Makeshift GPU Cooling

[Amars1]

Hi all.

 

A while ago I purchased a Radeon 7870 2GB off eBay for £20. The only caveat was that it came with makeshift cooling; despite this I still bought this because it was far and away the best price/performance graphics card I could find.

 

It came with just a very small fan zip tied to the heatsink (see picture w/o fan), which provided insufficient cooling when doing anything intense so I replaced it with a spare 120mm CPU fan which cools it much better, however, I have to crank the fan RPM to 100% which makes it pretty loud, which hasn't really bothered me up until now. I usually get temperatures up to around 80C when playing fortnite after a couple of hours on mostly high settings at 1080P (Capped at 60FPS).

 

I was wondering if anyone had a better cooling solution for the GPU apart from buying a new one of course.

 

Thanks in Advance!

 

 

[Himommies]

The price of even attempting anything like this would be half the price of the GPU or more so..

 

[mariushm]

Yeah, get 2 x 80mm or 2 x 92 mm fans ...  the basic idea is to reduce the amount of "dead space" in the center of the fans , make more air push down on the card.

 

May also be worth unscrewing the heatsink to change the thermal paste.

 

// and they're also cheap

[AntiTrust]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, get 2 x 80mm or 2 x 92 mm fans ...  the basic idea is to reduce the amount of "dead space" in the center of the fans , make more air push down on the card.

 

May also be worth unscrewing the heatsink to change the thermal paste.

 

// and they're also cheap

yeah this, if you want to get creative you could try getting a decent 4 pin fan, connecting it to a spare CPU fan slot and figuring out a way to have it throttle up when you gpu heats up. Never tried it but I bet there is a way

[Amars1]

1 minute ago, AntiTrust said:

yeah this, if you want to get creative you could try getting a decent 4 pin fan, connecting it to a spare CPU fan slot and figuring out a way to have it throttle up when you gpu heats up. Never tried it but I bet there is a way

I do currently have the CPU fan used to cool it atm connected to a system fan slot and use MSI command centre to throttle up to 100% when I'm playing games but that's not linked to the GPU heat, I just do that manually.

 

 

[Amars1]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah, get 2 x 80mm or 2 x 92 mm fans ...  the basic idea is to reduce the amount of "dead space" in the center of the fans , make more air push down on the card.

 

May also be worth unscrewing the heatsink to change the thermal paste.

 

// and they're also cheap

Could you recommend any fans to use? 

[mariushm]

Whatever has high amount of airflow ... sort by CFM at your favorite store... get the highest cfm value for the price you're willing to pay...  Don't know what's available in your country... not from UK.

You can then adjust rpm through the pwm pin or using a fan controller...

 

For example a EU distributor of electronic parts has 366 fans that run on 12v DC : https://www.tme.eu/en/katalog/fans-cooling-and-heating-systems_41/#id_category=112524&page=1&s_field=artykul&s_order=ASC

 

If you go with 70x70 up to 100x100 mm you're down to 119 ... here's sorted by "Efficiency" , volume of air moved ... of course the better ones are more expensive but scroll down the list: LIST of FANS

 

Good example of performance for the dollar, around 3.5$ per fan : https://www.tme.eu/en/details/me92251v1-g99/dc12v-fans/sunon/me92251v1-000u-g99/

3000 rpm , 92mm , 0.165A  4.5v ...13.8v

Add around 5 euro shipping

 

If you want something stronger, that's from around 8 euro a piece, this 6v..13.8v up to 4500rpm 0.393A  : https://www.tme.eu/en/details/pf92251v1-g99/dc12v-fans/sunon/pf92251v1-000u-g99/