Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Passive Cooling Mod

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GeForce GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti?

Although Nvidia rates the GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti for 75W, you might imagine that the 1050 would be better-suited to passive cooling. However, the 1050 Ti's performance advantage, helped in part by twice as much on-board memory, compels us to pick the higher-end model. A maximum of 2GB just isn't enough these days.

MSI's fairly simple GeForce GTX 1050 Ti OC stands in as our test subject. It has no separate power connector and features some extra mounting holes that we'll discuss shortly. Using a power target of 80%, the hardware never exceeds an average of 52W, and it often draws significantly less. If you're truly worried about heat, you can dial the power target back even further to 60%. The performance loss imposed by a more conservative ceiling isn't as bad as the percentage suggests.

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Power TargetMetro Last Light, 1080pFurMark Full-Screen
100 Percent66W70W
90 Percent59W62W
80 Percent52W54W
70 Percent45W47W
60 Percent39W41W
50 Percent34W36W

To recap so far:

SummaryThe GTX 1050’s 2GB of on-board memory is not especially future-proof.The card's power draw can be tuned easily through the power target setting.The simplest 1050 Ti will suffice for this project, and it requires no overclock.

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Igor Wallossek
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bloodroses
    That giant cooler is so funny looking on that little card. :)
    Reply
  • FormatC
    The smallest guys have the biggest cars ;)
    Reply
  • sephirotic
    Full passive is pointless, semi passive is the way to go.
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    Thank you for the really nice article Igor. It was an unexpected surprise and a pleasure to read. :-) Very interesting to read.
    Reply
  • Poozle
    you know setting the fans to even minimal (20-30%) where you cant detect an audible difference would be safer and nearly as quiet... but I digress
    Reply
  • FormatC
    The problem is, that the marketing is telling us that it works. I ordered an original passive card directly from a manufacturer and will check it in a short follow-up. Without any airflow in the case this must fail ;)
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    19136703 said:
    That giant cooler is so funny looking on that little card. :)
    It immediately reminded me of Sapphire's R9 Fury Tri-X:


    Reply
  • FormatC
    Same principle, but the used cooler is 4 years old.
    It seems that Sapphire copied the idea ;)
    Reply
  • thor220
    It looks like the large tail of that Cooler isn't even doing anything. No point in making a passive cooler that big if it can't transfer the heat.

    I would much rather see a passive water cooled setup with no fans, only the pump.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    19139141 said:
    It looks like the large tail of that Cooler isn't even doing anything. No point in making a passive cooler that big if it can't transfer the heat.
    What makes you say that? The heat pipes extend the length of the cooler, even the fins at the end should be absorbing and dissipating some of the heat.
    Reply