My previous “liquid CPU cooler on a GPU” experiment involved using Corsair’s H80 on MSI’s GTX 560. You can see how that went by going here, but in a nutshell, GPU temperatures went from 86C to 64C (both temperatures were taken under extreme load in FurMark). Using the Kuhler 620, a closed-loop CPU cooler that’s 40% cheaper than the H80, results were slightly improved. Mounting the water-block onto the video card was also a bit easier, not only because of the smaller water-block, but because of a custom mounting bracket that was sent out to me by “Dwood” on the Overclock.net forums (more on that below).

Mounting the 620

The 620 mounted onto the GTX 560.

Thanks to “Dwood” from Overclock.net‘s forum, mounting the 620 onto the GTX 560 was MUCH easier, as it mounts just like it would onto your regular CPU (once the appropriate mounting bracket is installed, of course). Installation took just a few minutes, and everything was securely into place.

If you’re interested in Dwood’s custom-made brackets, click here. They’re actually quite cheap, so definitely check them out if you’re interested.

The Results

Before installing the 620, my MSI GTX 560 was hitting about 82C under extreme load using FurMark. It’s not as high as with the H80, but new thermal paste has been applied since then, which is probably what resulted in the lower load temperatures.

After installing the 620, my MSI GTX 560 was hitting about 61C, a 26% improvement in temperatures. I was hoping it’d actually be a bit lower than that, but these are pretty good numbers, especially considering you’d never reach those high of temperatures under normal gaming scenarios.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, these were the only temperature tests that I did.

Overclocking

While I did just a little bit of overclocking after the 620 was installed, you can definitely hit 1.1GHz on the core. Just give the card a little bit of extra voltage in MSI Afterburner, and you should be fine. I can’t exactly recall what else I tried, but I think I tried 1.2GHz, which resulted in a driver crash (I was and am currently using NVIDIA’s 285.62 drivers, as the newer ones will result is constant system freezes).

Conclusion

In the end, getting a cheap liquid CPU cooler and putting it on your GPU will quickly and efficiently bring your temperatures down quite a bit. The results aren’t nearly as good as they’d be if you were to build a complete water-cooling setup, but this is much cheaper and easier.

It’s all up to you. You can either purchase a $62 CPU cooler and slap it onto your GPU to overclock, which results in slightly higher frame rates, or you can put that money towards a better GPU in the future. I’d go with the latter.

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