modding 8800 cooler.

[MrWizard6600]

ok so I have a sorta weird one for you

everyone knows water cooling is better then air cooling (... cept with thermaltake :p). but whats better then water cooling? water and air cooling. furthermore most of the time when you buy the hardware you get the air cooler, but you have to remove it (and sometimes try to pawn it off) and replace it with your waterblock. this has always pissed me off. thats perfectly good free cooling going to waste!

so heres what I want to do. in the next two weeks im gonna get a 680i mainboard and an E6300. around christmas ill get an 8800GTS or GTX. and a few more weeks after that ill try to get a water loop for it.

so, I want to use both a waterblock and the stock air cooler for my 8800GTX. my plan was to mount the stock air cooler on the back side of the card, and put some 100% non-conductive thermal pads on the backside of the PCB which, on the frontside has the memory and core.

so, if I cant manage to get some pins/bolts/screws that will extend the full distance to get thru the holes for the air cooler and the holes for the water block, I'll just make a clip.

but heres the thing. I really want to put it on the PCI-e slot thats on the top (closest to the io). but im think its gonna bump into the RJ45 port and USB ports. i dont want to mount it on the lowest one because eventually im going to go SLI, and I wont on the middle one, its only 8X.

so if I have to cut this cooler to make it fit, what should I use to cut it? im asuming I can take off the plastic cover, but cutting fins might be a pain in the ass. I was thinking I could fill the area between the fins with some sort of foam, and use a bandsaw or something. and after its cut, just melt the foam off.

can this be done? is there any way i can make this work? i really want to cuz, I want to one-up everyone thats going to have a liquid cooled 8800.

thanks for any suggest.

[Blur2u]

it's a good idea, but don't they sell or have designs of the 8800gtx thats a hybrid water/air cooling? i know anandtech just did a review on a bunch of 8800's and there's one that has a air/peltier as the cooler i believe it's made by sparkle.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2873&p=3

[MrWizard6600]

yeah but what im actually wondering is if i can mount the stock (kick ass) air cooler on the back of the board, without it touching the IO, and if i it does touch the IO, how should i cut it?

[MrWizard6600]

actually it might bump into the ram too T.T

[kill4killin]

That's a really good idea, however, I don't think it will be very effective. I'm having trouble kind of putting why I'm thinking that into words, however, the basic point I was thinking was that since the air cooler cant really cool much past the ambient temp of the air it is using, I don't think it will make much of a difference. However, if you used two water blocks on either side of the card, you would probably see more benefit. (sorry, thats a little vague)

[brinox]

honestly the backside of the card doesnt have the components to generate enough heat for the air cooled system to be effective if you ask me. the heatpipe is supposed to get hot enough to move energy back and forth along the pipe.

i understand that the backside of the card does indeed get hot, but the interface for the stock heatsink is 10-12 chips of RAM and 2 processors, all of which come in direct contact of the heatsink, save for thermal pads/paste.

i share your thoughts on the wasted heatsink, but lets be practical - how effective is the heatsink going to be without the proper interfacing that its designed for?

[MrWizard6600]

Dominator ram does exactly what im planning on doing, and it got some pretty sweet cooling.