Water cooling my GTX 285

[reddwarf45]

Now before anyone says it, I have read all the "new to WC read here" and "water cooling 101" threads and i'm still at a loss. I just want to water cool my GTX 285, my CPU is being taken care of by the cooler master V8. I have in my possession a thermaltake bigwater 760is but I am not sure which VGA water block to get. Could anyone suggest a good one? I think my 285 is a 891 model. there is are stickers on it that say -10891-0052-100.

Thanks for the help.

 

[rubix_1011]

TT Bigwater's are junk. The pumps fail all the time...I have witnessed 2 friends of mine both have this issue.

Why are you wanting to WC the cards in the first place? I'd consider different options if I were you. Waterblocks alone are $110+ for those.

 

[reddwarf45]

My card runs a bit to hot, I hit 100 yesterday so I cleaned it out and i now hover around 80. I would really like to bring that down to 70 or even 60. I have 2 front intakes and one rear exhaust but since the card is so thick it is rather close to the bottom of the case, so the hot air it's putting out via the fan isn't really going anywhere. I also wanted to water cool because I plan on SLIing, and if my one card is running at around 80 I don't think having a 2nd card right next to it doing 80 having the top cards hot air blown down onto it is a good idea. Are there good dual SLI air cooling solutions?

 

[rubix_1011]

I think your issues is case airflow. What case do you have? What fans and where?

Pull the side of your case, blow a desk or house fan into it on high. Run through your benchmarks, game, etc. See what your temps are. If they drop, you have a case airflow issue. If they remain the same, you need to look at better cooling solutions.

Either way, you should consider pulling the stock cooler and replacing the thermal paste with some better stuff. The factory gunk isn't that great...you would see ~5C better temps by this method alone.

 

[reddwarf45]

The cooler on the VGA? How do i go about doing that? It has a large plastic cover on the whole card.


I have a thermaltake armor+ with two 120mm intakes low to the ground on the front and one 120mm exhaust around the middle of the case on the back.

I don't have a fan in the apartment, but when I take the side off the temps don't drop.

 

[rubix_1011]

The cooler on the VGA? How do i go about doing that? It has a large plastic cover on the whole card.

Then how did you think you'd get a water block on there? You'd have to remove the cooler for that, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zXjwZ1i_k

The process will be the same for most water block installs, or to get to the GPU to apply new thermal paste...reinstall the cooler by reversing the removal steps.

 

[reddwarf45]

Do I need anything other than the thermal paste? like thermal pads? I've never removed the cover of a GPU before.

 

[rubix_1011]

If you are careful, you can just reuse the thermal pads if you are replacing TIM and installing the stock cooler.

If you are going watercooling...I think you should consider other options...and more reading. I have links in my signature to get you started.

 

[reddwarf45]

Cool, thanks. I should probably get some extra thermal pads just in case.

Would water cooling be best for SLI? or are there good ways to air cool with aftermarket GPU fans?

 

[rubix_1011]

There are lots of folks that run SLI on stock coolers. It's all about case airflow...without cool air for the fans, even a 'better' cooler will be unable to keep a video card cool.