Modder Cools RTX 3080 to 28°C With Repurposed Air-Conditioner Radiator
TrashBench turned a 4-kW outdoor AC radiator into a PC water-cooling loop, dropping an RTX 3080 from 65°C to 28°C, according to Tom's Hardware.
Australian hardware modder and YouTuber TrashBench published a video testing a repurposed 4-kW outdoor radiator-fan unit from a split air-conditioning system as a water-cooling loop for a PC test bench. The unit was used without refrigerant gas, according to Tom's Hardware.
TrashBench kept only the radiator, fan and pump, removed most internal parts and added casters. He converted a T-joint into a Y-joint and made 3D-printed mounting brackets for the cold plates.
With this loop, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 dropped from 52°C with its standard cooler to 33°C. He raised the card's boost clock from 2902 MHz to 3300 MHz, a 14% increase, which produced only a 3% average FPS gain.
An Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 fell from 65°C to 28°C on the same loop. Overclocking the RTX 3080 gave only a 3% FPS improvement.
In a combined GPU and CPU load test with an Intel Core i9-14900K, CPU temperatures dropped 18°C to 76°C. During that combined test the graphics card's heat sensor did not move.
Background
In an earlier project, TrashBench placed a graphics card in the 'wrong' position to get better cooling results.
Quick answers
What temperatures did the repurposed air-conditioner radiator achieve?
An RTX 3080 fell from 65°C to 28°C, and an RTX 5060 dropped from 52°C to 33°C.
Did overclocking the GPUs improve FPS much?
No, overclocking the RTX 5060 and RTX 3080 each gave only a 3% average FPS improvement.