Are you also tired of whiny and loud fans on low profile graphics cards? I've come up with a solution to keep the GPU both cool and quiet called deshrouding. In short, it means replacing the fans with both larger and thicker ones, whilst retaining the heatsink. These larger fans can spin a lot slower, making the GPU inaudible under load. A very welcome addition to a case you'll be putting in your living room or on your desk!
Yocto provides mounting points for two 60 mm fans under the GPU. Depending on the radiator size of your GPU, you can attach fans up to 25 mm thick to these points.
The sum of the fan thickness and the radiator height, starting from the PCB, can be no more than 48 mm. As a reference, I've made a table below with all the radiator dimensions of most of the popular low profile GPU's.
Advised fans
There aren't many quality 60 mm fans, but we're lucky that Noctua, one of the best fan manufacturers, has a great one. The NF-A6x25 PWM is probably the best fan you can get when deshrouding your GPU.
Controlling fan speed
GPU's tend to use different fan headers than regular case fans use. To control the fan speed based on the GPU temperature, you can buy an adapter. However, many cards define a high minimum fan speed on their header, so it is much easier and advised to use a fan header on your motherboard. You can then control the speed very precisely using software like Fan Control. You can find an in-depth guide to controlling fans based on GPU temperature with Fan Control here.
Note on the RTX A2000
The RTX A2000 is the strongest and most recent low profile GPU and a popular choice for the Yocto. But the blower style cooler makes it unsuitable for deshrouding. While it is a pretty quiet card, its minimum fan RPM can be annoying, so I came up with a custom heatsink solution that enables you to deshroud this card!
Supported graphics cards
Card | Radiator | Fan |
---|---|---|
ASRock Intel Arc A310 | 21mm | 25mm |
ASRock Intel Arc A380 | 21mm | 25mm |
Asus GTX 1050 (ti) | 21mm | 25mm |
Asus GTX 1650 | 21mm | 25mm |
Asus RTX 3050 6GB | 21mm | 25mm |
EVGA GTX 1050 (ti) | 36mm | ⟋ |
Galax/KFA GTX 1050 (ti) | 36mm | ⟋ |
Galax/KFA GTX 1650 | 36mm | ⟋ |
Galax/KFA RTX 3050 6GB | 36mm | ⟋ |
Gigabyte GTX 1050 (ti) | 36mm | ⟋ |
Gigabyte GTX 1650 | 20mm | 25mm |
Gigabyte RX 6400 | 20mm | 25mm |
Gigabyte RTX 3050 6GB | 21mm | 25mm |
Gigabyte RTX 4060 | 21mm | 25mm |
Manli GTX 1650 | 23mm | 25mm |
MSI GTX 1050 ti | 21mm | 25mm |
MSI GTX 1650 | 21mm | 25mm |
MSI RTX 3050 6GB | 21mm | 25mm |
RTX A2000 | 36mm | ⟋ |
RTX A2000 with custom heatsink | 23mm | 25mm |
RTX 4000 SFF Ada | 36mm | ⟋ |
Zotac GTX 1050 (ti) | 24mm | 20mm |
Zotac GTX 1650 | 24mm | 20mm |
Zotac RTX 3050 6GB | 24mm | 20mm |
How quiet does it get?
As for the results, they are spectacular. I ran a test with 3 cards total: The MSI GTX 1050ti, MSI GTX 1650 and the RTX A2000 using my custom copper heatsink.
I use two Noctua NF-A6x25 PWM fans rotating at a speed of 1000 RPM at idle and 1800 RPM under full load, both inaudible speeds at 30 cm distance. The MSI cards didn't go higher than 75C, while the RTX A2000 didn't even go higher than 67C.
As you can see, deshrouding is a big improvement over idle speeds of 3000 RPM that the original coolers tend to have!
Do you want an inaudible Yocto too?
Enjoy a handcrafted and stylish home theater or console that you don't have to hide from sight!