Upgrading water-cooled GPU 1080ti

[Dakpilot]

Recently sold my Gtx1080 to a buddy and bought a second hand  Msi Seahawk Gtx1080ti, it benchmarks with highish results comparatively to other 1080 ti's and runs coolish at 60C. so all good. And the 'upgrade' cost me 150 US

Unfortunately the pump has a slight audible rattle, further investigation says this can be normal on the Corsair h55 aio which the seahawk uses

As I was trying to achieve a near silent PC this is a bit annoying. 

Have bought a Kraken G12 which is basically a bracket that allows the use of many iao coolers to be fitted to the graphics card and a 92mm fan for the vrm's.( It was fairly cheap and can be used on pretty much every current GPU.) 

 

Have now ordered a Thermaltake water 3  360 mm aio cooler which uses a 5th gen asetek pump and is (supposedly) much quieter than the 1st gen pump from the h55  (I bought this using promotional ebucks from my bank you get when buying petrol so I can kid myself it was "free") 

 

Armed with these parts and a screwdriver I hope to have the 1080ti running nice and cool and near silent at high loads (with little actual cash outlay) at least that's the plan ?

 

Luckily my case has enough room for two 360 mm radiators, I currently use a corsair h150i for the CPU with very good results, cooling/noise even at 5.2ghz 

 

Wish me luck (cooler only arrives in a week or so) have never 'stripped down' a GPU before let alone a water cooled one

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Dakpilot

[CanadaOne]

5.2ghz? Nice!

 

What nuclear CPU are you running?

[dburne]

Nice, be sure and let us know how the GPU cooling goes, my interest is perked.

I am also running my 9900K now at 5.2 GHz on all cores.

[Dakpilot]

 

This is what I have at the moment

 

 

What I intend to fit 

 

 

And the bracket

 

The 360 is probably overkill, but I have room, and should be very quiet even under load, my Cpu is a 9600k and a corsair 360 keeps it cool and  pretty quiet even at load at 5.2ghz. 

 

I would have gone for another h150i but that model does not use the standard asetek mounting (which the G12 bracket needs) so I went for the Thermaltake one, underneath most aio loops are pretty much the same 

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

[jollyjack]

10 hours ago, Dakpilot said:

 .................Have now ordered a Thermaltake water 3  360 mm aio cooler which uses a 5th gen asetek pump and is (supposedly) much quieter than the 1st gen pump from the h55  (I bought this using promotional ebucks from my bank you get when buying petrol so I can kid myself it was "free") 

 

Armed with these parts and a screwdriver I hope to have the 1080ti running nice and cool and near silent at high loads (with little actual cash outlay) at least that's the plan ?

 

Luckily my case has enough room for two 360 mm radiators, I currently use a corsair h150i for the CPU with very good results, cooling/noise even at 5.2ghz 

 

Wish me luck (cooler only arrives in a week or so) have never 'stripped down' a GPU before let alone a water cooled one

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

 

 

I bought a Corsair h150i because of the longer water hoses. and with my non overclocked i7 9700K the processor runs at 37 degrees Celsius.

 

A tip for water coolers: i have all fans blowing out, and put an extra dust filter on the bottom (intake) roster. No dust sofar for about a month now.

Edited December 7, 2019 by jollyjack

[dburne]

12 minutes ago, jollyjack said:

 

I bought a Corsair h150i because of the longer water hoses. and with my non overclocked i7 9700K the processor runs at 37 degrees Celsius.

 

A tip for water coolers: i have all fans blowing out, and put an extra dust filter on the bottom (intake) roster. No dust sofar for about a month now.

 

Yeah I have the same h150i on my CPU, does a good job for me. I have mine mounted in top of case blowing the air out the top.

[CanadaOne]

On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 7:56 AM, dburne said:

Nice, be sure and let us know how the GPU cooling goes, my interest is perked.

I am also running my 9900K now at 5.2 GHz on all cores.

 

Could I borrow two of those cores, please?

[jollyjack]

after lunch?

[SeaW0lf]

On 12/7/2019 at 1:55 AM, Dakpilot said:

Have now ordered a Thermaltake water 3  360 mm aio cooler which uses a 5th gen asetek pump and is (supposedly) much quieter than the 1st gen pump from the h55  (I bought this using promotional ebucks from my bank you get when buying petrol so I can kid myself it was "free") 

 

They are basically the same (the Asetek pumps from different generations in general). The impeller could have changed, some bad design could have improved, but it is just a piece of small plastic to propel the water. Gamer Nexus reviewed the 6^th generation pumps. These AIO's have very week pumps, generally with a flow rate of 60 liters per hour, when a D5 pump for a custom water cooler can pump well above 1000 liters per hour.

 

The rattle noise could be air bubbles. Or then the pump is defective or going bad. Could be gunk as well if the fluid is contaminated.

 

I tested the H55, H75 and H60 in the past and they are all dead silent in optimal conditions. DeepCool has a pump / block very similar to Asetek and is also dead silent. My room has thick curtains, almost like a studio, so they are really silent in optimal conditions. The H55 that I got I had to RMA because it was just half filled. The washing / rattle noise was unbearable and it could affect the performance and spoil the pump on the long run. But once the bubbles had gone up, the pump had a silent operation. 

 

Also check the RPM with HWMonitor. The Asetek pump should run at 3000rpm (IIRC). Some motherboards will skip the pulse and read 1500rpm. 

 

And a Corsair engineer once told me that these pumps should run only at 12V (max speed on the motherboard). If the unit has speed control on the firmware (Corsair Link, that sort of app), you can change the speed with the app, but the pump firmware should be always receiving 12V from the motherboard. Or else they could oscillate and go bad in months. 

 

If you are really used to handle hardware, my best advice is to test the unit outside the case, before installing it. You could check pump speed, if the radiator is properly filled and if the fans are within specs.

 

I would also use a good thermal paste if you are overclocking the card.

 

[Dakpilot]

My order arrived minus the cooler ?

 

Just a tube of  CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker (within  few percent of top rated so should be fine for O/C will refresh CPU as well and see if it helps) 

 

Things going out of stock are a common hazard in my country and often it is a case of "buy it when you see it" because it may not be available again. 

 

Luckily the correct cooler is hopefully on its way now and I will have things up and running in a few weeks.. Fingers, toes, legs, arms and balls crossed

 

*Edit*

 

After more than a month delay my Thermaltake 360mm cooler has finally arrived 

 

Bit of thought needed to get it all  positioned so everything works and then time to tear down the 1080ti seahawk... Gulp

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Dakpilot

[Dakpilot]

First dry run to check for fit,  a little tight but it all lines up, all wiring is disconnected so is a mess ?

Will run it in this config, but have the option to put both 360's in the top

 

Cheers, Dakpilot 

[dburne]

 

Nice!

[Dakpilot]

Well it is the hottest day of the year so far here, about 33 c and muggy, good day for some benchmarks/testing

 

Ran valley for about 30 mins to get things warmed up properly and did the run. 

 

Max peak  temp of 6 1C  with a quick cool down to 40C, no downclocking of gpu stable at stock 1974mzh and 5500. 

This was with standard fan curve and radiator fans were pretty much silent.

CPU fans had spooled up a bit and after the run temps were low 40's, fan noise was acceptable and silent from a couple of paces. (@ 5ghz) 

 

Pump is silent and vrm fan not audible, I had planned on putting a noctua fan on the gpu but now seems redundant 

 

Overall the changing of pump and cooler and installation of kraken G12 was very straightforward with no issues and I highly recommend. 

 

With adjustment to fan speess/curves and fine tuning am sure there is room for improvement and headroom for some gpu overclock 

 

Overall I achieved what I wanted (cooling and quiet) and am very happy, it also looks nice which is a bonus

 

Cheers, Dakpilot