GPU Deshroud Mod - Mindblowing Thermal Improvement

undoubtedly the best way to reduce the temperature and noise from a graphics card is to liquid cool it this way even something as power hungry as an rtx 2080 ti can run quietly under full load given that there's enough radiator volume however there is another way that you can significantly improve the thermal and noise performance of your graphics card and that's with a little mod called gpu-d shrouding as it suggests it involves removing the stock shroud and fans from your graphics card and then pairing that bare heatsink with some high performance fans so that's exactly what we're taking a look at today and this doesn't work for every graphics card and case out there it does need to be quite specific but when it does work the results are seriously seriously impressive so let's take a look at what you need to know [Music] so some of you might remember one of my previous personal rigs over two years ago in the encase m1 which uses a very similar setup to what we're taking a look at today that build used a gtx 1080 ti with the arctic accelero 3 aftermarket gpu cooler paired with some 120mm fans from ek and the performance improvement over the stock evga sc2 cooler was night and day at the same fan speeds we saw around a 15 degree c improvement for gpu thermals which is absolutely massive however between then and now there was a big shift in graphics card cooling design with pretty much all of the major graphics card manufacturers getting really comfortable with two and a half slot and even triple slot coolers in fact the majority of rx 5700 xt graphics card models on the market are above two slots in thickness and overall this has been a smart move in my opinion larger heatsinks allow for more effective cooling and as most users have mid tower cases clearance usually isn't a problem so i originally planned for this card to be our test subject the triple slot xc ultra rtx 2080 ti from evga beefy cooler designs like this are highly recommended for power heavy gpus like the 2080 ti as with two slot coolers you're commonly looking at temperatures north of 80 degrees c along with a loud fan speed also a bit of a side note i'm definitely expecting some of the upcoming rtx 3000 graphics cards to use two and a half slot and three slot coolers like this so this upcoming mod should be very relevant for those graphics cards as well so removing the shroud from the xc ultra we can see that this card isn't actually compatible for what we want to do with it ideally with this mod you'll be able to sit two 120mm fans directly against the heatsink but here there are clearly brackets in the way these are the brackets that secure the shroud and fans to the heatsink and it seems like it's impossible to remove them without invasive force now if you really want to commit to this mod you could of course just use a dremel to remove and cut off these metal brackets but that's something that i'll be passing on for now as an alternative we'll be using this card right here a two and a half slot asus strix in this case an rx 5700 i know it's a measly card for a gpu mod like this but we'll still be able to measure how much of an improvement there is with d shrouding now this card actually has a major design flaw the exact one that hardware unbox brought up with the strix 5700 xt quite a while ago where the mounting pressure between the heatsink and the pcb is nowhere near enough so although this is a different card on paper it looks like it uses the exact same cooler and sure enough has the same mounting pressure defect the main problem are these two screws here which are just way too long as you can clearly see and i was able to easily fix this by replacing these screws with two shorter ones that i actually stole from the shroud with those two shorter screws in place you shouldn't have any mounting issues de-shrouding the card itself is fairly easy and as always i'd recommend investing in a small tool kit to avoid any damage i'll link the one that i'm using down below there are three small screws at the back of the card another three just behind the fans and that'll be enough to remove the shroud itself next up are the three fans which have four screws each you'll need to carefully rotate the fan blades until they're fully accessible and then slowly unscrew each one at this point you can unplug the fan cable and the lighting cable to reveal your d shrouded gpu as you can see though we kind of have the same problem as with the evga xc ultra where these metal tabs extending from the heatsink are getting in the way unfortunately you will have to flatten a couple of these metal tabs so that you can mount the fans underneath them otherwise i found installing the card pretty much to be impossible personally i'd rather not go and pry the original heatsink but luckily we can still use the stock cooler afterwards with no issues now the test system that i built here is one of the more popular kind of configurations that you'll see this graphics card de-shrouding being used because the clearance underneath the graphics card is pretty much perfect the end case m1 supports regular thickness 120mm fans underneath a two slot graphics card and it just so happens that when we de-shroud the two and a half slot streaks here that we reduce the thickness to exactly two slots so that means that we get this set up here where the heatsink is sitting directly on top of those 120mm fans this setup is very specific and very rare and i guess it's most useful for the end case m1 but there are other cases out there which can utilize this setup for example the fractal design node 202. so like i said this is probably the most common setup where you'll see this mod being used inside the end m1 we've also got the noctua c14s cooler in there calling a 10600k and we've got the power supply mounted directly at the front and one last thing before we jump into the results most of the rog strix cards that i've seen do actually have on-board 4-pin fan headers which will fit your regular case fans of course though since we're working with an amd gpu which regularly have fan control issues these fan headers just don't work at all on this card so in that case you'll need to use a mini 4 pin to regular 4 pin adapter all right so now the results and they really are super impressive firstly let's break down this graph a little so you understand exactly what we're looking at here the first test that i ran was with the stock gpu just installed regularly into the case then we have two tests with the d shrouded gpu at the same rpm to see whether intake or exhaust is better and then a noise normalized test versus stock then on the right we have the noise reading for each test 30 centimeters from the case the first chart looks at gpu temperature and even just at first glance you can see a huge thermal improvement with de-shrouding running the fans as exhaust will give you a slight thermal improvement versus intake but is significantly quieter due to less turbulence against the bottom panel and fan blades so add an equal noise level to the stock fans 40.7 dba we see a massive 26 degree c improvement in temperature for the gpu giving us thermal performance that you'd honestly expect from water cooling the gpu hotspot temperature doesn't see as much of an improvement as some of you might expect but still a 12 degree reduction at the same noise level is nothing to disregard the memory hotspot temperature however sees a 20 degree c improvement over stock at the same noise level and even at much quieter noise levels can still give you over a 10 degree better result lastly we have the vrm the section of the pcb which is responsible for the power delivery of the card and again we see the type of results that you'd expect from liquid cooling now the point of this mod isn't really to run your gpu and its surrounding components under 50 degrees c but it's more so to show how much quieter you could potentially make your gaming system with this configuration here there's not much benefit of running your fans beyond 1200 rpm and at that point given that you're using quiet fans you've got near silent gaming performance so if you do have a compatible graphics card and case this de-shrouding mod is absolutely worth doing the performance gains are simply insane the whole de-shrouding process at least for the strix cards here are relatively unobtrusive and only take a few minutes even performance aside i think it's a great looking mod as well and really makes your system look like a cohesive and deliberate unit the hardest part for this mod though is finding the compatible hardware for it as we saw some cards just don't work here unless you're willing to start chopping them up so although the usefulness of this mod feels quite narrow because it'll only work for a handful of cases and graphics cards definitely consider a setup like this for your next build so if you're interested in running a setup like this i will leave some known compatible graphics cards listed down below in the description and if you already have a de-shrouded setup like this feel free to share that down below as well as always guys a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next one

Channel: Optimum Tech

Views: 592,216

Keywords: gpu deshroud, asus strix, graphics card deshroud, remove shroud from graphics card, noctua, watercooling, pc build, gaming pc, ncase m1, nr200, air cooled, ITX, optimum tech

Id: QUaZVpN51Po

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/l_lawliot]

This submission has been deleted in protest against reddit's API changes (June 2023) that kills 3rd party apps.

[u/Lord_Emperor]

I've been saying for years we need at least one GPU partner or even AMD directly to just sell a bare PCB or at least an un-shrouded huge heatsink with standardized fan mounts and PWM headers.

All that extra plastic, branding and RGB is just costing us performance (and money).

[u/hmd53]

Saved. Will need to refer back to this post again. Amazing

[u/Sassy-Beard]

I love the look of just heatsinks in the case, wow. I know what my next build is going to look like.

[u/eiglow_]

Now we just need Noctua to start selling aftermarket GPU coolers, like Arctic does with their Acceleros.

[u/superINEK]

would be cool if gpu manufacturers would sell these "naked" cards. It would even be cheaper because you don't need to pay for the moulds.

[u/Ascalion]

I wonder if this could still be done in a regular case, but using some 3D printing magic. The bulk of the gain should be mostly because it's 2x 120mm higher performing fans, more than the placement of them, right?

[u/kikimaru024]

I feel like y'all should learn about a product that already does half the job for you: Aerocool Astro 24.

2x 120mm fans, on a frame, with PCI slot mount built-in!
It's quiet, pushes decent air, and costs very little (€30).

[u/hyperpimp]

I did this with my Zotac Amp Extreme 1080Ti and it worked fairly well.