Universal GPU blocks now dead?

[Wackabay]

I have a 'EK-VGA Supremacy' universal GPU waterblock. For those that don't know, it just cools the GPU die and you have to add heatsinks onto the memory and mosfets separately. I currently have this setup with my 5700 XT, some copper heatsinks and a 140mm low profile fan blowing onto the heatsinks for additional cooling (mounted onto a part I 3D printed).

The system is silent and cools really well, so I'm happy with the process. Some people may say "why bother! Just buy a full cover block", but I love to tinker with things which is why I went this route before. I think its time to upgrade the GPU, but I don't know whether universal GPU blocks are even feasible now or in the near future.

What are peoples thoughts on...

• Multichip dies: Is it possible without breaking the die? Has anyone tried it on the 7000 series, radeon 7 or Vega?
• Memory and mosfets: They keep getting hotter and hotter. I'm not sure if a small heatsink and a low speed fan will do the job these days or in the near future.

 

[Jay85]

I have a 'EK-VGA Supremacy' universal GPU waterblock. For those that don't know, it just cools the GPU die and you have to add heatsinks onto the memory and mosfets separately. I currently have this setup with my 5700 XT, some copper heatsinks and a 140mm low profile fan blowing onto the heatsinks for additional cooling (mounted onto a part I 3D printed).

The system is silent and cools really well, so I'm happy with the process. Some people may say "why bother! Just buy a full cover block", but I love to tinker with things which is why I went this route before. I think its time to upgrade the GPU, but I don't know whether universal GPU blocks are even feasible now or in the near future.

What are peoples thoughts on...

• Multichip dies: Is it possible without breaking the die? Has anyone tried it on the 7000 series, radeon 7 or Vega?
• Memory and mosfets: They keep getting hotter and hotter. I'm not sure if a small heatsink and a low speed fan will do the job these days or in the near future.

I used one of these recently on a 1060 for a silent media centre build. I highly doubt it would work as well with newer stuff now purely cos new gpu's do require such chonky heatsinks to cool not just the gpu itself anymore and small mere heatsinks just aren't efficient enough on memory chips and mosfets etc with power delivery going into 600w peak on some series of gpu's!

 

[pastymuncher]

I had one of these on a GTX780 and then a GTX1070 and it did really well. I just used stick on heatsinks for the memory chips but made a block for the vrm's out of a 2mm copper sheet cut to size and the body of a Asus motherboard vrm block. It was a bit of a pain with the extra connections but worked very well. I am not sure traditional stick on heatsinks would cope with the high temps of cards these days but the block should cool the core just fine. In the end I sold it and went with the hassle free option (until it came time to sell the card and block on) of using a full cover block.

 

[Wackabay]

Seems like we're coming to the same conclusion that 'way back when' you could get away with not so much cooling on the memory and Mosfets. This isn't the case now.

I thought that alphacool ditched this hybrid system (article link here) where they sold a universal block, but made a large passive aluminium heatsink due to lost revenue. In other words, most of the market buys full cover blocks and they can charge more. Maybe this method just died out quickly because the other parts just overwhelmed the passive heatsink.

 

[LuckyBenski]

Seems like we're coming to the same conclusion that 'way back when' you could get away with not so much cooling on the memory and Mosfets. This isn't the case now.

I thought that alphacool ditched this hybrid system (article link here) where they sold a universal block, but made a large passive aluminium heatsink due to lost revenue. In other words, most of the market buys full cover blocks and they can charge more. Maybe this method just died out quickly because the other parts just overwhelmed the passive heatsink.

I have the Nexxxos block pictured for my 1070 and yeah, it's a compromise. It appears like a full cover block but really it's just a very large heatsink that can soak up a lot of energy and then store it. So, you're more reliant on case airflow and there's a lot more interaction between case temperature and water temperature.

I expect it was still costing Alphacool a fair whack in R&D to keep designing the heatsink parts for each model of each card annually.

 

[cjgardens]

Last time I used them was on my 9800 GTX+ in sli

One of my pipes was leaking and the bottom card had a luminous green water all over it, God knows how it didn't kill it.

 

[LePhuronn]

The fact that GDDR6X alone pumps out more heat than an entire GPU die the universal blocks were designed to cool pretty much sums up why universal blocks are dead.

 

[Wackabay]

The fact that GDDR6X alone pumps out more heat than an entire GPU die the universal blocks were designed to cool pretty much sums up why universal blocks are dead.

Ha ha ha. I didn't even realise that was the case.

I don't want to give up on watercooling and I don't want to pay today's high end GPU prices + a full cover block. Instead, I bit the bullet and got a 6900 XT + full cover block second hand for £575 earlier today. I don't think it's too bad of a deal in today's market. It's nearly twice the performance of my 5700 XT, so I think I'll be happy with that.

I'll then replace by 290X in my node 202 with the 5700XT... Which should be much more cool and quiet in that ITX box.