My adventure liquid cooling the ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Turbo
Once the new Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti cards were announced, I had to get my hands on one. Early benchmarks were showing a big improvement over the GTX 1080 at 1440p and 4K resolutions. I already had the GTX 1080 and while it’s been great, I wanted that extra 35% push.
Just like the 1080, the 1080 Ti sold out fast. I went out and grabbed the first one that was in stock (and quite frankly, remains always in stock): ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Turbo. This turned out to be a mistake. While the performance was good, this version of the 1080 Ti was prone to very high temperatures and an obnoxiously loud fan.
To make matters worse, I learned that the PCB was not the 1080 Ti reference PCB. It was very similar, but just slightly off. See below.
I was hoping to alleviate the problem of high temperatures and a loud fan with liquid cooling. However, with the board not being a reference PCB, buying a water block for the entire board was going to be problematic. I had a couple of options at my disposal:
- Create a custom cooling loop inside my case, but either have a custom water block made for my GPU or buy a GPU cooler and heat sink the VRAM and VRM, or;
- Use a Kraken G10 GPU mounting kit with any of the supported liquid coolers, as well as placing additional heat sinks on the VRAM and VRM.
I ended up going with option #2. As someone who’s never liquid cooled their GPU before, this path felt very straightforward and there were several videos on YouTube of people doing something similar.
What I already had
Before jumping into what I bought to do this, I should outline what I currently have for my setup.
- i5 6600K — CPU
- ASUS Z170-A — Motherboard
- G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB DDR4 2400 — Memory
- ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Turbo Edition — GPU
- Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD — Storage
- WD Blue 4TB Hard Disk Drive — Extra Storage
- NZXT H440 Razer Edition — Computer Case
- EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 — Power Supply
That’s all I had in my case prior to this project. It was cool, quiet, performed and looked good.
What I bought for liquid cooling
I found I didn’t have to spend too much to do this project. To top it off, all the items were delivered same day for free from Amazon, so kudos to them. Pays off to live in Seattle!
- NZXT Kraken G10 (Black) ($30)— Some quick notes on this. First, the G12 bracket is out already. I decided to go with the G10 because it would work on the 1080 Ti, and it was available from Amazon and ready for same or next day shipping. I’d have to order the G12 directly from NZXT and wanted the simplicity of getting everything at Amazon. It comes in white or black, and I decided to go black to match the rest of my case inside and out.
- NZXT Kraken X61 280mm Liquid Cooling System ($120) — Yes, the X62 is the newer version of this cooler. However, the X61 cost me $120 at Amazon and the X62 is $160. I decided to save those $40 and use them on something else…
- Mudder 8 Piece Black Aluminum Heatsink ($20)— I had to buy 3 of these at $6.79 each. They come in packs of 8, with 4 heatsinks that are great for the VRAM and 4 smaller heatsinks that are great for the VRM. The 1080 Ti has 11 VRAM, so I was going to need 3 packs to have enough. I ended up with one extra heatsink for the VRAM and three extra smaller heatsinks for the VRM. I have to say that I also liked these because they were black aluminum instead of regular aluminum or copper.
Inspired from liquid cooling my GPU, I decided to take it a step further and liquid cool my CPU as well.
- NZXT Kraken X41 140mm Liquid Cooling System — Similar to the X61 above, I could have gone with the newer model. In this case, the X42. However, similar pricing issues: The X42 is $128 at Amazon and the X41 was $90. Another (almost) $40 price difference.
Video card tear down and prep
My first step was removing the housing that contained the GPU fan, radiator, and thermal tape from the PCB. This was fairly straightforward, just an annoying amount of small screws that will easily break if you’re not careful. At least that’s what YouTubers tell me. I also took off the connector plate which was completely unnecessary but looked fun.
Once I had it apart, it looked like this:
Next step was removing the power connectors. I tried for what seemed like hours to get them out by hand with no luck. I tried one of my wife’s eyebrow plucker things and got nowhere (NOTE: Do not let your wife seeing you doing that with her things). I found a pair of needle-nose pliers I didn’t even know I had and that finally did the trick.
With the housing completely off, I decided to see if I could use the base and GPU fan with the liquid cooler, removing the need for the G10 bracket altogether as well as the heat sinks I bought. I watched someone do that with a Founder’s Edition 1080 Ti on YouTube. You can watch those videos here, here, and here. I was going to have no such luck though.
The cutout on the base plate that holds the fan didn’t fit X61 properly. Also, that fan is a blower fan that, without the housing on top, isn’t going to be able to keep the VRAM and VRM cool enough. I quickly decided to head back to my original plan.
Now I was ready to clean up the GPU and put everything together!
Putting it all together, AKA “Don’t leave my GPU naked”
Before doing the assembly, I cleaned off the old thermal paste on the GPU using ArctiClean. Once done, I went through and placed the new heatsinks over each VRAM and VRM on the board. This process took about 10 minutes. Most of that was spent cleaning the GPU. Here is the result:
Next up was assembling the G10 bracket. This should have been really quick and simple, as you’re only screwing the fan on the bracket and screwing the backplate on the back of the board. However, it was not. One of the long screws that goes through the backplate wasn’t flush against the backplate. Weird enough, the screw was slightly wider near the head. No other screws were like this. It still worked and held everything together, but aesthetically it was crushing my soul even though no one would ever notice.
At least the fan was easy to connect to the G10 bracket. Or at least, they made it that way. It took me a couple of minutes to decide where I wanted the fan cable to be.
Once I wrapped that up it was time to place the cooler heatsink and pump in the bracket and on the GPU. This was nerve-wracking, but ultimately very easy and very quick. After I spent a minute decided where I wanted my hoses to face, it took another minute to put the liquid cooler with the G10 bracket on the GPU.
There was plenty of room under the G10 bracket for those aluminum heatsinks I bought. Before starting this, I had some concern that the bracket would touch the heatsinks but that didn’t end up being the case. Bullet dodged!
At this point, I decided to “pause” and install the liquid cooler for my CPU.
Installing the Kraken X41 on my CPU — AKA “Case Shenanigans Part I”
At the start of this project, I did not plan to liquid cool my CPU. My plan was to only do the GPU and put that massive X61 dual-radiator on the top of my case. My case fan setup would then have been the “default” plus this radiator. In case you’re not familiar with the NZXT H440…
- It has three fans in the front behind a filter pulling air into the case
- One fan in the back pushing air out of the case
- Space for fans at the top (but doesn’t come with any)
- Can accommodate a 240mm radiator either at the top or in the front
With that said, now that I was going to liquid cool my CPU and GPU and each was going to have their own closed loop system, I had to find room for both of those radiators. Without measuring or confirming in any way, because I’m an idiot that way, I decided that the X41 (CPU) radiator would replace the “push” fan in the back of the case and the X61 (GPU) radiator would fit in the top of the case in a “push” configuration.
I merrily went about removing my old Thermaltake CPU cooler, installing the X41 cooler on my CPU, removing the old “push” fan from the case, and screwing in the radiator and it’s new fan. The entire process quick. It was so much easier installing that liquid cooler than any heatsink+fan based cooler I’ve previously used.
With my CPU now liquid cooled and my video card completely assembled and awaiting installation, I was well on my way to wrapping this entire project!
Installing the 1080 Ti — AKA “Case Shenanigans Part II: Crusher of Hopes and Dreams”
At this point I was thinking, “I’m almost done!” Then I put my video card into the motherboard and went to install the X61 radiator on the top of the case…
It didn’t fit. Not even close. The X41 radiator and fan took up more room than I thought they would. You know, a simple measurement would have told me that to begin with but I’m no Bob Villa. Now I was faced with putting the radiator in the front of the case. After analyzing the situation there, I realized that I would need to:
- Remove my 2.5" and 3.5" storage drives and find them a new home.
- Why a new home? Because I had to remove all the drive bays from the front of the case.
- Remove all three fans from the front of the case.
The one good thing that came from doing this is that I took the front panel off my case and quickly realized that I have never cleaned my case filter. Ever. In two years of use.
After removing all of the components mentioned, I installed the radiator fans first. I wanted to keep the front of the case in “pull” configuration (pulling air in). This was not an easy installation. The screws provided by NZXT were barely long enough to reach the radiator, which meant lining up the holes was a difficult process. Every several frustrating minutes with some cursing, I was able to get all the screws in place and had securely fastened the fans and radiator.
With that solved, I had to find new homes for my two storage drives. Luckily, the NZXT H440 provides! At the bottom of the case, near the PSU, there is a spot for a single 3.5" drive. Just want I needed! I had to secure it via holes under the case but it was simple enough. My case also has two 2.5" storage areas on top of the housing for the PSU. Convenient! I placed my SSD there.
All-in-all, removing all those case components, installing the radiator and fan, and moving my storage drives around (and doing some cable reconfiguration), I spent an additional two hours on this project. In the end though, I got everything in:
With everything in and ready to go, I powered this on expecting the worst. After the initial gurgling sounds made by the two coolers, everything got quiet and my PC booted up normally. Yay! I put everything back together and here is my final “look”:
My performance results
This section is only going to address my GPU. My CPU was already overclocked over air prior to getting it liquid cooled. I pushed it to 4.5GHz with voltage at 1.25 V. I haven’t changed that yet since it’s been liquid cooled. What I can say is that my idle temps are around 22°C and about 55°C when being stress tested. I can’t recall what they were over air.
The GPU has seen big improvements. I had overclocked it using the stock heatsink and blower fan at these settings:
- GPU Boost Clock +150
- GPU Voltage +0
- Memory Clock +500
- Power Target +20
I did see an FPS boost in games like Mass Effect Andromeda, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Watch Dogs 2. However, GPU temperature was always in the mid-to-high 80’s and as a result, the blower fan would kick in and make a ton of noise. The GPU clock would max out at 1950MHz but it wouldn’t be able to sustain it due to the temperature. This lead to some uneven performance in the games I was playing.
With the liquid cooling setup, I decided to keep the same OC profile and run several stress tests in 3D Mark. In every test it consistently used 100% of the GPU stably, while never going higher than 42°C. This was great! With those tests under my belt, I decided to push the GPU a bit more:
- GPU Boost Clock +190
- GPU Voltage +100
- Memory Clock +550
- Power Target +20
With these settings I was 2100MHz without a dip, never going beyond 46°C. I’m not sure how much higher I can go, or want to go, but for now I’m satisfied. I didn’t see any noticeable improvement in the framerates of the games I mentioned previously, but I did notice a more stable framerate.
In conclusion…
This was a very fun project for me. I’d never liquid cooled my GPU before despite wanting to for years. Tearing apart a new $700 video card to do this for the first time was really scary. The look on my wife’s face when I told her what I was doing was very much how I was feeling inside the entire time. Luckily for me, I had a knowledgeable friend with experience in liquid cooling who stayed on Discord with me for hours to keep me company and reassure me of what I was doing.
All-in-all, this was worth it. I’m very pleased with the results and it gives me confidence moving forward with a custom loop set down the line. Baby steps…
