Unique cooling challenges are posed to PC hardware enthusiasts all the time — especially when their ambitions involve custom cases or out-of-the-box approaches. Today, the club of "out-of-the-box approaches" has been joined by a Redditor with a prototype passively-cooled Nvidia RTX 3080 with 10 attached CPU air coolers [h/t Fanless Tech].
Redditor Everynametaken9 posted to the Nvidia subreddit asking for feedback on their prototype — they're hesitant to try it without receiving feedback from others. The highest-voted comment immediately advises a complete overhaul of the build, feeling its approach won't work without custom heat pipes in a "Christmas tree" configuration, due to concerns about the copper bar's heat dissipation.
This may be yet-untested, but a project like this isn't impossible to pull off. Everynametaken9 cited MonsterLabo as an inspiration, which debuted as a case capable of passive cooling up to 400 Watts in heat. MonsterLabo's most recent passive-cooled "The Beast" case is also sold in a configuration on their site that includes an RTX 4080. So it certainly isn't impossible to execute.
More recently, we also saw Streacom show off a passive cooling PC case at Computex 2023 which was claimed to be capable of passive cooling up to 600W of thermal power. As it turns out, ambitious passive cooling hardware projects with ultra-quiet noise levels aren't just for laptops, smartphones, and Raspberry Pis. With the right approach, even high-end hardware can have a shot at passive cooling.
However, we'd recommend that anyone trying these projects for themselves use them in a fairly well-ventilated room. Passive cooling is, at best, just really efficient heat dissipation — and that heat's gotta go somewhere. Of course, nothing is stopping you from attaching a few very quiet fans to these constructs if you want to be extra safe — even MonsterLabo's "Insane" system config includes 2 be Quiet! Silent Wings fans— though that does defy the labeling of proper passive cooling.
We hope to see more of this passively-cooled RTX 3080 project as it progresses. Benchmarks would be especially appealing to see if it ever reaches a working condition, as well as up-to-date photos of whatever the final configuration ends up being.
