Replacing Sapphire 5700XT fan shroud for Noctua fans

[C64]

oooh its a reference heatsink ? that explains it then I thought it was the twin fanned model with the separate memory and vrm heatsinks
reference heatsinks and coolers have always been garbage in my eyes
using 2x 120mm fans does have a bigger impact but on heatsinks designed for 2x 3x fans not leaf blower heatsinks

I thought he had this one

 

[Rev_Night]

oooh its a reference heatsink?

The card is a Sapphire Nitro+ 5700XT. So if the heatsink used here is the same as the reference models with blowers, then yes.

 

[sadat]

Don't suppose you're concerned about warranty after doing this mod? Tbh I'm actually really keen to see your results.

 

[Rev_Night]

Don't suppose you're concerned about warranty after doing this mod? Tbh I'm actually really keen to see your results.

Theres no way that this would expire the wtty because theres no way to prove that I did anything. Remove the fan shroud is just a few screws. Although as far as screws go, I did remove a W and D stickers on two screws replacing the thermal paste. I read that these wttys are more for the asian markets then US/Europe ones.

I am going to try to downvolt 0.005mv until Furmark 15 min crashes. It's currently at 1080mv, and hopefully I can get this thing quiet without spending more money.

Kinda disappointing there aren't any Arctic P12 vs Noctua A12x25 reviews out there for Radiator/heatsinks. All the ones I am finding are for case fans, which is a big difference

 

[sadat]

Comparison including these two fans and much more:https://youtu.be/W2Zis8RjcX8. You were saying?

 

[sadat]

It's also a 22min video so if you don't wanna sit through there are time stamps.

 

[Rev_Night]

I already saw that. At the end for conclusions, he says this is for Case Fans, not Radiator fans. Case fans have no impedance, meanwhile Radiator fans have a whole radiator to have to get air through. For this thread (heatsink/radiator application), thats a bad review. It doesn't apply here

 

[Unseul]

I already saw that. At the end for conclusions, he says this is for Case Fans, not Radiator fans. Case fans have no impedance, meanwhile Radiator fans have a whole radiator to have to get air through. For this thread (heatsink/radiator application), thats a bad review. It doesn't apply here

No impedance? No meshes, no filters? Just because there's not a radiator, doesn't mean there's no impedance. You want the best fan you can get whether it's on the front of the case or on a radiator. The higher the pressure the better it will perform in almost any circumstances, apart from sitting in a windpipe, unimpeded, registering good CFM numbers.

EDIT - The review is done on a radiator, it states it's about radiators.

 

[sadat]

I already saw that. At the end for conclusions, he says this is for Case Fans, not Radiator fans. Case fans have no impedance, meanwhile Radiator fans have a whole radiator to have to get air through. For this thread (heatsink/radiator application), thats a bad review. It doesn't apply here

No you didn't watch this video. Not this one. The title clearly says cooler/radiator. The same guy did another video for case fans. Jeeez man man...like honestly what are we doing here...

 

[Rev_Night]

rofls you are correct. I finally did watch the video a week or two ago and I went out and bough them. Time for not only one, but two posts of results!

So the fan bracket,5 pack of Arctic P12s, and gpu-mini adapter cable, came in from Amazon and I was able to assemble the fan bracket. Only 2 fans are needed, so 3 are being put up for sale. I assembled everything and closed up the pc case and my temps were extraordinary high. After some research, apparently, little did I know, that gpu fans don't pull hot air from the heatsink, they actually push cool air. So yeah, I had the fan orientation wrong. Oops.

Try #2: After taking apart everything and putting the fans in the correct way (fan grill faces heatsink, open fans face bottom of pc case), I actually really like it. They plug in straight to the GPU. These 2 fans are extraordinary quiet, and it took 2-3 hours of COD before I could hear anything from my pc. Even then, I had to put my ears up against it. This is with my headphones being off and my ceiling fan being off, all to reduce extraneous noise. Whats best is that this solution doesn't void my wtty, is very easy to do, and can be used for all future GPUs. Even if future GPUs have a massive 3 slot heatsink, I still have 2 slots extra, so I can just place it down one. Of course, the GPU (2 slots) and fan bracket (2 slots) now take up 4 slots, but I never had anything there, so that's fine with me. The OEM sapphire fan shroud, screws, and slot insert will go into a ziplock bag and stored in my generic pc parts box for RMA, or years down the line I want to sell this.

Quite happy, I now have a 99% dead silent pc under full load. Temps/noise will only get better when I delid the 6700k in a few weeks. Maybe i'll put the LM on the gpu too.

Stats during COD sessions:
90% PWM: 66C, 76C
70% PWM: 69C, 78C
50% PWM: 73C, 83C
45% PWM: 76C, 85C
40% PWM: 80C, 90C

 

[Rev_Night]

This past weekend, I added liquid metal (TG Conductonaught) to try and drop temps even more. I was able to do several COD sessions at 40% PWM and 50% PWM (horizontal line fan curve across all temps) and then a gradual curve from 20-45% PWM (realistic fan curve, because who wants to hear full power at idle).

Stock Paste/Stock Sapphire 5700XT Pulse Fans:
Core: 75C
Junction: 90C
PWM set to 20-50% but kinda loud

Noctua NT-H1/Stock fans:
Core: 73C (improvement of 2C)
Junction: 83C (improvement of 7C)
PWM set to 20-50% but kinda loud

Noctua NT-H1/Custom Arctic P12 fan bracket:
90% PWM: 66C, 76C
70% PWM: 69C, 78C
50% PWM: 73C, 83C
45% PWM: 76C, 85C
40% PWM: 80C, 90C
Somewhat cooler temps, significantly cooler if you go up in PWM, but its a lot quieter.

TG Conductonaught/Custom Arctic P12 fan bracket:
50% PWM: Starts at 67, 76, ends at 69C, 78C. (Improvement of 4C core, 5C junction)
20-45% PWM: 76C, 85C (Improvement of no C to 4C core, 5C junction)
40% PWM: 78C, 88C (Improvement of 2C core, 2C junction)

So where does this leave us? Improvement from Stock paste to LM is huge, up to 6C core and 14C Junction, even more if you really speed up the fans. Noctua NT-H1 will offer middle ground improvement with TG Kyro offering maybe a C or 2 better. The custom 120mm fan bracket does a great job over stock Sapphire Pulse 92mm fans. Overall, this is a good project to do especially if you are about to do a CPU delid, since you will have all the stuff you need already.

 

[eeii]

Nice work.

 

[heatonpkmassive]

I did this with a 4850 and Accelero cooler back in the day that was running at mid 80's on the stock blower cooler, results were fantastic like yours. It ran after that at about 45-50c at full load, had to put on ramsinks but no need for VRM sinks back then.

Also did something similar with my 1070, although I didn't fit a new heatsink, just strapped two 120mm fans to the existing one. Still worked very well, was a bit ghetto rigged on the 1070 but it ran very quiet. My mate is about to buy that 1070 with my old system, he'll appreciate how quiet it is. Stock coolers generally tend to be a bit poor.