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Would cards with multiple fans get any air intake with this tight a fit?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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September 19, 2014 5:30:54 PM

Although I still think my overclocked GTX 670 FTW cards will last me for a decent while, eventually some day I will have to upgrade, so I want to know if that would even be possible considering my ill planned jury-rigged setup.,

Right now my system's PCI slots are pretty packed. In fact, I grossly overestimated what I would be able to fit onto the motherboard because my last build was a Pentium 3 that even had ISA ports and I had no idea when a modern motherboard mentions something like (6 PCIe slots) they mean (*But only about 2 of them will be usable with those gigantic dual-slot GPUs nowadays).

The only reason I even managed to get everything to fit was because I wasn't able to afford a capture card....

Anyway, this is what my setup looks like now:

http://i.imgur.com/ABOk0KW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gfoVuSh.jpg


That red card below the first GTX is a sound card, and the other card below the second one is a RAID card. The main reason this causes no problems is because by luck, the cards I got happen to have a single fan at the very end, which extends past the cards directly below them, as you can see in the photos.

However, as I was looking at most new cards today, especially the ones with doubled RAM (which I heard while not that useful for single cards, helps when it comes to SLI) tend to have two or even three fans, on top of that, a lot of cards, especially Nvidia's, nowadays seem to tend to put the fan in the center.

I know there is no way of knowing what cards in the future will be like and where they place their fans, but in case they don't have a model where the fan is at the very end like mine, I want to know if I would even be able to put in a newer card. Is there still enough clearance here for the air intake, or no? Do they even just intake air from the front of the location of the fan, or regardless of the fan's position do they pull air in from the front end and exhaust it out the back of the card/PC? Or do they do none of this and pull air from the side?

Basically, if I were to put in a current double or triple fan model card, would the clearance or direction they intake air from still work with those other two cards so close to the front of them, or no? Or is it dependent on the card where it pulls air from and there is no commonly accepted standard to do it?

And I know what some are going to say, but I would not be able to bypass all this by water-cooling them. I don't have ANY experience or understanding of how those systems work, and I know I would forget to check for leaks/the water levels in a timely manner.

More about : cards multiple fans air intake tight fit

September 19, 2014 7:32:56 PM

Your present situation is cramped, but fine for air intake. And yes, the air is taken in at the fans and exhausted everywhere else. It doesn't take much room for the cards to have plenty of air volume for intake. I doubt the proximity to the other cards would hinder that. But having hot cards that close will reduce cooling due to the air taken in being warm. The 2 and 3 fan cards will still be able to intake sufficient air where the area is ope, though. Air molecules are very tiny ;-) I wouldn't expect too much cooling loss.

I'm not sure what you mean by doubled VRAM and SLI. If you are referring to adding the VRAM from both cards to double the total, no. It doesn't work that way. Most games use alternate frame rendering (AFR). Each card only uses its own VRAM to render a frame. If you come across a game that still uses split frame rendering (SFR) where each card renders approx. half of the frame, then technically you are using both cards' VRAM per frame rendered. But the end result is still the same. VRAM does not double.
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September 19, 2014 7:42:08 PM

clutchc said:
I'm not sure what you mean by doubled VRAM and SLI. If you are referring to adding the VRAM from both cards to double the total, no. It doesn't work that way. Most games use alternate frame rendering (AFR). Each card only uses its own VRAM to render a frame. If you come across a game that still uses split frame rendering (SFR) where each card renders approx. half of the frame, then technically you are using both cards' VRAM per frame rendered. But the end result is still the same. VRAM does not double.


No no, I meant how there are some versions of cards that have twice the amount of VRAM they normally come with. E.G. EVGA makes a 2GB and 4GB model of the GTX 770 card.
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