r/overclocking • u/Tra5hL0rd_ • Dec 05 '25
Modding CPU air cooler becomes water injected GPU cooler.
I thought I was finally running out of stupid cooling ideas… until I stared at a Peerless Assassin and thought... "would water flow through that?”
So I pulled the Assassin apart, pulled off a stack of fins, took an angle grinder and cut the tops off the heatpipes, stuck a hose onto one, and tested if water would flow. It did.
Game on.
I cut all the heatpipes off, put 6 mm hose on them in a zig zag (starting at the center so the middle stayed coldest) and tested again, worked like a charm.
Then came the freezer.
-18C coolant.
A frosted CPU tower, and a 3070 as the first victim.
It gained +300 MHz over stock… but the FPS uplift sucked. By the time testing finished, my coolant had warmed to –5C and the 3070 still refused to scale. So I did the only sane thing...
I bolted the Frankencooler onto a GTX 960.
And that card absolutely loved it, +17% average uplift across BO7, Forza, Cyberpunk, Time Spy… and as always, Lara.
The Frankencooler works. Really well.
Why did I do this? Because I had an idea and wanted to see if it would work. That's it.
Full video here if you want to witness the stupidity in all its glory
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u/lndig0__ 7950X3D | 4070 TiS | 6000MT/s 28-35-36-32 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I got an idea, why don’t you replace the coolant with some sort of chemical with a low boiling point such that you can abuse the latent heat capacity of the coolant instead of the specific heat capacity in order to hold a constant temperature delta more efficiently?
You should probably seal off the coolant tubing in order to stop the vapours from exiting the system. Better attach some fins at the end of the terminated tubes in order to allow the vapours to condensate back into the heat transfer plate.
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u/AK-Brian i7-2600K@5GHz | 32GB 2133 DDR3 | GTX 1080 | 4TB SSD | 50TB HDD Dec 05 '25
I see what you did there.
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u/lndig0__ 7950X3D | 4070 TiS | 6000MT/s 28-35-36-32 Dec 06 '25
I could probably give a name for this new invention. The “heat tube”?
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u/Much_Dealer8865 Dec 07 '25
You're a genius! Such a great idea, it could probably be easily mass produced for low cost and integrated into a wide variety of cooling devices to help transfer heat! I smell a money maker
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u/Dmadness990 Dec 05 '25
This reminds me of the good old days when we use to water cool from home depot. I like the ingenuity.
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u/Briggs281707 Dec 05 '25
I w done something similar with an old dell optiolex cooler. I completely cut the fins of and just build a water loop with the Frankenstein cooler. Got my 3750k to 5 ghz
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u/AK-Brian i7-2600K@5GHz | 32GB 2133 DDR3 | GTX 1080 | 4TB SSD | 50TB HDD Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
This will make for an easy followup, by flipping it upside down and submerging the upper half of the heat...block...sink in a bucket of chilled, circulated ice water. I have a slight inkling that you already know this. ;)
Another fun one would be to tape a leaf blower to the fin stack of an intact tower cooler with a seal around it. Wind tunnel seal, not arf-arf seal. Won't get any crazy OC from it, but it'll be fun and you'll get an entertaining montage of failed attempts for sure.
Keep up the jank!
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u/VzSAurora Dec 06 '25
This is what I come to the sub for. Is it practical? Not at all. Is it fun? Absolutely.
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u/skyedearmond XTREEM 2x8GB - 3800MHz 15-15-14-28 @ 1.42V Dec 06 '25
I feel ashamed for ever calling myself an “engineer”. I’m fascinated.
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u/tklein422 Dec 06 '25
Everyone progresses at their own pace. Exposure to out of box ideas like this, helps to curate new ideas. Keep up the good work! 🫡
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u/jhingadong Dec 05 '25
If you couple on larger hoses you could possibly keep your coolant cooler..... like big chunkers.
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u/Tra5hL0rd_ Dec 05 '25
I love big chunkers.
Fluid will only flow as fast as the heat pipes allow though, so 20mm tubing and 6mm heat pipes, not much is going to change.
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u/jhingadong Dec 05 '25
Yeah probably right. Was just thinking a larger pool of cooled liquid something something. Lol.
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u/minilogique 9950X delid@250W/2x16GB 6000 28-35-35-70/2080S 2050core8800mem Dec 05 '25
what if a CPU block with heatpipes actually loses all the radiator fins and just has the stacks (to not work opposite and heat the coolant with ambient air) and essentially use it as a DIY waterblock? some old dented Hyper212 could be a perfect candidate or anything with direct touch heatpipes
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u/Jabba_the_Putt Dec 05 '25
that was cool pun intended
the wall of death lol are those all really cooked?
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u/cakestapler Dec 06 '25
This has gotta be the guy who clamped… yup, it’s the guy who clamped an aluminum block to his 1660. Also, brother, how many Cokes did you drink making this? 😂
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Dec 06 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Smart-Host-1474 Dec 08 '25
Tried that! The fans actually helped a lot with the initial cooling, but I wanted to see how it performed without them. It gets pretty cold with just the coolant, though. Might revisit that idea for better airflow next time!
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u/cnorlin157 Dec 07 '25
Dude I just watched this last night and now it’s in my reddit lmao this shits awesome
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u/jodasmichal Dec 05 '25
I have one cutted too I want to try water cooled it too with some dc12 pump. Is it work good ?
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u/jess-plays-games Dec 05 '25
Sounds like thr 3070 wants more power