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I want to add liquid cooling in my system. My gpu is getting heated and I hope this will reduce the life span. I have a Radeon 6970. I can fix up a good one on cpu but what about the gpu. I cannot find a proper kit for that. I am looking for a waterblock for Radeon 6790.
To add liquid cooler on gpu you have to make some changes. The cooler must contact with the heatsink. For that somehow you have to remove the top cover. It will then work. You can with proper management hook up the cooler and make it work well.
There is one from PNY. You do not need to remove the top case. The cooler comes with pipes that you have to book properly with the heatsink that's all. There is no need to add water block or make changes to existing kit. The cooler is quiet portable. There is a fan attached to the pipe. I think this is the only portable cooler yet available for a graphic card. Along with the gpu you can fix the same on your cpu also. This will save your money in adding up a additional cooler for the processor.
The cooling fan is separate and can be easily fitted to the chassis. There are two pipes which comes out from the gpu and reaches the fan. The first pipe draws the cool liquid to the gpu and the second one withdraws the heat. The process goes over and over gain a number of time. You can expect to get more than 30% cooling compared to other coolers. It is a very lightweight cooler and easy to fix also. You can remove it whenever you want. It operates on minimum voltage because of which there is no need to upgrade the psu for the same.
For a number of liquid cooler you have to upgrade the smps or else it will not operate in proper way. The only requirement to run this cooler is that you must have a psu atleast 700w or higher.
There are many liquid cooling kits available for graphic cards. But they are costly and complicated to fit. I will recommend you to buy a cpu case which has preinstalled cooler. The case is designed to cool every piece of hardware inside.
Getting a new cpu case can be costly to some extent. The reason why we do not get a proper coole for gpu is the fitting. Somehow coolers need extreme modification. There are number of manufacturers no web which offer you gpu specific cooler. You can check the design if that matches with your gpu then you can use it. One of them is 740GF Graphics Liquid Cooler. This fits directly on the graphic card. You will need to remove the heatsink for that. I had seen some images but not aware about the exact installation procedure.
You have to open up the entire kit and get rid of the heatsink. There is a fan attached which can be fitted anywhere. It draws out heat and keeps pulling cooler air inside. Another important thing that you have to see while buying a liquid cooler is noise. Some of them are quit annoying when you turn on the system. Also there are number of alien products which are not at all reliable. You have to buy the most trusted one only. Try to check some kit on koolance.
It is quiet not possible to fix a liquid cooler of specific cpu model on another. It will not work properly. There are chances you might face issue with configuration. Somehow try to find something that fits actually your gpu.
Koolance has wide range of water blocks for gpu's. They sell that on the base of gpu model. I found water block for Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 6990. You can try to locate a one of your model also. But think they come with common designs and you can fit any of them. It depends on the kit actually.The price lies between $90 to $130. Koolance only sells the water block, not the entire kit. You can hook that up on the gpu and fix the pipe on it. It is fine and well designed providing your gpu a much higher power and improved performance.
If you are not willing to spend that much then better stick with air cooling. There are good fans available on web. It is possible to find a much better fan compared to what we get with the graphic card. You can open the kit and replace that. It is not at all complicated. But if your gpu is under warranty then I will not recommend you to open it up. It will void warranty.
This all stuff must be provided by the gpu seller itself. They must sell all this cooling things. So there will no issue of relying on any third party sources to purchase a liquid cooler and worry about the fitting.
You are right to some extent. It is not possible to get the right kit for each gpu model available. And liquid cooling has maintenance issue. Compared to air cooling they are quiet costly. You cannot just fit them and turn them on. Also they provide you lower life of cooling. You have to check the cooling liquid from time to time and change them.
To avoid all those thing I bought a system for alienware. There was everything configured and fitted in that. It worked well till now. It is costly but to some extent it is beneficial. As there is no need to look for each and every part. They are packed together.
There are gpu liquid cooler, but I a quiet not sure about the water blocks. There are some manufacturer on web that offers you to get custom blocks depending on the design you have.