[Project] ducted cooling for video card

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blkdrgn613

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Sep 2, 2008
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i recently purchased the Asus Maximus IV Gene-z/Gen 3 with a pair of EVGA GTX 570 2.5gb.

after gaming for about a day, i was having issues with games freezing up and crashing.

turns out that the close proximity of the 2 cards was causing too much heat to build up and not allowing the fan on the upper card to push air.

after some thinking, i came up with the idea of mounting a fan next to it. didn't work out so well. since water cooling the cards would be too expensive, and i haven't ever done a WC system before, i came up with this idea of a ducted fan.

i went to home depot and picked up a sheet of aluminium.

using nothing but these tools

tools.jpg


the first prototype did not work out so well..

prototype.jpg


so i opened up autocad and came up with this.

autocad.jpg


i printed it out, taped it to the aluminium and proceeded to cut it out.

cut.jpg


and this is where i am up to, the dry fit of the cut pieces.

dryfit.jpg


my next step is to find (or buy more) solder so i can "weld" the pieces together.

i will be mounting a SilenX EFX-08-15 80mm Case Fan to this little guy. 32 CFM @ 15 dBA.

i will of coarse update my post as i complete this little mod/build.
 
DAY 2

i soldered all the pieces together and wrapped the whole thing in duct tape. (bad solder job lol)

done1.jpg


done2.jpg


done3.jpg


and here is it fitted to the modified 570 cover.

attached.jpg


modifying the cover wasn't hard, just took a dremel to the end of it and took off little bits at a time til if fit snug.

i will update again once the fans get here and i get one installed. after that will be final pics of the finished job installed into my system.
 
RogueTrip said:
nice idea, wanna see it in use now and results :)

Black duct tape FTW hehe
Click to expand...

i'm thinking i should do some benchmarks like the big boys do, stock and modified, and post it :)

gonna get red and black tho i think and redo it to match the ROG color scheme i have going.
 
DAY 3

fans came in.

fan.jpg


popped it into its place and mounted the duct to the video card.

ins.jpg


skipped the redo of the duct tape as they wanted almost 12 bucks per roll for the colors for only a small amount compared to the grey @ 3 bucks for about 10 times the amount you get. tried sharpies then realized nobody will really see it except for this pic of it lol.

since i don't know how the big boys benchmark temps, i used furmark in burn-in mode and let it run for 10 min at 1920x1080 4x msaa.

with the cover off the card exposing the heatsinks, i got a max temp of 110 C

with the cover on, max temp of 100 C

with the duct on and running, max temp of 81 C

i cannot even hear it running.

as you can see from the pic above, there really is NO room for airflow on the upper card.

so i guess all in all, my idea is a success. i only wish i took mounting into consideration for my design. i may still add a bracket to the back of it so i can mount it to the case instead of using a zip tie.
 
Last edited:
pretty cool

and glad it shows some temp change. that is a good amount of degrees cooler
 
I had a similar idea of doing a funnel-like solution for keeping my AMD card quiet. You'd take the air from outside the case and use a big fan to push cool air into the card trough a funnel/pipe which would hopefully result in the card small loud fan not having to ramp up at all. No idea if it would work but could be a fun project.
 
i'm sure something like that could be done. it would only be a matter of dimensions and placement.
 
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