The Challenges of Building a Custom Water Cooling Loop for High-End Graphics Cards

As we embark on this ambitious project, it's clear that building a custom water cooling loop for high-end graphics cards comes with its own set of challenges. The first hurdle we face is finding a suitable part that can accommodate our specific needs. In this case, the part in question is a $600 graphics card, which, despite its impressive specs, poses some unique issues.

One of the primary concerns is the non-standard mounting hole spacing, which makes it difficult to find brackets that fit perfectly. This means we'll need to get creative and potentially fabricate our own custom solution. Additionally, there are no pre-made brackets available on the market for this particular part, which adds an extra layer of complexity to the project.

However, with some careful planning and experimentation, we're able to overcome these obstacles. We begin by applying thermal paste to the component, taking care to ensure that it's evenly distributed and provides adequate heat transfer. This is a critical step in our build, as it sets the foundation for the rest of our cooling system.

Next, we move on to selecting the substrate material. In this case, we choose a clear acrylic sheet, which will serve as the base of our water block. We carefully cut out the necessary shape and size, taking care to ensure that it's precision-cut to fit our graphics card perfectly.

With the substrate in place, we can begin assembling the rest of our cooling system. This includes attaching the pump, tubes, and other components using a combination of screws and thermal adhesive. We're mindful of ensuring that all parts are properly secured and aligned, as any movement or misalignment could compromise the performance of our cooling system.

One of the key challenges we face is the need to accurately locate the hotspots on our graphics card. To address this, we rely on earlier measurements taken during our review process, which provides us with a baseline understanding of where the heat is concentrated. We then use these findings to carefully position our water block and other components, ensuring that they're in optimal contact with the die.

As we near the completion of our build, it's clear that every detail matters. We've taken extra precautions to ensure that all parts are properly secured and aligned, including using thermal adhesive to reinforce any weak points. With our system complete, we can now move on to testing and validation – an essential step in verifying the performance of our custom water cooling loop.

To cool our graphics card, we'll be using a combination of air flow and heat sinks. We've installed a MAG Love fan above the VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) to provide ample airflow and help keep temperatures in check. Additionally, we'll be using some of the thermal adhesive from an Arctic kit to add extra cooling capacity.

In our testing phase, we'll be closely monitoring GPU temperatures, as well as power consumption and clock stability. We're also planning to attempt a power limit bypass later on, which will provide us with valuable insight into the capabilities of our custom water cooling loop.

As always, we appreciate your support and encourage you to subscribe to our channel for more content and updates on this project. You can also visit Gamers Nexus.net or Patreon.com GamersNexus for exclusive rewards and behind-the-scenes information. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you in the next article!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone today we are doing our build log for the Vega Frontier Edition Hybrid mod disclaimer I'm not sure this is going to work so we're going to try there may not be a results edition of this video it might just be build log and then abject failure so we'll find out uh this is the Vega Frontier Edition card we already have a tear down if you're curious you can see that on the channel put a card in the video so you can find that or the review is also online so the challenge here here is going to be figuring out how we get a liquid cooler mounted to these odd mounting hole positions so they are 64 mm apart whereas something like the RX series cards were closer to 53 54 53.5 something like that and the Nvidia cards don't fit either so this is a new unique whole spacing which means that we're going to have to have a new unique method to get a CLC on there before get into this content this is brought to you by EVGA and their hybrid mod for the GTX 10 series cards we were going to try and use one but it is made for GTX 10 series cards if you have a 1080 TI 1080 1070 or other card like that you can find a link in the description below for the hybrid mods it's an easy mod to do and improves thermal significantly all right so speaking of that this is what I wanted to use originally because we've used it for basically all of these mods since the beginning of time except for the rx480 hybrid mod uh that a lot of people seem to have forgotten we did because it was the most uh I I don't know it was it was really the least organized of all of them in terms of the final product because we had to get a bunch of parts from a bunch of different things so the reason this won't work and any of the other asch coolers made for a GPU or a CPU even is because the whole spacing doesn't line up so as you can see we can line up one of them and that's it the whole spacing here is uh these versus these quite a bit wider so we can't use this kit and we also can't use the ace attack CPU coolers because if we look at where's my bracket if we look at this this is for an Intel CPU the holes just don't match I mean you can't even see any of them so we've got one here one here one here one here so that doesn't line up Intel is 80 by 80 apart on the LGA 115x CPUs I believe so that's no good we also have to worry about component clearance for for things like the chokes so that's going to be a concern and then the next thing is do we want to try and keep this base plate which the answer is yes I would like to try to keep it but uh we've got a couple kits here so I pulled out every kit that I have for hybrid modding um we're going to go through all of them see if any of them have a bracket that is adjustable if one has a bracket that's adjustable then great we'll use it if not then I have an idea for a mod that we can do that will involve a drill um so we'll see we'll see how it goes but we're going to start with the g12 which I just have on top here and is the newest uh I've only used this once I used it for the MSI 1080 TI armor video and I am pretty sure right now that this isn't going to work but we're going to check that's not going to work there's just not enough so that rules out the g12 That Was Easy check the next one Arctic accelero 120 I've used this kit before I used this kit on the rx480 are these the heat sinks yes it's a bag of heat sinks I'm not going to open because there I mean there they are these are vrm component heat sinks last time it took something like 30 or 40 minutes to get them all applied and repacked is a nightmare so we're not going to open that um it's just heat sinks it might come in handy but not what we need right now what we need right now is adjustable mounting plate that just uses a slide rail okay no good next one G10 nope okay so we have ruled out the G10 the g12 the Arctic whatever it was probably this Arctic one won't work either probably maybe that one but I have the most faith in this one maybe not it's looking more and more like we are going to probably resort to a DIY approach where's the manual oh there's our spacing right there 58.4 millimeters is the biggest one no good so we are left with the drill route and here is what I've been thinking of so this is an Intel mounting plate for an ACH cooler the way it works is you take something like this cooler which has short tubes but whatever and you mount them like that to the cooler so it just sockets on there and we have clearance on the edges as you can see where that metal isn't being used for anything and uh we might be able to get away with cutting through it so I'm thinking that we take take one of these and measure a couple times and probably basically end up cutting holes like or drilling holes right at the end of the second one already so that's probably what we're looking at for this mod so what I need to do is what all right okay next step is figuring out where the new ones go we want as little overhand as possible where there are a lot of mosfets or where the bottom of the card is that looks pretty good what do you think so that's good that looks promising now we could use zip ties to secure the cooler to the GPU and it would probably work here's the concern we have a GPU and we have hbm and the chances of potentially having uneven waiting or positioning on either of those are high enough that it's it's a little bit scary to do that because we don't have temperature sensors for hbm we're not going to have a good idea if those are being cooled and sticking a a couple in there isn't going to be the best approach either so I would really like to avoid anything where we're going to potentially have uneven Mountain mounting and that is probably going to be best avoided by mounting a proper retention kit to it so that we can act we can carefully screw in uh with a nut and a screw on either side the same amount of threads and distribute the weight evenly now the next question is are we going to have use a shim I think the answer to that that is we'll figure it out when we get there but um probably cuz these are flat plates and the the inductors are T well yeah definitely the inductors are taller than the GPU so we're going to have to use a shim we did that with our 1060 mod actually you know what this is making contact we'll see we did that with our 1060 mod and it worked out fine it was still one of the coolest things we ever tested so even if we have to use a shim we're going to be better off than the VAP chamber that's pretty good okay so now we need to drill this I'm thinking I got to figure out do we want to take this outside to not get metal shavings everywhere there we go there's some metal shavings okay progress dent it's been dented inward we might have to go to a larger bit just because there's going to be some inaccuracy here God what is it even doing there's one there's that is that R over there uh let me ask him a question so we're trying to mod modify something for a video we're shooting uhhuh um and I need to basically add in some holes right here on this bracket uhuh it doesn't need to be pretty but uh so I got one with a drill right but the other ones I started on it's just like barely making a dent CU I guess it's maybe stainless steel or aluminum or something okay any ideas what would be best to cut through that well um what you need to do first is uh is to give it a little on the side you're going to drill on give it a little punch okay with a little punch so you get a little dent in there and then you could take uh some Thin oil oh you have a press I have a press I can get I can it into a press okay do you mind if I uh if we record the part drilling through it oh let me get Andrew that does look like it'll make it way easier thanks for the help problem this part up without destroying the oh yeah cool that's prob way too much a little oil so you're just going to clamp it down I got to clamp it I don't know if I got something okay then you probably want to take a file on this side and take off the all right guys okay so thanks to Rob next door we got this sorted out and used a a drill press combo to get through it so pretty cool utility it's got five different functions it's from the 60s he says we were able to get through the mounting bracket after a whole lot of effort and now uh we're just going to mount it onto the pump block and all we need for this is the plate and then this little piece here from asch which just snaps in so that's our retention okay so that's retained now the next step is this has to mount here on top of the Silicon might be able to keep the base plate that would be cool literally I think it'll work is there any downside to this oh I guess is there clearance that's the only question that's left so our clearance now might be different than our clearance before 50 no there's your problem this is bigger so instead we'll get rid of the base plate and we'll cool the vrm components with a lot of air just fans I need to do this exercise one more time to see um if we're definitely for sure making contact everywhere okay we are clear I am I can see through the other side that's unfortunate I can see through to that side too damn so what's stopping us think no I think I can maybe see through that side I don't know what we're hitting a little bit of flex on the PCB oh maybe this is actually looking okay now so it just takes extra mounting force hbm's not making contact though the left hbm module is not making contact so we just put a shim on no that doesn't make sense uh getting to the point where I'm getting nervous about tightening this further I I think that's it I think we are making contact maybe not on the far left it's going to be really hard to gauge with thermal paste on there can you see it shining through a little so there's something there's for $600 because of this because it's not a standard mounting hole spacing and there are no brackets on the market but the minute someone like EK makes one there's no way this $600 is worth it unless there's something else special about the card that we don't know yet this side is good so that's okay what about this one oh that's also good so that one lines up with the Silicon so we're good there that means that the part I'm seeing the light shine through is actually the substrate and then this one is right here which lines up with the Silicon for the hbm so we're good there part I'm concerned about maybe although I may have well actually this might be more okay than I thought it was so this small Mark lines up with the edge of the Silicon we're good there this one I wasn't sure about I was a little sloppy with this one because I was having so much trouble getting it to mark it is more inward or in lender whatever uh but where's the end of it it's the ends right there and this hbm stack is inset that way by about the same amount so it's close it's close enough to try it I think we're going to be good because anything any light bleeding out over there is probably just cutting through that corner that's not covered so let's give it a shot let's see how this does we'll cool the vrms with a lot of air and maybe some stick on heat sinks that we open from that Arctic kit earlier for good good measure we use extra thermal paste okay cool that one's good all right so they all need to be same amount screwed in tubes are on the bottom can I get away with that this clear video card slot 7 point 2 one two one not quite sweet so it's the same same height for all of them they're all the same height and it will fit in a video card slot even though I put the pump the tubes at angle I didn't want to put them at but it's also irrelevant put a fan above it for the vrm do I want vrm heat sinks we really don't need them if you just blast a fan out it these are exposed copper anyway um got that okay thermal adhesive not thermal paste thermal adhesive do not mix them up are these even the same height that's the real question looks like it there we go 0.59 that sounds more accurate 0 six okay they're all the same height that's cool I already know the hot spots because we measured them earlier for the review so that's convenient uh HPM one's at the bottom just ignore that one for now okay that gets left alone okay the last two sets will be cooled with air a lot of it I'm going to put a MAG love fan over this thing and you wouldn't even really need these technically so whatever so that is the longest buildup we've ever done I mean even the part one and part two of the first tear down and hybrid mod we did was shorter than this building part the tear down was trivial um so we've got it we've got the cooler mounted it's making contact everywhere now I've checked it multiple times I was basically shining a UV light through there and then marking with a pencil when I saw it bleed through and when I checked where it marked it's bleeding through in places where there is not a die so it's good so that's making contact first thing I'll do is check GPU temps anyway the vrm should be fine there are two pairs of mosfets that are not covered by one of these small aluminum heat sinks didn't even need to put those on there technically anyway uh but the two that aren't covered are going to be just fine they'll be happy because I'm going to put a maglab fan over them blast it at 100% and it'll all be good air flow is better than heat sinking anyway at least heat sinking without air flow so I think we're ready to test it I can't move the card cuz everything's dry but we'll have Boll shots of it and then check back for the results where we'll have the temperature and thermal difference we'll have the clock stability difference if there is any at that point the only limitation that's left will be the power limit and we have plans to try and deal with that too so check back for all that as always you can subscribe for more especially the results and the follow-ups with potentially power limit uh bypass attempt and store. Gamers nexus.net to grab a shirt or you can just go to the website Gamers nexus.net patreon.com Gamers Nexus helps out directly thank you for watching I'll see you all next timehey everyone today we are doing our build log for the Vega Frontier Edition Hybrid mod disclaimer I'm not sure this is going to work so we're going to try there may not be a results edition of this video it might just be build log and then abject failure so we'll find out uh this is the Vega Frontier Edition card we already have a tear down if you're curious you can see that on the channel put a card in the video so you can find that or the review is also online so the challenge here here is going to be figuring out how we get a liquid cooler mounted to these odd mounting hole positions so they are 64 mm apart whereas something like the RX series cards were closer to 53 54 53.5 something like that and the Nvidia cards don't fit either so this is a new unique whole spacing which means that we're going to have to have a new unique method to get a CLC on there before get into this content this is brought to you by EVGA and their hybrid mod for the GTX 10 series cards we were going to try and use one but it is made for GTX 10 series cards if you have a 1080 TI 1080 1070 or other card like that you can find a link in the description below for the hybrid mods it's an easy mod to do and improves thermal significantly all right so speaking of that this is what I wanted to use originally because we've used it for basically all of these mods since the beginning of time except for the rx480 hybrid mod uh that a lot of people seem to have forgotten we did because it was the most uh I I don't know it was it was really the least organized of all of them in terms of the final product because we had to get a bunch of parts from a bunch of different things so the reason this won't work and any of the other asch coolers made for a GPU or a CPU even is because the whole spacing doesn't line up so as you can see we can line up one of them and that's it the whole spacing here is uh these versus these quite a bit wider so we can't use this kit and we also can't use the ace attack CPU coolers because if we look at where's my bracket if we look at this this is for an Intel CPU the holes just don't match I mean you can't even see any of them so we've got one here one here one here one here so that doesn't line up Intel is 80 by 80 apart on the LGA 115x CPUs I believe so that's no good we also have to worry about component clearance for for things like the chokes so that's going to be a concern and then the next thing is do we want to try and keep this base plate which the answer is yes I would like to try to keep it but uh we've got a couple kits here so I pulled out every kit that I have for hybrid modding um we're going to go through all of them see if any of them have a bracket that is adjustable if one has a bracket that's adjustable then great we'll use it if not then I have an idea for a mod that we can do that will involve a drill um so we'll see we'll see how it goes but we're going to start with the g12 which I just have on top here and is the newest uh I've only used this once I used it for the MSI 1080 TI armor video and I am pretty sure right now that this isn't going to work but we're going to check that's not going to work there's just not enough so that rules out the g12 That Was Easy check the next one Arctic accelero 120 I've used this kit before I used this kit on the rx480 are these the heat sinks yes it's a bag of heat sinks I'm not going to open because there I mean there they are these are vrm component heat sinks last time it took something like 30 or 40 minutes to get them all applied and repacked is a nightmare so we're not going to open that um it's just heat sinks it might come in handy but not what we need right now what we need right now is adjustable mounting plate that just uses a slide rail okay no good next one G10 nope okay so we have ruled out the G10 the g12 the Arctic whatever it was probably this Arctic one won't work either probably maybe that one but I have the most faith in this one maybe not it's looking more and more like we are going to probably resort to a DIY approach where's the manual oh there's our spacing right there 58.4 millimeters is the biggest one no good so we are left with the drill route and here is what I've been thinking of so this is an Intel mounting plate for an ACH cooler the way it works is you take something like this cooler which has short tubes but whatever and you mount them like that to the cooler so it just sockets on there and we have clearance on the edges as you can see where that metal isn't being used for anything and uh we might be able to get away with cutting through it so I'm thinking that we take take one of these and measure a couple times and probably basically end up cutting holes like or drilling holes right at the end of the second one already so that's probably what we're looking at for this mod so what I need to do is what all right okay next step is figuring out where the new ones go we want as little overhand as possible where there are a lot of mosfets or where the bottom of the card is that looks pretty good what do you think so that's good that looks promising now we could use zip ties to secure the cooler to the GPU and it would probably work here's the concern we have a GPU and we have hbm and the chances of potentially having uneven waiting or positioning on either of those are high enough that it's it's a little bit scary to do that because we don't have temperature sensors for hbm we're not going to have a good idea if those are being cooled and sticking a a couple in there isn't going to be the best approach either so I would really like to avoid anything where we're going to potentially have uneven Mountain mounting and that is probably going to be best avoided by mounting a proper retention kit to it so that we can act we can carefully screw in uh with a nut and a screw on either side the same amount of threads and distribute the weight evenly now the next question is are we going to have use a shim I think the answer to that that is we'll figure it out when we get there but um probably cuz these are flat plates and the the inductors are T well yeah definitely the inductors are taller than the GPU so we're going to have to use a shim we did that with our 1060 mod actually you know what this is making contact we'll see we did that with our 1060 mod and it worked out fine it was still one of the coolest things we ever tested so even if we have to use a shim we're going to be better off than the VAP chamber that's pretty good okay so now we need to drill this I'm thinking I got to figure out do we want to take this outside to not get metal shavings everywhere there we go there's some metal shavings okay progress dent it's been dented inward we might have to go to a larger bit just because there's going to be some inaccuracy here God what is it even doing there's one there's that is that R over there uh let me ask him a question so we're trying to mod modify something for a video we're shooting uhhuh um and I need to basically add in some holes right here on this bracket uhuh it doesn't need to be pretty but uh so I got one with a drill right but the other ones I started on it's just like barely making a dent CU I guess it's maybe stainless steel or aluminum or something okay any ideas what would be best to cut through that well um what you need to do first is uh is to give it a little on the side you're going to drill on give it a little punch okay with a little punch so you get a little dent in there and then you could take uh some Thin oil oh you have a press I have a press I can get I can it into a press okay do you mind if I uh if we record the part drilling through it oh let me get Andrew that does look like it'll make it way easier thanks for the help problem this part up without destroying the oh yeah cool that's prob way too much a little oil so you're just going to clamp it down I got to clamp it I don't know if I got something okay then you probably want to take a file on this side and take off the all right guys okay so thanks to Rob next door we got this sorted out and used a a drill press combo to get through it so pretty cool utility it's got five different functions it's from the 60s he says we were able to get through the mounting bracket after a whole lot of effort and now uh we're just going to mount it onto the pump block and all we need for this is the plate and then this little piece here from asch which just snaps in so that's our retention okay so that's retained now the next step is this has to mount here on top of the Silicon might be able to keep the base plate that would be cool literally I think it'll work is there any downside to this oh I guess is there clearance that's the only question that's left so our clearance now might be different than our clearance before 50 no there's your problem this is bigger so instead we'll get rid of the base plate and we'll cool the vrm components with a lot of air just fans I need to do this exercise one more time to see um if we're definitely for sure making contact everywhere okay we are clear I am I can see through the other side that's unfortunate I can see through to that side too damn so what's stopping us think no I think I can maybe see through that side I don't know what we're hitting a little bit of flex on the PCB oh maybe this is actually looking okay now so it just takes extra mounting force hbm's not making contact though the left hbm module is not making contact so we just put a shim on no that doesn't make sense uh getting to the point where I'm getting nervous about tightening this further I I think that's it I think we are making contact maybe not on the far left it's going to be really hard to gauge with thermal paste on there can you see it shining through a little so there's something there's for $600 because of this because it's not a standard mounting hole spacing and there are no brackets on the market but the minute someone like EK makes one there's no way this $600 is worth it unless there's something else special about the card that we don't know yet this side is good so that's okay what about this one oh that's also good so that one lines up with the Silicon so we're good there that means that the part I'm seeing the light shine through is actually the substrate and then this one is right here which lines up with the Silicon for the hbm so we're good there part I'm concerned about maybe although I may have well actually this might be more okay than I thought it was so this small Mark lines up with the edge of the Silicon we're good there this one I wasn't sure about I was a little sloppy with this one because I was having so much trouble getting it to mark it is more inward or in lender whatever uh but where's the end of it it's the ends right there and this hbm stack is inset that way by about the same amount so it's close it's close enough to try it I think we're going to be good because anything any light bleeding out over there is probably just cutting through that corner that's not covered so let's give it a shot let's see how this does we'll cool the vrms with a lot of air and maybe some stick on heat sinks that we open from that Arctic kit earlier for good good measure we use extra thermal paste okay cool that one's good all right so they all need to be same amount screwed in tubes are on the bottom can I get away with that this clear video card slot 7 point 2 one two one not quite sweet so it's the same same height for all of them they're all the same height and it will fit in a video card slot even though I put the pump the tubes at angle I didn't want to put them at but it's also irrelevant put a fan above it for the vrm do I want vrm heat sinks we really don't need them if you just blast a fan out it these are exposed copper anyway um got that okay thermal adhesive not thermal paste thermal adhesive do not mix them up are these even the same height that's the real question looks like it there we go 0.59 that sounds more accurate 0 six okay they're all the same height that's cool I already know the hot spots because we measured them earlier for the review so that's convenient uh HPM one's at the bottom just ignore that one for now okay that gets left alone okay the last two sets will be cooled with air a lot of it I'm going to put a MAG love fan over this thing and you wouldn't even really need these technically so whatever so that is the longest buildup we've ever done I mean even the part one and part two of the first tear down and hybrid mod we did was shorter than this building part the tear down was trivial um so we've got it we've got the cooler mounted it's making contact everywhere now I've checked it multiple times I was basically shining a UV light through there and then marking with a pencil when I saw it bleed through and when I checked where it marked it's bleeding through in places where there is not a die so it's good so that's making contact first thing I'll do is check GPU temps anyway the vrm should be fine there are two pairs of mosfets that are not covered by one of these small aluminum heat sinks didn't even need to put those on there technically anyway uh but the two that aren't covered are going to be just fine they'll be happy because I'm going to put a maglab fan over them blast it at 100% and it'll all be good air flow is better than heat sinking anyway at least heat sinking without air flow so I think we're ready to test it I can't move the card cuz everything's dry but we'll have Boll shots of it and then check back for the results where we'll have the temperature and thermal difference we'll have the clock stability difference if there is any at that point the only limitation that's left will be the power limit and we have plans to try and deal with that too so check back for all that as always you can subscribe for more especially the results and the follow-ups with potentially power limit uh bypass attempt and store. Gamers nexus.net to grab a shirt or you can just go to the website Gamers nexus.net patreon.com Gamers Nexus helps out directly thank you for watching I'll see you all next time\n"