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Shunt mod tutorial:
Warning: CoolLabratory Liquid Ultra (and Pro) are conductive thermal interface materials. We use this conductivity to lower the resistance in the card to do this mod, but this conductivity means it is dangerous and can destroy your graphics card if it spills and touches another component on the GPU. I take no responsibility if you break your own (or someone else's) GPU with this mod. If you choose to do the mod, be careful.
NOTE: you can use other liquid metal TIMs as well. Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut works fine too
Warning: If you use an open bench setup that has the GPUs oriented vertically then this mod will not work for you. The CLU will run down off the resistor and get onto other parts of the card which will cause the GPU to most likely die. Normal towers will work fine as they keep the GPUs sitting horizontally.
Warning: This shunt mod is best used for doing bench sessions and the like, and not for permanent, long term installation. Please look up the mod for soldering a resistor on top of the existing resistors if you wish to do this for permanent, year+ use.
EDIT: Criminal gave me a link this morning to a video where der8auer does this mod as well. I posted it at the end of this tutorial if you want to see someone apply the liquid metal in a video rather than just pictures.
1) Start off by removing the backplate and cooler from your GPU. To do this you will need a size #0 phillips screwdriver and a 4mm socket wrench. Once all the screws and bolts are out the cooler should come off relatively easy, so if it is not coming off then you probably forgot a screw somewhere. Likely places that get forgotten are on the end of the card with the display outputs.
2) Once the cooler is removed your card should look like this:
The three resistors on the card are circled in red. We are only going to mod the top two resistors.
3) Place a small bit of Liquid Ultra on the two top shunt resistors. These resistors have a case label of "5MO". You dont need a ton of CLU, just a small dab that you will spread out. See the picture here for how much I applied:
4) Now use the brush included in the CLU package to spread the CLU over the whole top of the resistors. Be careful not to spill it off the resistor. If the CLU spills off the top of the resistor it will most likely destroy your graphics card. Be careful not to use too much CLU as using too much will cause a spill as well when you put the graphics card back together. You do not want to smother this and have CLU completely enclosing and surrounding the resistor, you are just covering the top of it. There is an inductor very close to resistor #2 (RS2) that can easily be spilled onto. Be very careful with this step.
Your graphics card should look like the above picture now. Put the cooler back onto the card and you are done!
To remove this mod from your graphics card, simply wipe away the CLU. If the liquid ultra has hardened then you may be able to use a hair drier for a very brief period to liquefy the material again so that you can remove it.
I showed a screenshot of before and after the mod in 3DMark earlier to show the mod works. Graphics score rose by 223 points in FS Ultra with the mod. I have now been playing a video game for the past 3 hours since doing the mod and posting this with no problems.
By covering both the resistors on the Titan X you should increase your power limit by about 30-35%. This will give you some additional headroom for overclocking so the card doesnt throttle down due to power limit. However, the Titan X (Pascal) has very poor VRM setup on the GPU. It is not rated very high and adding 30% more power from this mod, combined with setting your PT slider to 120% will allow the GPU to draw what I consider to be unsafe levels of power to the core. This mod should let you draw around 390 watts of power, but I dont consider anything over 350w on the Titan X to be safe. Just because you *allow* the card to draw that much power, doesnt mean it will of course. However to be safe, you may want to limit your power target slider to only 110%. That, combined with this mod, should let you draw around 350 watts max before the limit kicks in which will keep your card's VRM from frying.
As you can see, this mod is for the Titan X, and Der8auer's video is for the GTX 1070 and 1080. These mods works for any Nvidia card going back to at least the 700 generation, and probably in future generations as well. Not all cards will have 3 shunt resistors, you may only have 2 resistors because of the single power connector input on your GPU. If you only have 1 power connector, only apply CLU to the one resistor at the top.
Der8auer's video tutorial for modding the power limit on these cards:
EDIT: markklok did the mod and used some hot glue around the resistors to give additional protection against run off and spills due to his vertical mounting of the GPU. You can check out the pictures here:
And finally, this is how it looks with the mod and hot glue around the resistors when under an EK water block:
Warning: CoolLabratory Liquid Ultra (and Pro) are conductive thermal interface materials. We use this conductivity to lower the resistance in the card to do this mod, but this conductivity means it is dangerous and can destroy your graphics card if it spills and touches another component on the GPU. I take no responsibility if you break your own (or someone else's) GPU with this mod. If you choose to do the mod, be careful.
NOTE: you can use other liquid metal TIMs as well. Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut works fine too
Warning: If you use an open bench setup that has the GPUs oriented vertically then this mod will not work for you. The CLU will run down off the resistor and get onto other parts of the card which will cause the GPU to most likely die. Normal towers will work fine as they keep the GPUs sitting horizontally.
Warning: This shunt mod is best used for doing bench sessions and the like, and not for permanent, long term installation. Please look up the mod for soldering a resistor on top of the existing resistors if you wish to do this for permanent, year+ use.
EDIT: Criminal gave me a link this morning to a video where der8auer does this mod as well. I posted it at the end of this tutorial if you want to see someone apply the liquid metal in a video rather than just pictures.
1) Start off by removing the backplate and cooler from your GPU. To do this you will need a size #0 phillips screwdriver and a 4mm socket wrench. Once all the screws and bolts are out the cooler should come off relatively easy, so if it is not coming off then you probably forgot a screw somewhere. Likely places that get forgotten are on the end of the card with the display outputs.
2) Once the cooler is removed your card should look like this:
The three resistors on the card are circled in red. We are only going to mod the top two resistors.
3) Place a small bit of Liquid Ultra on the two top shunt resistors. These resistors have a case label of "5MO". You dont need a ton of CLU, just a small dab that you will spread out. See the picture here for how much I applied:
4) Now use the brush included in the CLU package to spread the CLU over the whole top of the resistors. Be careful not to spill it off the resistor. If the CLU spills off the top of the resistor it will most likely destroy your graphics card. Be careful not to use too much CLU as using too much will cause a spill as well when you put the graphics card back together. You do not want to smother this and have CLU completely enclosing and surrounding the resistor, you are just covering the top of it. There is an inductor very close to resistor #2 (RS2) that can easily be spilled onto. Be very careful with this step.
Your graphics card should look like the above picture now. Put the cooler back onto the card and you are done!
To remove this mod from your graphics card, simply wipe away the CLU. If the liquid ultra has hardened then you may be able to use a hair drier for a very brief period to liquefy the material again so that you can remove it.
I showed a screenshot of before and after the mod in 3DMark earlier to show the mod works. Graphics score rose by 223 points in FS Ultra with the mod. I have now been playing a video game for the past 3 hours since doing the mod and posting this with no problems.
By covering both the resistors on the Titan X you should increase your power limit by about 30-35%. This will give you some additional headroom for overclocking so the card doesnt throttle down due to power limit. However, the Titan X (Pascal) has very poor VRM setup on the GPU. It is not rated very high and adding 30% more power from this mod, combined with setting your PT slider to 120% will allow the GPU to draw what I consider to be unsafe levels of power to the core. This mod should let you draw around 390 watts of power, but I dont consider anything over 350w on the Titan X to be safe. Just because you *allow* the card to draw that much power, doesnt mean it will of course. However to be safe, you may want to limit your power target slider to only 110%. That, combined with this mod, should let you draw around 350 watts max before the limit kicks in which will keep your card's VRM from frying.
As you can see, this mod is for the Titan X, and Der8auer's video is for the GTX 1070 and 1080. These mods works for any Nvidia card going back to at least the 700 generation, and probably in future generations as well. Not all cards will have 3 shunt resistors, you may only have 2 resistors because of the single power connector input on your GPU. If you only have 1 power connector, only apply CLU to the one resistor at the top.
Der8auer's video tutorial for modding the power limit on these cards:
EDIT: markklok did the mod and used some hot glue around the resistors to give additional protection against run off and spills due to his vertical mounting of the GPU. You can check out the pictures here:
And finally, this is how it looks with the mod and hot glue around the resistors when under an EK water block:
