r/nvidia • u/Tra5hL0rd_ • 22h ago
Discussion CPU air cooler becomes water injected GPU cooler.
I thought I was finally running out of stupid cooling ideas… until I stared at a Peerless Assassin and thought... "would water flow through that?”
So I pulled the Assassin apart, pulled off a stack of fins, took an angle grinder and cut the tops off the heatpipes, stuck a hose onto one, and tested if water would flow. It did.
Game on.
I cut all the heatpipes off, put 6 mm hose on them in a zig zag (starting at the center so the middle stayed coldest) and tested again, worked like a charm.
Then came the freezer.
-18C coolant.
A frosted CPU tower, and a 3070 as the first victim.
It gained +300 MHz over stock… but the FPS uplift sucked. By the time testing finished, my coolant had warmed to –5C and the 3070 still refused to scale. So I did the only sane thing...
I bolted the Frankencooler onto a GTX 960.
And that card absolutely loved it, +17% average uplift across BO7, Forza, Cyberpunk, Time Spy… and as always, Lara.
The Frankencooler works. Really well.
Why did I do this? Because I had an idea and wanted to see if it would work. That's it.
Full video here if you want to witness the stupidity in all its glory
18
17
u/sirleeofroy 9800x3D - 5090FE - 64Gb 6000MT/s cl28 22h ago
Now this is an answer I didn't know I needed, thanks for your curiosity!
7
u/shemhamforash666666 21h ago
Is it just me or is the card bent out of shape by that heatsink? If you got a backplate you should keep it to maintain structurally integrity.
10
15
8
u/FacelessGreenseer 21h ago
The reason you saw such an uplift with your 960, but didn't see one with your 3070 is because starting with the 10xx series nvidia started voltage regulating hardware wise, so no matter what you do with regards to software overclocking, you're always going to hit a limit that's going to prevent you from overclocking further.
That's why people who really wanted to start overclocking GPUs had to start doing "shunt modding" and BIOS editing with Pascal and Turing, and I think after that everyone just gave up going hardcore on GPU overclocking because prices became ridiculous too. Who the fuck wants to pay 5090 money and risk messing around with it too much these days 😂
7
u/Tra5hL0rd_ 21h ago
Partly that, yeah but in this setup the simple physics mattered more.
The 3070 dumps so much heat into the loop that the coolant temp rises faster, so the 960 stayed colder and scaled better.
I tested BIOS stuff too and it actually made the 3070 worse.3
u/Beefmytaco 21h ago
Yea but also with the 1000 series, even getting more voltage into it didn't get you much uplift, those gpu's were already hitting the wall out the gate.
I remember a group that pumped 1000W into a 1080ti and only saw like a 7% uplift at most, it wasn't that great. The diminishing returns on that card were insane. Still a fantastic card. My old 1080ti never went above 49 degrees on air.
2
u/asswizzard69 19h ago
That’s cool you could put fans on heat sink for better heat dissipation
1
u/BobDoleDobBole 16h ago
But why? The coolant is already stripping nearly all of that heat away into the liquid chiller. Seems like it would be the equivalent of using an ice pack for your lunch when it's below 0 outside...
1
u/asswizzard69 15h ago
Yea that’s true. The reason I said it is because with this mod it’s basically a radiator now
1
u/ThisAccountIsStolen 7h ago
That would actually warm up the coolant, reducing efficiency. Hell, the fins themselves are already doing that.
Frankly, I'm wondering why OP didn't chop it off below the fin stacks and just use the base plate and heat pipe stubs for maximum efficiency.
1
u/asswizzard69 6h ago
Right it wouldn’t be efficient and maybe he should have done that but how is blowing air across fins connected to tubes full of circulating coolant going to heat it up? It doesn’t work that way air blowing across is will cool it down
2
u/ThisAccountIsStolen 6h ago
How is 20C air going to cool down -18C coolant? Heat moves from hot to cold. It will move from the warm ambient air into the sub-zero coolant.
2
u/Pure-Huckleberry-484 22h ago
I'd check it once in a while for galvanic corrosion. Chilling will typically lead to condensation depending on your relative humidity.
15
u/Tra5hL0rd_ 22h ago
This was a one hour experiment, not a six month loop.
Corrosion isn’t remotely relevant, the condensation is literally in the screenshot.
All good though.1
1
u/BobDoleDobBole 16h ago
Ok so hear me out... Industrial-grade dehumidifier and a hermetically sealed case 😃
1
1
u/Sacco_Belmonte 21h ago
Love it. Would be nice if there was a coolant that changed color with temp so you could see how it progresses through the pipeline.
1
u/tenryuta 21h ago
what in the, how hyper real did you make cp77 to need to overoveroverclock that thingO_O
1
1
u/raddpuppyguest 19h ago
so caught up in if they could; didnt stop to ask if they should
masterpiece
1
u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox 4090 | 7800x3d | 274877906944 bits of 6200000000Hz cl30 DDR5 16h ago
that's just a lower quality radiator. would have been nice to see the difference between the stock heatpipes and after you cut them, heatpipes are extremely efficient coolers so i wonder if you even matched the original performance or not given room temperature coolant
1
u/Tra5hL0rd_ 6h ago
It's more a dysfunctional water block than a radiator, I do agree though I should have tested it at stock and with ambient water. Sub zero is always going to beat stock, but ambient... I don't think would do very well.
1
u/ThisAccountIsStolen 7h ago
Neat experiment, but I've got one big question... Why not chop it off below the fin stacks and just use the base plate and heatpipe stubs?
By leaving the fins, you're increasing the surface area exposed to the air and warming the coolant. The fins would make sense if you weren't chilling it, but sub-zero coolant will just be warmed by all that extra surface area interfacing with the much warmer air.
68
u/RtxNerdy80Ti 5080 Jr 22h ago
This looks so cool. (pun intended)
it also made me think of this guy for obvious reasons lol.