph252 · February 22, 2016

7 hours ago, lazar.d said:

There is a simpler solution from Corsair:

You can use The Hydro Series HG10 N980 GPU cooling bracket and some of liquid CPU coolers.

Just check compatibility with your GPU model.

http://www.corsair.com/en/hydro-series-hg10-n980-gpu-liquid-cooling-bracket#

unfortunately, they are not compatible with my current GPU :<