GeForce RTX 3060 cooling mod drops gaming temperatures to 22°C

YouTuber TrashBench ran an unusual experiment and turned an ordinary desktop ice maker into a cooling system for a GeForce RTX 3060. After the mod, the GPU temperature in Cyberpunk 2077 fell from roughly 60°C to 22–23°C, while the hottest spot dropped from 75°C to 34°C.

For the project, he fully disassembled the graphics card, removed the stock cooler and connected a homemade liquid-cooling loop to the GPU die. A submersible pump was installed inside the ice maker to move water between the reservoir and the GPU water block.

Initial tests showed that without the ice maker actively running, the RTX 3060 climbed to 44°C. Once cooling kicked in, the temperature fell by more than 10 degrees, but another issue appeared: the ice maker compressor ran in cycles and could not cool the water continuously. The modder therefore replaced the stock thermostat with another one, allowing the compressor to run without interruption.

TrashBench then reworked the evaporator tube layout so the system could draw heat away from the graphics card more efficiently. After that change, the result improved noticeably: in final tests, the RTX 3060 held at about 22°C while playing Cyberpunk 2077, and hotspot temperature fell by more than 50%.

Water leaks appeared during the experiments, and the author had to fix them by hand. In the end, the project looked impressive, but clearly was not the safest idea: electrical components and circulating water ended up side by side. Still, the experiment showed how much thermal headroom even a relatively old GeForce RTX 3060 can gain when cooling is approached in a very unconventional way.