Node 202, GTX1070 & Accelero Artic Xtreme III

TL;DR - I fitted an Artic Accelero Xtreme III to a reference GTX and it dropped my temps by around 25 degrees and is almost silent.

After scouring the web for information on whether this combo would work I decided to just bite and order the parts (including a gpu-pwm fan cable, thanks u/Edlu32!) and low and behold it is amazing.

The process of actually tearing down the card and fitting the new cooler was a stressfull ordeal especially as I slightly was unsure which chips required the heat spreaders and which did not plus this was my first time doing anything of this calibre. After watching a few helpful youtube videos on loop I managed to figure it out and slowly put the whole thing together. All in, including curing time for the thermal glue, it took around 3 hours.

The set up I chose to was using the Xtreme III heat sink and then two Noctua NF-F12PWM case fans set to blow hot air out of the case (similar to this video from Optimum Tech). I connected the fans directly to the GPU with the aforementioned cable and a splitter, with the thinking that the GPU can control the speed of the fans as the temperature goes up instead of setting a constant RPM.

After a quick benchmark in Heaven last night temps are on average 25 degrees lower, 56-60 down from 83 whilst under full load, than with the stock cooler (ASUS Aero blower style). It is also maintaining a constant boost clock which it was previously unable to do due to thermal throttling. During this benchmark the fans were at around 60% speed and for all intents and purposes it was completely silent - my girlfriend was very pleased with this as the PC is in the livingroom where she watches TV.

Overall I couldn't be happier with the choice and would urge others that have been having troubles with thermal throttling on reference cards in a Node 202. The only downside I have found so far is that the card now blows hot air on to my feet, which during the current summer temperatures is pretty unbarable. The solution is just to move my feet somewhere else.

Edit: Sorry I have no good pictures, it was a late and frantic build and there are plenty of people out there who have documented it better than I ever could. Youtube is your friend.