Chopping Up a GTX Titan... AGAIN!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,362 words · ~6 min read
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so you might have seen our video a little while back where we chopped up a
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gtx titan so it could fit in a single
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pci express slot with a card installed
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right next to it that mod included water cooling though and we thought
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why don't we try and do one better what if we made a single slot card that's
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air-cooled alex why don't you quit your bitchin and get
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to work so get your angle grinders revving because the gtx titan is going
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on the chopping block once again
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experience MSI's gs63 vr laptop now with
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NVIDIA's GeForce gtx 1070 max-q check it
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out at the link below making a double slot card the height of
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a single slot card with air cooling isn't particularly easy if it was then
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this would be a lot more common than
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this this video has been a long time in the
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making so we got to work measuring every important bit of the titan to make a
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solidworks model which will actually link if you guys want to make your own
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mod to one of these for whatever reason with the model for the single slot
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adapter made it was time to print now pla filament would pass the glass
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transition temperature when the titan was stressed turning into a deformed
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blob so we ended up using abs
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with the 3d printed part in hand well one thing became clear and that's
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that our calipers hold a zero like a drunk hits a bullseye
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but all the critical dimensions were close enough so we just needed to
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perform a little bit of massaging to get everything to uh
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kind of fit together for our next trick then we'll
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need a low profile fan thanks cooler guys you have everything
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now we were hoping to cannibalize the fan and mount it where the original fan
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went but unfortunately this press fit bearing
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holder prevented us from doing so so it was time for super cannibalization with
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this angle grinder and the savagery continues the wonderful
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cooler mounting plate for the titan well
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i'm afraid that anything that was going to be too high to fit in a single slot
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was gonna have to go excellent so everything seems to be
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coming together fairly well let's move on then to the final step
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which brandon dubbed torture porn for nerds
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chopping up the heatsink originally we thought that just the good
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old angle grinder would do the trick allowing us to relatively easily slice
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through these thin fins unfortunately that ended up taking too long and
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grinding aluminum is actually really sketchy
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so we moved on to our favorite method of heatsink chopping the reciprocating saw
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and oh oh god oh no
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oh please stop oh the humanity
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like we said before using an angle grinder or a reciprocating saw those
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would be terrible ideas so we ran out and bought a belt sander
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to ensure that we didn't cause any more unnecessary harm to the heat sink while
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we cut down its size it really is amazing how much easier
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things are when you have the right tool for the job with the heatsink now at the
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right height we just had to remove any loose bits of aluminum because if one of
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those crosses the traces on the pcb it's game over and then
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slap it all together it's actually a little bit easier to
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assemble now than stock since there are way less screws
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so that's a plus the fan mounts with some strong
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double-sided tape the see-through panel had to be glued onto the outside instead
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of the inside like on the original model but i mean this was
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so that we could maximize the area of the fins because in truth having the
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glass on the inside would have meant about 20 percent less cooling
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unfortunately though when we went to test it the fan wouldn't work
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possibly because of the grinding we could have gotten another fan but if
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we're being honest that just wasn't going to be enough airflow anyway so we
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went back to the drawing board and designed a 140 millimeter fan to dryer
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vent adapter and a new single slot cover inspired by
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server gpus without a hole for the fan
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the good people at my mini factory printed that up for us the parts arrived
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and we could finally smash them into the computer as hard as you guys are
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smashing the like button right now so we bolted the adapter to a knock to a
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140 millimeter industrial fan at max speed and then squeezed it into the case
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before connecting the dryer vent to the graphics card we added some foam to the
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back to prevent the dryer vent from shorting anything out we then attached
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the vent the red green way lots of duct tape and finished it off with some tuck
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tape for that industrial quality seal
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now it just needs to be encouraged in and we're good to go
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oh my god what is this
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wow this actually looks
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like shockingly not
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i mean the dick butt is sort of unnecessary but uh
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does this work where does it exhaust from okay that seems to be a bit of a
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design flaw there yeah did you not think to maybe cut vents here like single slot
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graphics cards usually do okay okay okay
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okay oh boy oh boy
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oh buddy oh boy you better shut this baby down
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before you overheat here and while we could have spent the rest
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of the day taking it all apart modifying it carefully and putting it back
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together it was easier to whip out the saw and hack off the last inch of the
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cover to give it some breathing room which
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hardly helped it all of course it thermal throttled again
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because our heatsink was crazy restrictive and getting almost no
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airflow also this whole thing was kind of a dumb idea
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alex did the calculations before he even
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started the project and no matter how much air you push across the fins if
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they're that size you're not going to get the cooling needed for a titan so i
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guess the real takeaway from today's video is that math exists for a reason
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get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device
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