Novel custom GPU water cooler help please?

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frosty3907

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Hello all this is my first post on the forum but I'm a long time reader of the site.
I've done plenty of custom mods and computer jobs my whole life, I repair laptops and all kinds of stuff- when it comes to my PC I generally try and squeeze every little bit of performance out of it and to make that harder I usually use the cheapest bits I can find or recycle old gear.. generally it's not neat or pretty but it usually works :)


ANYWAY - my current job is upgrading my GTX 480 to a custom watercooling solution, it just runs too hot as I use it for fermi with progressive rendering.

However the proper water cooling solutions and blocks are far too expensive for my budget and so I'm looking at using a swiftech i-20 that I repaired (radiator leak):
Swiftech-H20-120-Compact.gif


In conjunction with the stock GTX heatsink:
evga_gtx480_02.jpg


which already has a big chunk of metal and proper component placement (obviously).

My current idea is this;

The GPU block has 5 heat transfer pipes running through it up into the cards radiator (see image above) which is cooled by the fan, from past experience I know these pipes are generally hollow and so it would seem these would be ideal to pump some water through, from the center looping back outwards as they go.

So do the experts foresee any problems? Likely with the connection between water line and heatpipe (no idea where to begin on that) and/or the different pipe diameters.. flow rate... etc...

Go easy if you think it's a stupid idea, I just hate spending hundreds of dollars on a lump of metal when I already have a large lump of metal available to use :)
 
The heatpipes aren't connected. It'd be a bitch to make a loop with them ;).

Not impossible, but even if you did rig it up, you'd get sub-par performance, and possibly corrosion issues down the line.
 
uhhh... yeah, what arcygenical said.

Get an MCW60 or MCW80. The MCW60 are cheap nowadays, approximately $25 used. You can use those in conjunction with the stock cooler plate, look it up, many people have done that. The heatsink is easily removable from the rest of the cooling components. Many people leave the stock fan and RAM/MOSFET cooler on there.
 
Don't do it.

Heatpipes already transfer heat with incredible efficiency - they are a sort of phase-change system, and this is something you will not get with water. You may be able to augment a watercooling system by exposing part of the heatload (say using an in-line copper block clamped, with thermal interface material, under high-pressure to the heatsink - probably more trouble than it's worth when you can simply add radiators) to a heatpipe cooler, but that's about all you can do.

Maybe if you could somehow affix the heatsink to the backside of the GPU, that'd help, but that seems difficult to fit. Alternatively, it would be possible to use heatpipes to TRANSFER the GPU-backside heat to another area, and then cool that load with the heatsink. It's still way too much trouble, but it illustrates the idea that heatpipes are excellent heat-conduits - they serve to transfer heat across great distances - as opposed to relying upon pure conduction within metals, which as we can see does not work as well, considering the dominance of heatpipe heatsinks.

Edit: and yes, what Tsumi said. Do that...heh
 
Yep, I had a GTX 470 that I tried to do with my D-tek Fuzion GFX 2. Unfortunately, the block was a little bit too large, and it hit part of the mounting system for the 470, causing improper contact. The base of the MCW60 is curved at the edges, and smaller, so it fits on the GTX 5xx and 4xx (ones using GF100 and GF110) fairly easily.

Edit: Plus, this method should not void your warranty (if you registered it). Modifying the stock cooler definitely will.
 
thanks guys, can't find any MCW60's on ebay in Australia...
I just hate to throw out such a huge chunk of metal as the stock heatsink and sink even more money into this video card :)

Yep I know the pipes aren't connected, was thinking of just adding a U connector to the ends.. when you look at the stock heatsink they aren't such a far throw from what you get when you buy a waterblock... usually the same thing minus a fan plus two barbs and some hollowed out bits.. I may be simplifying of course :)
 
You are grossly oversimplifying things. A waterblock is in no way similar to a heatpipe. A heatpipe is smooth and hollow on the inside, to facilitate the phase change and heat transfer of the gases inside. A waterblock (look up most waterblocks besides the MCW30) has a base which has a bunch of pins, in which water is forced through. The pins increase the surface area exposed to the water, greatly increasing the effectiveness of heat transfer. If they do not have pins, then they have narrow channels cut through the block, but these are usually much less effective than the pin designs. To say that they're practically the same is a great mistake.
 
hmm ok, so if i got a waterblock, would that swiftwech i-20 radiator even be up to cooling a gtx 480?
 
a 1x120 radiator can cool a GTX 480, depends on your fans. Temps won't be spectacular, so don't expect any miracles, but it can reduce load temps by maybe 20-30 C, not sure though.
 
With a really loud, high pressure fan like a Delta or high speed Panaflo / other 120x38mm fan, sure. You'd be better off reapplying TIM to the stock block and strapping the same or quieter fan to the stock heatsink after tearing off the plastic shroud on the card though. Probably similar temps, the same amount of noise or less, much lower out of pocket expenses (only the cost of the fan and some zip ties), and fewer points of failure -- no pump to die, no tubing or block to gunk up / crack / rupture / leak, no coolant to replace from time to time, no radiator to get holes in it, etc.
 
That's a good point.

I personally wouldn't watercool a GTX 480 with any less than a 120.2 radiator or a shrouded, push-pull 140.1 using 2 good fans (ducted 120mm scythe GT AP-15, because they work better than 140mm fans).

Otherwise I'd just reapply TIM to the stock heatsink, and try to increase airflow. It's already somewhat of a beefy heatsink, so zip-tied fans would certainly make a measurable difference. I'd zip-tie a decent 120mm fan on there if I could (though that may raise case temps a bit if the current airflow direction is rearward).

I'm not saying you wouldn't see any improvement using a simple 120.1 radiator and a cheap fan, but the surface area of that 120.1 radiator is likely comparable to that of the stock heatsink anyway. You won't see a large improvement, and much of the improvement will likely be from the higher airflow of a full-sized 120mm fan. That's speculative, however.
 
mmm, i've already replaced the TIM, right now i'm trying to get an old video card installed to drive the second monitor due to the 80c idle temps when using dual monitors bug..

so, sell the water kit, buy more fans?
 
Ah, my bad. Either way, the structure of a heatpipe is simply not designed for watercooling.
 
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