Starting DYI water cooled g1 980 TI

Hi guys, I was getting real good o.c. numbers with my g1 980 TI but my fan profile had to be obviously loud.
I don't have a custom water loop in my system so i decided to search for a nice 120mm AIO.
Found a zalman lq-320 for a bargain of 10€ with need of a little repair.
This morning i repaired the cooler (small leak), added it with zipties to my 980ti and tested.
I had around 83° in heaven and valley with my fans at 3400rpm, now I'm around 50° max! And the radiator fan is on silent profile making literally no noise at all.

Future plans are place new custom fittings and new tubing so I can place my stock fans blowing over the card and keep it looking as stock as possible and I'll put some copper heatsinks in the memory chips and mosfets as soon as possible.

Looks good but now you lost the VRM/MEM cooling, i would at least put the thermal pads back on ?

I would get the NZXT attachment meant to do this that also provides a fan to cool the mem/vrm. It's not expensive and is designed for just this thought process.

Scu84St3v3420 said:

I would get the NZXT attachment meant to do this that also provides a fan to cool the mem/vrm. It's not expensive and is designed for just this thought process.

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It's ugly as hell!!! XD
I'll reuse the stock fans and led and will put custom heatsinks in the memory chips and mosfets.

Kenrou said:

Looks good but now you lost the VRM/MEM cooling, i would at least put the thermal pads back on ?

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Hi, every mem vrm chip will be cooled with heatsinks and the stock fans will be reinstalled.

Staiko said:

It's ugly as hell!!! XD
I'll reuse the stock fans and led and will put custom heatsinks in the memory chips and mosfets.

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Cause using zip ties without the ends cut is beautiful or even proper for that matter... Just invest in a custom loop if liquid cooling your cpu and gpu is a priority for you, otherwise I'd just go back to stock cooling solution.

Scu84St3v3420 said:

Cause using zip ties without the ends cut is beautiful or even proper for that matter... Just invest in a custom loop if liquid cooling your cpu and gpu is a priority for you, otherwise I'd just go back to stock cooling solution.

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I wonder if you read the thread completely...
What you said just doesn't make any sense.
That's a DIY project, that was like part 1, gather the parts, make sure they are working and then build custom fittings/brackets etc so all can fit nice and tight.
If I run way cooler and silent than before why go back to stock cooler?
If I spent like 8$ in a good AIO that works really nice in my card why spend hundreds building a custom loop?
The satisfaction is about doing it myself, my way and I think we all should risk and try those kind of stuff in our hardware. Sometimes we are just amazed by the results as I was.

Hi again, while I'm waiting for some parts to assembly my card with the stock fans over it I placed a 120mm fan blowing fresh air below my card.
Running valley for 2 hours, 59/60° max on GPU. It scaled about 30 min to that value and stayed there until now.

Some provisory small heatsinks in memory's and vrms

Some results

Still in stock bios until I finish the vrm and memory cooling process