THE GPU COOLER PROJECT PART 2

From the start, my GTX 1080 Ti video card would overheat. It had one of those blower style coolers and obviously this was not good enough after less that a minute running full power. (How do they get away with selling a card that overheats when run at full power? I don't know ) - but this must be fixed.

(Before the coolers)

I had already bought two different GPU coolers and three fans with the intent of using them to get the GTX 1080 Ti card running properly – but there were problems with these ideas:

First idea: Noctua NH-D9L – a great CPU cooler but needs a special mounting plate made to fit it to a GPU. Also takes up so much space that only one GPU can be fitted. 

Second idea: Raijintek Morpheus II - a very good cooler, up to 360 watts TDP and it fits on the GPU and comes with lots of extra parts to cool the card chips that need them BUT it takes up more than three PCIE slots (more than 60mm wide with fans on it) so once again, you can only have one GPU unless I want to replace the entire motherboard and case.

Soooooo . . . . . 

Having looked over the specs and carefully checked everything, I bought a second used GTX 1080 Ti Blower design and two Arctic Accelero III coolers, which DO fit inside the 3 PCIE slot 60mm width and thus allow me to have two 1080 Ti's that can run full power without melting down.

Okay, so they don't blow air out the top of the case as I wanted in the previous post but hey, at least

they work.

HOW I INSTALLED THE ARCTIC ACCELERO 3 COOLER ON A GTX 1080 TI

After doing the first card I decided to make lots of notes for anyone out there who wants to try this.

First, please remember that THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY. Don't know why some folks are so worried about this, but there you go, no doubts there.

You will be replacing the cooler on your card but if you are careful and not stupid you will not harm the actual working parts of the card itself in any way.

Tools you will need

Work surface (in my case, a towel. )

Phillips Screwdriver Medium

Phillips Screwdriver small

Tweezers

Fine hobby knife

Fine tipped pliers

Disposable alcohol soaked computer cleaning cloths (come in a plastic bottle)

Magnifier

Disposable gloves – wear them whenever you work on the insides of your PC.

Vernier Caliper

Earthing wrist strap (yeah, okay I didn't use one. I'm an expert :D I still suggest that you use one though. )

1. Removing the existing cooler

Take all of the tiny screws out of the card anywhere you can see them apart from those holding the end plate (the mounting plate with the output sockets in it).

Then gently remove the cooler, making sure that you don't pull it hard as there will be at least one cable and plug joining the two parts. Next, carefully remove these plugs from the board. The plugs are fiddly things and may need persuasion with a small screwdriver at either side – but don't break the socket.

Watch out for the thermal transfer paste (grey goo) as you pull the thing apart, don't let it touch anything or it will make a mess. It may also be toxic so if you get it on you, clean it off - and wear disposable gloves while you do anything inside your computer, not just for your protection, your sweat and dirt could damage electrical components.

2. Cleaning the GPU chip

This is where we get out those alcohol soaked cleaning cloths. Clean all of the thermal paste off the chip in the center of the card, GENTLY clean the surface and watch out for the tiny bits around it – those tiny rectangular bits are electronic components and if you knock any of them off you are in deep doodoo.

On the first card I did ( Asus ) there was a lot of thermal paste in the gulley around the chip and I got rid of most of this by gently brushing with an old soft toothbrush. Once again, be very gentle, you don't want to put pressure on the tiny components stuck down there – if any of them are damaged you will need specialist help to repair them. Maybe. If you can find the bit that came off. If you can find a tech who can do it.

(Bare Card)

3. Fitting the spacers

First, according to the instruction sheet you need to pick the right spacers for your card. Then you need the Vernier Caliper to measure those tiny spacers to get the right ones. These things are light and very small, make sure you don't lose any by opening the packet into the box lid. 

(The spacers with rings stuck on)

Next up is sticking the adhesive rings onto the spacers: this is very fine, I needed tweezers, a fine tip knife and a magnifier to do this.

(mounting plate with spacers, tools)

Then sticking the spacers with their sticky rings onto the mounting plate was also a fiddly task since it was hard to remove the backing paper ring from the double-sided sticky ring – I used the knife tip for this and the magnifier and it was still fiddly.

You will also need to make sure that you stick them over the correct holes according to the instruction sheet too. Fortunately there is a bit of slop and even if you get the sticky ring over the bolt hole a bit it doesn't matter, the bolt should still thread in.

Once that was done, there was a second set (this time they were black and already had the sticky rings stuck on) to stick onto the back plate. Finally, there is a black foam rectangle that is to be stuck onto the back plate in the center. 

(back plate parts)

Once that is done, you only need to screw the mounting plate onto the cooler itself.

4. Fitting the small radiators

Put the inside of the old cooler above your bare circuitboard so you can see where the heat transfer pads were – this is where you need to put all those small aluminium radiators.

(card and cooler)

Clean these off with more of the alcohol cloths or the glue might not stick. In the instructions they recommended using an eraser for this but it didn't seem to work very well when I tried it and then I had to brush the erasings off afterward. One of my cards had something like oil on it and only the cloths got this off.

Fit the biggest ones you can but don't let them overhang the board or they might come off during installation.

You can also use the clear tape to insulate parts of the board if needed too. I wish the tape was coloured though, it was hard to see.

I found the rads that had cutout bases most useful. It is a good idea to lay them out first without glue to make sure you have everything neatly covered.

(fitted radiators)

Once you have the layout, stick the rads down with the thermal glue supplied. I only used a small amount and wiggled each mini-radiator to try and spread the glue all over the chip and rad – it might not have completely covered all of the chip face but I don't like the idea of having the glue all over the board either and so far nothing has failed.

Make sure that the radiators you stick on don't touch anything else on the board – this is where the magnifier comes in handy. The glue takes an hour to set so once you have all of them stuck on you can easily spend a few minutes checking the positions of all of them and adjusting without concern.

5. Fitting the cooler to the card

First, be very careful with the cooler- it comes with thermal paste already applied and both times I managed to smear this which was not ideal. It seemed a good idea to set it back in the plastic tray it came in which has a depression for the pasted area – but both times I still managed to smear it a bit, not enough to worry me but still . . .

When you go to fit the cooler onto the card, put the cooler face down on the bench, then put the card on top, then the backplate on top of that and then fumble with one screw at a time getting them in and started before going on to the next and finally screwing them all down a little each at a time so they all go down evenly.

All that remains is to plug in the four-pin fan plug and it's done.

(both Accelero3-equipped 1080's fitted)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relocating the Wifi card

This had to be moved since the second Accelero 3 takes up the end PCIE slot where it was – so I came up with a way to keep it working that only required some holes being drilled for a special fitting. I picked up a PCIE riser cable to connect t to the same slot as before and all was good to go.

(ready to drill holes)

This drilling was not going to be simple since I do not want any metal filings in the computer case: that is a very bad idea. I also did not want to take everything out of the case just to drill the holes so I came up with a way to do it: I found a small box that would fit around and under the area and cut it to slot over and around the area and capture all of the metal shavings. This worked very well – after I had finished I could just throw it away and then install the card in it's new place once the GPUs were in.

(new improved tools)

There was a little more to the wifi installation, actually – I had to chop off the top of the slot fitting and drill two holes in it to bolt the card into the case. The final fitting was achieved using a rubber band and some blutack. The rubber band went around the handles of the pliers to hold the nut and the blutack went on the tip of the screwdriver to hold the screw on when fitting them. I also used a cable tie to fix the card in place before fixing the first bolt and nut because it was otherwise impossible to do with only two hands.

(Wifi card mounted with cable attached)

After all of that, I hooked everything up, closed the case and Pop! Everything worked first time which made me very happy. I adjusted the GPU cooling curve to fit that supplied by Accelero in the box but I did it in NZXT's CAM software rather than MSI Afterburner as they recommended as I like to have CAM running minimised in a corner of my screen giving me CPU and GPU temps – Afterburner seems to have no equivalent mini – display, instead having an exhaustive array of graphs and such.

The Results

I have a special DAZ Studio iRay Render file that I use to test the system – it takes about 15 minutes to render and all three processors run full steam (99 to 100 %) for that time.

CPU Temps – 79 – 83 degrees

GPU Temps – 70 – 73 degrees

Anything else I threw at the GPUs never went over 70 so I am happy with that and I am sure that I could overclock the GPUs without any problem if I choose to later on. For the price of $150, the Accelero 3 Cooler is excellent – even in the three PCIE slot space, it is so good that I would recommend it to anyone – particularly when GTX 1080 cards with fancy coolers are still very pricey: I got a used blower style 1080 Ti for $800 AU and with the $150 AU Accelero 3, I paid $950 for what could otherwise cost well over $1200 new (if you can get one) – and it is guaranteed to stay cool.

Is it quiet? Well, it's pretty quiet: there is no point even trying to make a silent AND full power computer - not unless you want to shell out BIG money – and besides, hearing the fans ramp up is a clear indicator of what the system is doing. It's still a lot quieter that any of my previous computers at full power.

So why didn't I get an RTX 2080? Because I don't think they are worth getting at the moment: where's the software to make use of the new chips, and why should I pay twice the price for less than twice the performance? Two 1080 Ti's are a better deal.

Footnote: If you are looking to game with this sort of system please note that you CANNOT get an SLI bridge onto the cards once you have put the custom coolers on.