Passively Cooling Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 Ti...With An AMD Sink

Organ Donor: Assembling The Passive Cooler

Pillaging A Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 Ultimate

We weren't able to find any older passively-cooled Nvidia cards that'd work, so we made a Radeon HD 7750 from Sapphire suffer. Why Sapphire? That's just the first board I grabbed when I came up with this idea. It could have just as easily been a HIS card. I remember that the iSilence Cooler does its job really well, going nearly unchanged since the days of AMD's Radeon HD 6670.

Within minutes, I had the sink removed and cleaned off, and the same for Nvidia's sample.

So what now? We're off by just one millimeter in length and width. In the end, I had to get crafty and enlarge the holes to make the PCB fit under Sapphire's sink.

You can do this with something like a good pair of scissors. Just be careful and trim the enlarged holes.

Of course, you need to keep a sharp eye on thermals the first time you fire up the modified card. Then, carefully re-tighten the screws after an hour of burn-in.

Why not use an Arctic Accelero S1 Plus?

Sure, that might have worked. In some situations, it could have even been better. But the Arctic cooler doesn't solve the PCB fitment issues. In fact, its bundled screws are even thicker up top to ensure the cooler doesn't go anywhere after installation. Also, the S1 Plus is extremely large, which means you need 16 cm above the upper card slot edge, and there was no way to get that into the case we're using.

No matter what you do, there's no way to avoid enlarging the screw holes. The safest way to do it is up to you. With a little skill and a little courage, you can use this cooler or try another one, so long as it's not too heavy for Nvidia's little PCB.

  • 0217422356
    The temperature is alittle too high
    Reply
  • rmpumper
    Passive cooling is irrelevant these days when fans are whisper silent (mostly).
    Reply
  • s3anister
    Excellent article; very unique take on what seems to be another future possibility for 750 Ti in the retail channel. I would have however, loved to see some thermals for the passively cooled card in a case like Fractal's Define R4 or Nanoxia's Deep Silence.
    Reply
  • blackmagnum
    Can a gaming/htpc video card get any better than this? AMD, please respond.
    Reply
  • Cons29
    i'm not comfortable with these temps, a low speed fan should be enough to lower it while still keeping the noise down
    Reply
  • merikafyeah
    That looks ridiculous...ly awesome!
    Reply
  • FormatC
    The temperature target of 80°C was set by Nvidia for Kepler too - all reference boards were designed to handle this w/o problems.
    Reply
  • emad_ramlawi
    interesting, i reckon it would been a perfect match for the GTX 750, i dont know why people overlook it, its only a tad slower than GTX 750 Ti
    Reply
  • Blazer1985
    False! The resistance generated the heat you had to dissipate, it was all but futile! :-D Sorry, nerd joke :-D
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    very interesting little project. i read from reviews and comments how this gpu might be suitable for passive cooling. this may be the most powerful passively cooled card i've seen so far.
    Reply