Installing An Aftermarket Cooler On Your Video Card

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The staff at HotHardware have put together a little "how-to" guide on installing an aftermarket cooler on your GPU. Whether it's for better cooling, quieter performance or just for looks, this guide should help you get the job done.

Not everyone has the funds to drop hundreds of dollars on a new GPU every generation, but they may still want to improve or update their systems in some way. This effort was similar to going from a stock CPU cooler to a high-end aftermarket heatsink from another vendor. You kind of expect some thermal and acoustic improvements, and you typically get them.
 
That's what I do with every graphics card I owned, except I put a $20 water block from Ebay.
 
Sigh, I still remember the first time I put an aftermarket cooler on my videocard.
Too eager/rough and goodbye 9800xt and $716 :(

For those curious a screwdriver took off a little IC or something, and I got a yellowish display...

Edit: also it was pretty much brand new, a couple days old
 
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ChoGGi said:
Sigh, I still remember the first time I put an aftermarket cooler on my videocard.
Too eager/rough and goodbye 9800xt and $716 :(

For those curious a screwdriver took off a little IC or something, and I got a yellowish display...

Edit: also it was pretty much brand new, a couple days old
Click to expand...
did you repair it or send it back for replacement?
 
:) suffered with a 9200se for awhile longer

I gave it to my brother to fiddle with, I don't think anything ever came of it (lost the little chip).
 
When I was young and foolish, I tried replacing the old TIM on my gt 240. The old paste was like gum, so...I scrapped it off with a knife. That heatsink looked like a cutting board:LOL:
 
I bought 2 broken Radeon 7950's on amazon for $40. The stock fans had died completely but otherwise they were in perfect working condition. I picked up the bigger brother of this cooler with 3 fans and attached it to one of the cards. I had to modify the very thick back plate cooler with a dremel because the fins were bumping against the RAM dimms and it wouldn't fully seat. I also cleaned off the screen printed thermal compound that came with the cooler and used arctic silver. Works like a dream and I'm still using that card. I want to do the same to the other card I got but I'll need to upgrade my motherboard to full ATX in order to fit both cards with the massive coolers for crossfire.
 
Any suggestions on what not to do when installing a water block on your video card?
I'm going to do that on both my 980Ti's next week. Will try not to force things with a screwdriver or scrape old thermal paste with a knife ;)
 
It was more of a slip then a force :)

Take your time and read instructions beforehand/have them on hand
Try to find a video of someone else doing it
Ground yourself
 
Is it really a must to ground yourself? I have never done it before and have been assembling my own computers for 15 years.
Shouldn't touching some metal surface be enough?
 
Why nobody slap on an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme IV on their 980Ti ? That huge cooling solution looks badass. Perhaps AC is to be blamed for not giving enough heatsinks?
I wonder if its performance will be better or worse than the MSI Lightning.
 
Nebell said:
Any suggestions on what not to do when installing a water block on your video card?
I'm going to do that on both my 980Ti's next week. Will try not to force things with a screwdriver or scrape old thermal paste with a knife ;)
Click to expand...

Do them one at a time, just in case you manage to do something that would destroy both on accident.
 
Nebell said:
Is it really a must to ground yourself? I have never done it before and have been assembling my own computers for 15 years.
Shouldn't touching some metal surface be enough?
Click to expand...
Well I only use the grounding wrist thingy with expensive hardware, but yeah just discharging excess energy is usually all I do.
 
Skylinestar said:
Why nobody slap on an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme IV on their 980Ti ? That huge cooling solution looks badass. Perhaps AC is to be blamed for not giving enough heatsinks?
I wonder if its performance will be better or worse than the MSI Lightning.
Click to expand...

I have, on an EVGA SC+ ACX2.0+.

The Extreme IV doesnt use any individual heatsinks, it can be completely removed and the old cooler refitted.
The only creative bit required is cutting out the plastic isolation sheet to match the card.
It doesnt perform quite as well as the original heatsink with fan at max, but that was thoroughly unusable, way too noisy.
My previous best "quiet" 100% stable overclock was 1435MHz, with this cooler I got it to 1469MHz 100% stable and silent.
Fan is always at max speed.

I fitted an Extreme III on my old 290x.
That was much more of a pita with all the memory and VRM heatsinks but the result was so worthwhile.
It overclocked easily to 1150MHz and was silent always. It would go faster but I didnt see the need.
No fan control required either, I kept it at max speed permanently.
 
Nenu said:
I have, on an EVGA SC+ ACX2.0+.

The Extreme IV doesnt use any individual heatsinks, it can be completely removed and the old cooler refitted.
The only creative bit required is cutting out the plastic isolation sheet to match the card.
It doesnt perform quite as well as the original heatsink with fan at max, but that was thoroughly unusable, way too noisy.
My previous best "quiet" 100% stable overclock was 1435MHz, with this cooler I got it to 1469MHz 100% stable and silent.
Fan is always at max speed.
Click to expand...
Does it require the additional shim for core contact?
 
I must say, I've never done a GPU cooler swap, with it being so much more complicated and never having a really hot card (PCS+ on my 290X works quite well). I'd be interested to know if HBM has made this sort of thing easier with more standardized positioning for VRAM cooling.
 
I wish it had went into more detail about other coolers or those AIO kit fitments to GPUs.
 
changing out the reference coolers is probably my favorite part of custom loop watercooling. There have been very few stock air coolers on graphics cards I could tolerate.
 
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