One Redditor has 3D-printed a big yellow air duct to attach to their GPU, and the results are middling: It 'does nothing but it looks cool'
If you're wondering what happens when you cross a love of cars with a gaming PC, you get a full-on air duct inside a gaming PC. And it looks way better than I was expecting it to.
Over on Reddit, user Esra-Zander shared their project to the Nvidia subreddit. In it, they attached a large yellow air duct to the bottom of the GPU, with the endpoint positioned at the bottom of the front of the PC case.
Instead of one large hole to hold the GPU in, the air duct has three smaller holes on the top, with a big cone-like end for the hot air to exhaust. I reached out to Ezra-Zander, and they told me, "My design is somewhat inspired by intake manifolds on cars."
I was also told that the design is inspired by others who have done similar, namely Optimum and their 3D printed ducting project. If you're wondering how the duct fits so snuggly into the rig, that's because it, too, was 3D printed. The end of the duct was made according to the specifications of a PC fan.
In a follow-up post, they showed benchmarking stats, getting lower temps and lower sounds in the Heaven benchmark. Idling and playing a game show worse results than without the duct fan, though. They say, "This test begins to show the drawbacks of the design. The GPU is having a harder time drawing air into its fans because of the duct and becoming louder as a result."
As a comment points out, "Hey OP, the tests are within margin of error sooo... the duct does nothing but it looks cool". Their reply? "Sweet! That's a relief, I thought it was all negatives but I certainly enjoyed making it".
Esra-Zander goes on to say, "Clearly the design is flawed but I certainly don't think it's beyond saving. I will continue working until I have something I'm happy with."
It seems like the point of, well, slapping an air duct on the bottom of your RTX 5070 isn't necessarily to get better results. The point of it is to say "I've slapped an air duct on the bottom of my RTX 5070". At least, in this case, it looks pretty neat.