Installing a GPU is easy - except if it doesn't fit in the case. I had to saw off 3cm of the upper, 5.25" bay. Just removing the bay cage entirely was not an option because I still need that for my DVD drive.

My bow saw wouldn't have enough space, and the cage is riveted. So despite terrible ergonomics, I used the metal saw of a fucking Swiss Army knife for 24cm of cut length through 1mm steel. Then I filed off the cuts so that I won't injure myself later.

However, I was too lazy to take out the mobo and shit, so I protected it professionally against potential metal dust - with a towel.

Drill out rivets and remove cage. Modify cage. Rivet cage back in place. Aluminium rivets are easy to drill out and replace.

But yeah, 1mm mild steel isn't that hard, so just sawing it in-place worked fine too, i guess.

@Oktokolo That would have been an option, but actually even more work. Also, I don't have a riveting tool and no suitable screws stocked. Doing it in-place worked well enough, except that my wrist felt like wanking through all of YP.

Next rant: new motherboard

@Demolishun Nah, shit works flawlessly. I also vacuumed the mobo off just to be sure. If I had used an angle grinder, that would have been a different story because that kind of dust is a lot nastier.

The GPU should come with a case in the box

@electrineer The card not even that large, 31cm in length - which was 1.5cm too much. The previous card was only 26cm, that did fit.

It's just that the case is from 2009 when GPUs were quite a bit smaller. Ten years ago, I had a HD 6850 with passive cooling, making it 22.4cm long. That was considered a pretty large card.

@Fast-Nop you know.. there is such a thing as checking clearance before buying?

@tosensei Honestly, I forgot that. However, even if I had checked, I still would have come to the same solution because smaller cards with the same chipset would have worse cooling performance and hence be louder.

@Fast-Nop against noise, i can wholeheartedly recommend shroud modding. remove the original fans (not the heatsink) and slap two noctuas on instead, and boom. significantly better thermals while being barely audible at all during max load.

i really don't get why GPU manufacturers insist on using their own crappy fans. because every single standardised fan is soooo much better.

@tosensei Mine is pretty silent OOTB anyway, and modding a new card would run into issues in case I had to RMA it. Even replacing the fans probably won't become necessary because they don't spin in desktop idle at all, so the wear is limited.

However, on the passively cooled HD 6850 back then, I sewed (!) on a case fan attached to the 12V and 5V lines of the PSU, thus reducing it to 7V - still inaudible, but greatly improving the thermals. Before, they were barely in spec under full load and became really cool after the mod.

@Fast-Nop when you gotta RMA it, just re-mount the old fans. at least with the cards i've modded so far, you could easily take the fans off without even getting close to any "warranty void"-stickers.

@tosensei sounds like making the GPU take even more slots

@electrineer take a slim fan. even they are superior to gpu stock fans.

What is DVD drive?

@tosensei In order to get the shroud off, I'd have to unmount the cooler from the board because the cooler is mounted to the shroud from the inside. That's nothing I'd do before the legal one year vendor liability with reversal of evidence on the vendor is over.

@PAKA I have a lot of physical DVDs and also not-yet-ripped CDs. I could ofc use some shitty USB crap drive, but that's not the same as a proper Plextor one.

@Fast-Nop oof, tough luck. the ones i had were either screwed on at the side, or literally just clipped on (though the last one, a rescue from a smoker, was also glued by nicotine and needed some fresh thermal paste anyway) - what card do you have?

@tosensei A Sapphire Nitro RX 6750 XT, and Sapphire is to AMD what EVGA was to Nvidia in terms of build quality.

Here a teardown of the pre-refresh model Nitro RX 6700 XT, time index is set to where the heatsink is removed from the shroud: https://youtu.be/rmFy6OOuNQs?t=234 As you can see, accessing these four screws requires removing the heatsink from the PCB first.

But! The fans are quick-removable. So if they should die, I can simply get replacement fans from Sapphire, disconnect the fans without disassmbling anything else, clip the new ones in place and secure them with only one screw per fan, accessible from between the fan blades.

@Fast-Nop hm. you _could_ remove the fans and put your own ones on top of the shroud, shouldn't be too much obstruction for the air.

even if you don't want to do that now, i still think it's the better choice when you eventually have to replace the originals - clearance permitting, of course ;)

@tosensei That wouldn't make sense, from an airflow POV, and by the time the fans are likely to die, given that the zero fan idle mode doesn't tax the fan, a repaste will be in order anyway.

.

German engineering at its finest.