Nvidia Gets A Little More Support From An AMD Cooler
We received plenty of feedback from our U.S. and German audiences on Passively Cooling Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 Ti...With An AMD Sink, and we wanted to give customization another shot. What can you expect this time around? We'll see (yet again) that Nvidia's GPU Boost is quite effective as a thermal protection mechanism. And we'll toy around with single-slot coolers from AMD graphics cards to make today's story happen.
Our spare parts come from AMD's FirePro V3900. That board is based on a Turks GPU, which takes us back to 2012 and a 40 nm manufacturing process. A 50 W thermal ceiling is lower than what Nvidia's card needs to handle, but the GeForce GTX 750 Ti is more elegant with its power management, and we have to believe AMD's thermal solution has some headroom built in.
Still, the question remains: can the single-slot, low-profile FirePro V3900's heat sink and fan keep Nvidia's first Maxwell-based GPU running stably?
How much performance might you sacrifice in the process of dipping from a dual- to single-slot cooler? That's probably the most important question coming from HTPC and small form factor enthusiasts.
Let's get to work customizing our board in order to answer that question.
