Howdy gang,
Ages ago I got a couple ASRock B60 Passive cards for a good price and primarily used them for transcode which doesn’t really work them hard so I didn’t care too much about cooling. I was always looking for a way to cool them better/actively anyway, which is why I produced this post previously.
Anyway, I came back to this after forgetting about it for a while, and discovered these very cheap “GPU backplate cooler” things which have a thermal interface pad and zipties. They fit the card perfectly.
At full load I could previously hit thermal throttle (around 96c) pretty quickly, but with this on at 100% it holds them down to about 83c and never throttles.
I think if I put another thermal interface between the card’s external case and internal radiators it would perform even better, as there are clear gaps between the two when you look down the card.
Anyway, just posting this for anyone in the same boat. The same coolers are sold under a variety of brands and are easy to find on all the usual marketplaces.