Advice on the 3080 and front mounted water coolers.

[Don Cool]

I did previously write a post asking for solutions to my heat problem, not disastrous one but temperatures were hitting 83 celsius on the GPU most of the time under load, a bit too high for my liking even though it´s considered safe.

I had 3 intake fans on top and a front exhaust double heatsink water cooler, a very beefy H115i RGB which unfortunately wouldn´t mount on top due to the RAM being in the way. Poor research on my part when it came to buying parts.

People came with a lot of solutions and good advice but nothing really seemed to work until I inverted all fans.

The front radiator coolers are now taking air in and all sites state it should increase temperatures by a bit, it did the exact opposite, the GPU temperatures are now at 71 celsius max.

There was simply no airflow in the bottom part of the case previously, that´s the only thing I can conclude, the 3080 creates a lot of heat and the front mounted radiators couldn´t keep up as exhaust. Even though I am pumping in hot air the GPU now apparently has air to work with and it turns out, it was all it needed.

The 3 fans on top are exhausting hot air and the flow within the case seems vastly improved, the only problem now is that I am taking in dust since I have no front filter as it is meant for exhaust, I have ordered a magnetic dust filter and it will hopefully arrive soon.

This post is only meant for those who might be struggling with a heated up case due to the 3080 heat creation. If your system is working fine don´t experiment.

[shiel]

It's pretty common knowledge that front/ bottom is intake, and top/back is exhaust. There are almost no situations where this isn't optimal.

[EmineMI]

ok

[Don Cool]

Originally posted by shiel:

It's pretty common knowledge that front/ bottom is intake, and top/back is exhaust. There are almost no situations where this isn't optimal.

I know that, it´s just that when I have seen people assemble front mounted radiators those are usually set to exhaust and everywhere on Google I did read that intake on the radiator would cause higher GPU temperatures.

[shiel]

Originally posted by Don:

Originally posted by shiel:

It's pretty common knowledge that front/ bottom is intake, and top/back is exhaust. There are almost no situations where this isn't optimal.

I know that, it´s just that when I have seen people assemble front mounted radiators those are usually set to exhaust and everywhere on Google I did read that intake on the radiator would cause higher GPU temperatures.

Almost no builds I've seen (and certainly none I've built) have done that. A front rad causes higher gpu temps because the fans are pulling/pushing through the rad so airflow coming in is restricted(this is made worse if you have a case without a mesh front panel). That being said, if you are exhausting through the front and your intake is on top, the only air getting to your gpu fans is pulled in through the back or bottom of the case, or is recirculated hot air. That restriction is far worse than an intake at the front of the case.

[SeriousCCIE]

I have my radiators on top and bottom. the "front" is all fans to pull air in over a number of disk drives.

People go crazy if you malign their approach to being an elite gamer, but I am more of an arrogant intellectual so I will accept critique about my present methodology:

I have a rad for the CPU pull fresh air in through the top of the PC

That heated air is partially expelled out the side, but there is also some opening available for air to move into the motherboard area

The motherboard area has the typical exhaust and is also getting... heated air from the hard drive intake

bottom of PC has air being pulled up through the bottom pedestal chamber where I have the GPU looping and the associated radiators pulling air in through.. the side, and out the other side--that air only meets the PC if the intake on top manages to catch some of that exhausted air.

As a result, the CPU and GPU rad use doesn't impact each other.

At the moment I have 4 peltiers/tecs placed on the backplate of my 3090 and it drops the vram temps down to within 2F of the gpu core when gaming. That heat itself is absorbed by an old LGA 2011 copper heatsink I purchased off ebay explicitly for this task, but I did take a few moments to polish it with 600 grit sand paper to make it a little more effective. I have fans blowing on that CPU (heatsink) via a cheapo "vga fan card" that I've adulterated and hooked in a sensor that I taped onto one of the fins of that heatsink.

Once the sensor reads about 90F, the fans turn on, and will linger for a few minutes after the heat drops to like 85F or so. While gaming, that means it can stay running.

I unplug the peltiers when not gaming. No sense leaving that on.

Ultimately I am working on completely replacing the alumninum backplate with a copper one I have already fashioned, but I still need to polish the modified water cooling blocks/cold plates so that they in turn can either... draw heat away from the peltiers (and in effect, replace that heatsink I mentioned) via a water loop dedicated to that task, or simply say to heck with the space age science and just cool the back of the card in a really customized and unncessarily complicated way, to prevent the need for buying active backplate cooling due to how poorly thought out the water blocks available have been due to the fact that the rear facing vram was not included in the active cooling in... all of the designs out there.

Speaking of ultimately, I am making the power to the peltiers more based on temperature sensing -- not the same way as teh fans but via a dedicated controller that can provide sufficient voltage, and then drop the voltage down too so that I don't have condensation issues.

All to... well the card isn't going to go any faster, but it will never be limited due to temperature constraints based on the 'performance bin' it is in based on its active temperature when gaming.

In my tests thus far, its's been really good. Polishing all the copper by hand is exceedingly time consuming, though, so it'll be a while before I'm done. I hope Nvidia doesn't release a better card by then!!

[Guydodge]

dont rely on your factory settings for your 3080 use msi and set you fan curve to ramp up
to 70-80% at 50c ,put your rad on top pushing air out.make sure your rad pump is at full speed.
front as intake and rear as exhaust.make sure your tower is on a hard flat surface.turn case fans as high as you can without noise bothering you.if your case has a glass front theres no real help there most are trash get a mesh front case or one with large vents.

[shiel]

Originally posted by Guydodge:

dont rely on your factory settings for your 3080 use msi and set you fan curve to ramp up
to 70-80% at 50c ,put your rad on top pushing air out.make sure your rad pump is at full speed.
front as intake and rear as exhaust.make sure your tower is on a hard flat surface.turn case fans as high as you can without noise bothering you.if your case has a glass front theres no real help there most are trash get a mesh front case or one with large vents.

I always swore by Afterburner but my FTW3 doesn't play nicely with it! It only controls two of the three fans and those ones won't go past ~70%. At first I thought it was the card, but Precision X works fine(although I dislike the program itself).

[dOBER]

Originally posted by SeriousCCIE:

At the moment I have 4 peltiers/tecs placed on the backplate of my 3090 and it drops the vram temps down to within 2F of the gpu core when gaming. That heat itself is absorbed by an old LGA 2011 copper heatsink I purchased off ebay explicitly for this task,

Do you have some pics? How do you controll temps or how much w did you take?

I have a mp5works block on my 3090 backplate and there is some room for peltier elemets between waterblock and backplate.