Hybrid GPU mod

Feronix

New member
Heya guys!

I'm back with yet another impossible question :)

I've recently purchased a what I thought was a reference EVGA GTX 760 2GB. While this card has enough horsepower for the little gaming that I do, it is incredibly loud. Not only during games, but also at idle because Nvidia has locked the fan so that the lowest it will go is 40%, even though my card idles at 28 C.

EVGA-GeForce-GTX-760-EVGA-Cooler-2GB-GDDR5-%2802G-P4-2761%29.jpg


Obviously this is a bit high, and it should be able to do 20% easily in idle. The only way that this seems possible though, is by either flashing a custom (unsupported) vBios on it, which I'd really rather not cause I risk bricking the card and I have no experience with it.

The second way is watercooling it. This is where I found out that when you buy an EVGA card with stock cooler, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a reference card and after a quick investigation there appear to be no full-cover water blocks available for my specific model.

There are however, the universal blocks that I am considering. They go over the GPU core only and thus leave the vRAM uncooled, so I need a solution for that.

EK-VGA_Supremacy_NA_800.jpg


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I was thinking of modding my GPU shroud so that I can fit the block under it and still keep the original shroud + fan on. But, that would still mean that the fan will be loud so I have to fix that somehow and I still don't want to flash the vBios.

I think there are two main options right now for me:

- Solder in (or use a 5/7v adaptor) a resistor to make the PWM fan spin and 5/7volt instead of 12. Then set a fan profile so that it does 60% (60 : 12 x 5)= 25% in idle and ramps up to 100% (100 : 12 x 5)= 41% under load.

- Get a regular style PWM fan (quieter) and attach that to the shroud and plug it into the fan. It won't be blower-style but there's only one way out of the shroud anyway so air should travel over the vRAM heatsinks.

Can you also buy the blower style fans seperate somewhere? Maybe I could get a slightly different (slower spinning, quieter) one.

I'm also running OS X on the same computer and there is no Afterburner software or similar available for that, so that would mean in OS X it won't spin up much at all (default fan profile). I won't be gaming in this OS but video editing might happen. Would the card run too hot editing on CUDA?

What do you lot think? Yay or nay? Any other things I could try?

Would love to hear from you.

Thanks in advance! :)
 
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Can you also buy the blower style fans seperate somewhere? Maybe I could get a slightly different (slower spinning, quieter) one.

There are many blower fans available:
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of course I have no idea how loud they are but they are all about 4€ so trying out and finding out that they are loud wouldnt hurt your bank

and yes I know they are all for the Pci slots but modding them is really the smallest problem :D
 
Also, I mentioned that Nvidia locked it in the vBios and even by setting a custom fan curve it won't go below 40%.

Great suggestion TPC, thanks, but those aren't PWM, are they?

Considered getting an 80mm Noctua Redux fan as well but they're 25mm thick which is the same thickness as the card itself so that's not going to help :(
 
well cutting that shroud is easy and then you could either put a normal fan (a slimmer one) in there and let the air pressure dynamics handle the rest or put the after market blower type fans in, wich are just dc not pwm.
Either way would be a great mod
 
To demonstrate, I pulled my fan curve way below 40 in idle, but as you can see by the yellow line, this does nothing. It is in fact a vBios lock:

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Well, I guess it has to be a PWM fan otherwise it'll either be loud all the time still, or not spin up during GPU intensive work. Honestly, I don't know if the VRAM needs all that much cooling.

Right, time for modding ideas and an image dump!

Stock shroud + fan:

001_zpsada9ca27.png


Remove the stock fan and expand the hole by 10mm on each side (although move slightly to the left, cause there is only 10mm of space to the right of the hole).

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Get this Noctua Redux 80mm PWM fan. Max RPM = 1800 RPM @ 17dB. That means it'll do 1800 : 100 x 40 = 720 RPM at 40% which should, in theory, be pretty quiet.

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Will probably take it out of the frame (or at least remove the left section of the frame) so that it will blow sideways as well. The frame might also interfere with the oddly placed 6+8pins and the 4pin PWM header for the fan itself.

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I was thinking I could maybe use the two hole in the far right of the PCB (last image) to mount the fan to the card instead of the shroud.

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Not the absolute best sight, but not bad at all and I'll end up painting the shroud white :)

I can get a universal GPU block then and put that on the core

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Make some 'room' in the shroud for short tubing running to the top of the card (if necessary). Then two 90 degree angled fittings.

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Get some of these for the RAM around the core

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And the naked PCB of my card:

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Bonus: I'll add a custom white acrylic backplate. Not with this design cause it doesn't look very good, but it gives you an idea ;)

009_zpsc55499d2.png
 
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Interesting! I have a Xilence XQ cooler with a cageless 80mm 4 pin fan if you could make use of it, it's yours. I was going to do something similar a while back but changed my mind.

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I think I've seen a 5970 modded like this before?

Either way it'll be cool to see this happen :P.

Might just go for the block (or even Kraken G10) under the shroud and mod the Bios myself if I can find the correct tools. At least that way I'll know 100% sure that the bios is completely stock except for the fan adjustment.

Interesting! I have a Xilence XQ cooler with a cageless 80mm 4 pin fan if you could make use of it, it's yours. I was going to do something similar a while back but changed my mind.

Thanks mate, quite cool but I had a look at seems like the minimum start-up and operating voltages are both at 6v which is 50% fan speed so that's still a tad high. The Noctua at 40% would do 720 RPM and if needs to can go all the way down to ~350 RPM so that would be insanely quiet.

Thanks for the offer, but if I'm replacing the fan at all, I think I'll go for the uber-quiet Noctua one :)

Does VRAM even need a lot of cooling anyway?


I did consider that but it's really expensive (might as well get a new card then) and if I look at the PCB of my card with the power connectors nearly in the middle, I worry if it would even fit.
 
I'm sure I've seen that Heatkiller copper plate cooler on the right of the picture, for sale somewhere recently dirt cheap, like a fiva or something. I'll dig through my history in a bit and have a look.
 
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