See how far you can push an Nvidia RTX 3080 with extra fans, duct tape, and cable ties.
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The experiment began with an overview of the Asus ROG GeForce RTX 3080 , a nice example of the breed. But it was a choice that would perhaps end up making the 11-fan wonder look like less of an accomplishment. TrashBench stated the goal was to add more and more fans, plus duct tape and cable ties, then see whether the reduced temperatures from the boosted airflow result in more frames.
After cleaning and repasting the guinea pig GPU, a baseline was set with the stock cooler. Running 100% fan speed on the Asus ROG resulted in a stable temperature of 63°C (down from 70°C) during stress testing with the Unigine Heaven benchmark.
Watch On Replacing the Asus ROG cooling shroud with a trio of Arctic case fans dropped the reported GPU temperatures to a stable 52 degrees Celsius. That’s a decent result. Next, the trio of case fans was swapped for thicker server fans, shaving another 2 degrees Celsius off the GPU temperature, bringing it to 50 degrees Celsius precisely. Duct tape was added to prevent air venting from the sides of the server fans. Oops, the GPU temperature actually stabilized at a warmer 54 degrees Celsius.
So, that was the end of fans-at-the-front modifications. TrashBench next looked at adding a quintet of tiny Arctic server fans that run at up to 15,000 RPM along the top of the card. This jet-engine-soundalike configuration didn’t shift the needle, though. The RTX 3080 still wouldn’t hold below 50 degrees Celsius when tested for any length of time.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/strapping-11-fans-and-a-360mm-aio-to-an-rtx-3080-sounds-crazy-until-you-see-the-30-c-temp-drop-modded-gpu-delivered-less-than-5-fps-uplift#main
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