The Ultimate DIY Passive Cooler: A Massive Copper Block for RTX 3080

If you want power in a modern PC build, you’ll need to move air around. Fans cool components unless you want to turn it into a very expensive radiator. Just ask this Reddit user trying to passively cool an Nvidia RTX 3080. The user removed the stock cooling shroud and replaced it with a copper and steel contraption. The contraption is made from a solid bar of copper, 1 foot wide, 2 inches tall, and 3 inches deep, with at least eleven extra CPU cooler heatsinks attached. The copper block alone weighs 23.26 pounds, dwarfing the GPU and PCB beneath it. Despite completing passive cooling projects before, the user is a long way from getting this to work. The consensus is that the huge bar of copper won’t effectively dissipate the heat. There’s a small but dedicated group of PC enthusiasts who like to passively cool high-power components. SilentPC’s passive cooling designs can fit high-end parts, but they can’t handle a card as powerful as the 3080 without a fan. Solid-state cooling may usher in a new generation of designs in a few years, but passive fans might scoff at it anyway.