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Brutal, ugly, please don't judge me, 5970 blower to open conversion.

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E

ewollowe

New Member
Joined
Nov 5, 2016
Hi,

First post (be gentle), mods if I'm in the wrong place admonish me accordingly.

Just thought I'd share as I couldn't find a similar mod? After market cooler expensive and hard to find in Oz.

This is a bodge job (limited funds, ie none) but has worked well. Might be of interest to those of us with time but not money or just those of us who are curious and like some fun :)

I recently got an old 5970 cheap and whilst more powerful than my trusty 7850 in lots of things (Witcher 2) it was loud!

Did some googling, saw people sticking cpu coolers on gpus (which I've done) but that wasn't really doable here with multi gpu and thermal pads ahoy.

The card is a blower type with a shroud and closed over style heatsink. I removed the shroud, fan, pried the fins open and added some Noctua fans I had, 20C drop in idles and 15C at load, massively quieter too (main thing for me)

opened heatsink.jpg noctua.jpg
 
Welcome, what did this do to your overall temps now that the heat is dumping into the case as opposed to exhausting to the outside? Just curious.
 
donuts said:
Welcome, what did this do to your overall temps now that the heat is dumping into the case as opposed to exhausting to the outside? Just curious.
Click to expand...

In this situation overall temps dropped. I dropped a few C on my cpu even though I robbed it of a fan to feed my gpu. Blowers sucks.
 
:welcome:

it's been a while since I last saw this kind of post.
it's always nice to see improvement with more effort involved, rather than plain budgets without thoughts, nor guts.
well done, there :thup:

I've tried those kind of mod as well before.
the main issue I had, was the fan blocking the slots for future expansion.
else, I had zero complaint.
and yes, noise are better as opposed to the radial fans ;)
 
Thanks guys.

Yeah it took a bit of effort but also quite a bit of fun (I'm a bit sick at the moment anyway so couldn't do much else) and my rig needed some cleaning/organizing too.

Very happy with the results, will mod further when funds permit, want to replace some of the noisier fans.
 
Hey, nothing wrong with improvising like that. We encourage that around here. If it works, it works. Doesn't have to win a beauty contest. Besides, we have an unofficial category for improvised things that don't look pretty but work: "ghetto" mods.

What you have done I have done to video cards as well whose fans died. Only I'm much more tacky than you. I actually silicone the fans to the heatsink.
 
Definitely a ghetto mod :) I was sick at the time and got bored senseless sitting on my ***.

I might try improve case cooling next with what parts I have lying around, as that's now the noisiest part of the build (exhaust behind cpu)

The thermal tape on the heatsink looks pretty shot (split, threaded?) so that'll probably be another step but will unfortunately cost money, I'll consider that option if there's a good cheap product available?
 
That's a good fix ewollowe. I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this but many users find a big improvement by replacing the TIM. That's a little older card and likely needs new TIM. If your temps are acceptable right now I would wait until you replace the thermal pads and do it at the same time.
 
Blaylock said:
That's a good fix ewollowe. I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this but many users find a big improvement by replacing the TIM. That's a little older card and likely needs new TIM. If your temps are acceptable right now I would wait until you replace the thermal pads and do it at the same time.
Click to expand...

Did the TIM already, used artic silver 5 but I'm not totally convinced about it? I've used some on my girls laptop and found it performed poorly compared to some unbranded stuff I got from my local electronics store. I may try the cheap paste on the card when I replace the pads? The artic I've had for a few years, it still seems quite fluidy so not sure why I got poor results on the laptop?
 
Interesting. AS5 has been around for years. Aside from it being conductive it's still a decent product. In fact it's only a few degrees from the very expensive top brands. Is it possible that you used too much or not enough? Maybe the application method? On larger die GPU chips I tend to go with the thin X instead of the pea method. Any rate I hope it gets all situated when you redo it.
 
ewollowe said:
Definitely a ghetto mod :) I was sick at the time and got bored senseless sitting on my ***.

I might try improve case cooling next with what parts I have lying around, as that's now the noisiest part of the build (exhaust behind cpu)

The thermal tape on the heatsink looks pretty shot (split, threaded?) so that'll probably be another step but will unfortunately cost money, I'll consider that option if there's a good cheap product available?
Click to expand...

did you refer the thermal tapes or "pads"?
the "tapes" are sticky but the pads are typically use to fill the gaps between the RAM chip and the joined heatsink (the big chunk of metal that covering large area).

if you refer to thermal "pads".
you can search for "thermal silicone pads" (don't miss the thermal word, or you'll end up in another realms :rofl:)
this material is commonly use to attach the mosfets /diodes in our PSU to their heatsink.
you can look for thickness that match your need, obviously much thicker than what's came in the PSU.

they should be cheaper, and easier to obtain at the common electronics shops rather than the thermal pads.

as for the thermal tape, I'm afraid there's no other alternative.
there're thermal glues, but as the name implies they're non removable materials; so I'll take this as the last resort.

anyway, thermal tapes are usually use to stick small heatsinks to a RAM chip or VRM modules which I didn't see on your GPU picture.
maybe you to look into this ;)
 
very nice mod, had to google the 5970, didnt relaize it was a dual gpu and wondered how it was beating a 7850 lol.
 
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