Homemade GTX 280 watercooling

Tubes

Tubes

Tubes

Associate
Joined
23 Sep 2008
Posts
104
Hello,

I recieved my shiny new GTX 280 this morning courtesy of Overclockers and am now firmly getting stuck into planning my new build. I have been toying with the idea of watercooling this system.

Me being of the "bite off more than I can chew nature" I was planning to manufacture the water blocks myself.

Now, here is my question; what parts of the card actually need cooling?

I was looking to link some images of the pcb but didn't want to break the forum rules, but they are there if you google it.

From what I can tell from these pictures and by looking at here it seems that the water block makes contact with the main chip and 8 smaller chips to the left,above and right of the main chip.

That is the fairly obvious part, but by looking at pictures of the rear of the card I can see that the same 8 smaller chips are assisted by a heat spreader type of arrangement, would i need to worry about this if i was watercooling or just leave them as they are?

My final question is, what about the rear end of the card? My Zotac and most other cards I have seen place the cooling fan here. Can this just be left or would I need some sort of extra cooling there?

Any input whatsoever is very welcome.


Tubes
 
Last edited:
If you've got access to:
- some very good CNC kit (it will need machining in 3D)
- a decent electrolytic copper block
- accurate schematics of your card - it may not be the reference design!
- facilities to machine a top,
- facilites to produce a seal for the two halfs
- are able to thread the barb holes,
- moderate CAD skills (this is the easy bit ;) )
- time and money to try

then great, but I'd say dont.
More things can go wrong than right.
 
Last edited:
take your stock cooler off and have a look at where the thermal pads are. These are the points of contact you want to make with the cooler!!

you best bet is just to look at pictures on the web of the EK, XPSC, Koolance, DangerDen (to name a few) water blocks and see what they are like in terms of design, etc

but to be honest, for the cost of the copper block and the machining time and CAD design, i recon you'd be better off buying one off the shelf.

but be interested to see a build thread if you did make one :D
 
You also got to get the dimensions right first time, or make another... Getting a good fit on both GPU and RAM chips is tricky. As a one-off exercise not worth the effort, but if you're making 100 or so then OK.

[Of course, if you happen to have a 3D laser scanner handy that would help]
 
I can certainly see the pitfalls in this idea. Materials and machinery are not a problem, wouldn't cost me anything, my only out lay would be the 'o' ring and glue but that still comes in at over £20, still might be able to get that for free also.

I have been looking at some other waterblocks that were mentioned danger Den and koolance, it has given me a lot of ideas and also made me think a bit about it a bit more. I do have the option of leaving the gfx card as it is for the time being but would definitely like to use water on the cpu(hate those huge cpu coolers), making a block for the cpu is a hell of a lot easier but also not exactly saving me a huge amount of cash. It would however give me a little bit of insight into the whole process.
 
I have a dangerden tieton here with a cracked acrylic faceplate that I'm having redone in delrin, I can snap some photos to give you an idea.

You should make tons of them and sell them here on ocuk! :p
 
I had to double check the date on this thread, I thought this was 2002 or something, with people milling straight tracks in lumps of copper. I can imagine the satisfaction you might get with making your own blocks if you are that type of bloke and everything but I promise you, these days it is far more economical and you will almost certainly get better performance if you buy off the shelf. I admit I did a bit of iron mongery with my water cooling kit, but that was only to make my own back plates for the NB block and gpu block, along with custom modifying a gcard unisink, but as far as the actual blocks go, unless you are able to machine the intricate pin designs they have in them these days it is optimistic of you to think you can get the same performance. Sorry to be blunt about it. If you were looking to get the best performance out of your gcard then a core only block is what you need which will also allow you to customise your gcard a little bit by choosing how to cool the ram, i/o chip and mosfets, i.e. there would be no problem making sinks for them from scratch as they are by definition need only basic cooling.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom