RTX 3080 hotspot temperature drops 37°C using 4kW AC radiator

YouTuber TrashBench tested a custom liquid cooling system using a repurposed 4kW Fujitsu air conditioner radiator on several components. During testing with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 at stock settings, the GPU hotspot temperature dropped from 79.4°C to 42.2°C. TrashBench also overclocked the card to a core clock of 2,130MHz, which pushed power consumption to approximately 459W. Under this modified cooling, the GPU reportedly operated at about 33°C. While the temperatures fell significantly, TrashBench observed merely minor gains in average frame rates at stock configurations.

Image: Digital Citizen

The cooling setup was also used on an Intel Core i9-14900K during combined CPU and GPU workloads. The processor reached approximately 230W, and its temperature decreased from 74.8°C to 71.7°C. TrashBench suggested this 3.1°C improvement was much smaller than the GPU results because the CPU water block possibly lacked proper physical contact with the processor.

TrashBench previously tested the radiator on an RTX 5060, but reported the card had limited overclocking headroom. The creator also noted the original pump used in the setup was extremely noisy. The experiment does not establish the setup as practical for ordinary gaming systems because of considerations regarding noise, electrical consumption, component stability, and power delivery.