Sawing in heatsink?

[MrAMR]

Hi there,

I'm about to buy a Lian Li PC-TU100 case for college (I'm quite stuborn and I don't want to buy an overpriced laptop that'll have to be replaced in two years because of heating issues, broken screens, etc)

The thing is, I want a decent GPU for it.
I found out that there are two ASUS cards that'll fit my build. The 670 mini and 760 mini.

I also found out that the fullsize ASUS 760 DirectCU II is "only" 210 mm/8.26 inch.

The case however, is 250mm/9.84 inch and can hold 193mm/7.6 inch cards


The fullsize ASUS card CAN be made smaller by sawing of a piece of the heatsink (first having deattached it from the PSB of course), and a piece of the plastic.

Why do I want the fullsize 760? Because it has presumably better cooling (I'm not going to overclock anything, just basic "gaming" and 3D-modeling, video-editing, etc)

See picture.

Now a question to you guys (who pressumably know much more about GPU's, etc); would this harm anything?

Thank you.

 

[varkanoid]

Why do I want the fullsize 760? Because it has presumably better cooling (I'm not going to overclock anything, just basic "gaming" and 3D-modeling, video-editing, etc)

If you chop a bit off it wont have better cooling

Now a question to you guys (who pressumably know much more about GPU's, etc); would this harm anything?

Thank you.

The cooling of the heatpipe will be reduced. Dont cut the heatpipe or the gas escapes. Bit too risky for me.

 

[MichaelM]

If those fins are simply gone then it will just reduce the cooling efficiency of the heatsink.

The danger will come from going at with a hacksaw while it's still attached, jarring it from the PCB or having metal particles left on the PCB.

 

[tom_e]

As long as you don't cut into the heatpipe it'll be fine and as long as there's nothing but the heatsink under the plastic.

 

[d_brennen]

What's obstructing the ~17mm of card? The fan at the front?

Anand makes it 200mm clearance. TBH it's hard to tell from Google images, but I reckon with some wrangling on with the fan position and possibly a thinner fan with no guard, it's doable without hacksawing anything

 

[MrAMR]

If you chop a bit off it wont have better cooling

You're looking at the PCB, the other side has massive pipes and heatsink-"plates" and two fans.

It will have better cooling in relative to the 760 mini, which is about 170mm/6.7 inch in size, has smaller heatsink, smaller pipes and only one fan.

So sawing of a couple of 1mm alluminium plates won't affect it that much I suppose.

 

[MooMoo444]

Cant you just buy a smaller card? This just seems ridiculous, too risky and obviously warranty will be gone.

 

[tom_e]

I don't see what's risky about hacksawing a couple of fins off?

 

[MooMoo444]

On slight miscalculation/twitch and you puncture the heatpipe making the whole thing a block of nothing for one

 

[bru]

So you are considering buying a £72 case and a £200+ graphics card and taking a hacksaw to the card to make it fit, are you feeling unwell?

Either just buy the Asus mini as according to the manufacturers website it is only 170mm long and according to Anandtech the case has 200mm of clearance, or if you really must use your destructive nature on something cut up the far cheaper and far far less likely to go wrong and need a RMA..... case rather than the more expensive and undoubtedly more likely to go wrong within the 3 year warranty period £200+ graphics card.

 

[Meaker]

Or buy a 3rd party compact cooler.

 

[bru]

Or buy a 3rd party compact cooler.

could do, but seeing as both the mini and the normal 760 are the same price what is the point

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 760 Mini OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 760 DirectCUII OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
Total : £429.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).





The opening poster should just buy the mini and stop worrying about it, they both have the same clocks and I expect any difference in temps due to the cooler would be minimal.

 

[MrAMR]

could do, but seeing as both the mini and the normal 760 are the same price what is the point

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 760 Mini OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 760 DirectCUII OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £209.99
Total : £429.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).





The opening poster should just buy the mini and stop worrying about it, they both have the same clocks and I expect any difference in temps due to the cooler would be minimal.

Yes!

The biggest worry of all was the temperatures. The case on itself is not that "airflow"-ish (well it has a big front fan, but so what?) + all those cables blocking good airflow + CPU, RAM, HDD, PSU heat are also to be noticed.

I don't know how "overrated" temperatures are nowadays. The computer I'm working on is about 6~7 years old and was 'top-tier' back then. It has only a CPU and a GPU cooler, ATX case.

That's why. I'm a bit ignorant about the whole temperature-topic nowadays

 

[d_brennen]

It should be fine. I reckon the mini will fit and temps will be ok