Ok, coolant delivered and PC drained. Had a go at getting the backplate from my 980Ti - which, ironically says "TITAN X" on it - to fit and I could probably persuade it to fit by milling down one of the mount points on it but I decided not to. Partly because it was liable to fit poorly, or I'd scratch it but mainly because doing so would render the 980Ti unusable. Alright, that's probably not entirely fair but the backplate on the 980Ti does provide cooling (passive heatsink) to a bunch of VRMs on the back of it whereas it doesn't seem to on the Titan. Maybe they moved from analogue power to digital or perhaps they're hidden under the block on the front...which I refrained from taking off to be honest.
I cursed my only half-effective drain system again....and then failed to do anything about it....again.
Got the new card in and found - as expected - that the water ports were shifted towards the front of the case. I'd estimated 30mm without taking anything out. Actual shift was 25mm....which I don't think was bad!
The GPU to CPU hardline link fits (fittings rotate) but is now at an angle. Not sure I like that...but equally sure I couldn't be posteriored (substitute your own vocabulary here) to do anything about it.
Pump to GPU link is also hardline and there was nothing to do here except take a saw to it. Well, I could have broken out the heat gun and bent a new one....but I remember it being a joy last time round. 25mm cut off the end and it cracked half way through the cut. Words were uttered that caused the sun to hide behind the clouds. Managed to save it by carefully sawing an extra few mm off the end and then filing it flat. Got away with it too! Just fits.
I had a look at trying to mount an eSATApd port in the back of the case without it being ugly. I have a BluRay drive (read only) connected at the moment and that involves cables out the door currently. Would need to order an eSATAp cable and it ought to work if I start Dremeling slots in the back of the case and making up brackets. I got that far and pretty much lost the will to live to be honest. Pressure test was good so I filled 'er up and moved on!
I'd gone back through this log as a useful and obviously accurate account of how much coolant I'd need for a complete fill....turns out that "accurate" wasn't exactly, well, accurate. Just shy of 2 litres I'd previously said. Nope. An incomplete drain - there were bits left in the bottom somewhere but all the parts I needed to access were clear. In went two litres and.....it's not quite full. Enough to power up though, just needs topping off.
So, just a tiny performance gain then!
So that's a 60% gain in FPS and a 50% gain in score. The only downside is that MS Office now thinks I've pirated it and won't activate. I haven't, by the way. The joys of "Now enter the second block" await!
And now the temps. You can see in the GPU graph (blue is temp, red is load) the peaks from demo, gpu test 1, gpu test 2 and then the last bit where there's a peak on the CPU load but not the GPU is the CPU test.
To be fair and honest here, this is from a cold system so the coolant hasn't got up to temp. Currently the coolant is at 29°C....but the fans don't even start until the coolant gets to 36°...and that's only at one third speed. They flip to 'panic mode' (100%) at 37° but I've never seen that happen.
Cleaned up the 980's block. Some corrosion in the last four years. Couple of spots near the seal where it's taken off the nickel plating. Nothing flaky though so it should be good to go.
So, the future involves ordering more coolant to top mine off and enough to replace my wife's coolant when I swap her card. I think I'll also try to treat the Titan to a matching backplate. Although, in a fit or irony, it looks like the only ones that may be available are going to say "1080Ti" on them instead of "Titan X". Ah well.
Well, cheers Andy. Much appreciated.
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