flip the chip allready! gpu on wrong side for cooling.

Why dont video card manufacturers put the gpu on the other side of the card? Wouldnt this give it a better chance to get cooled with the main airflow from front to cpu to out the back? double slot coolers that exhaust out the back was a good idea but they hog space.

Problem is that with some motherboards 'flipped' gfx cards would then interfere with the northbridge or CPU fan...

Flipping it doesn't make sense, then the fan has to pull air from the same space it is trying to dump hot air into. Its best on the bottom side of the card so that it can pull the cooler air from the bottom of the case directly to it, not around the card like it would have to if it were on top. Then the hot air gets dumped out and moves up (since it is hotter).

I personally think it is silly to put the power supply at the top of the case and make it eat all that hot air. But, while I am an engineer, I'm not an HVAC engineer...

The PCI, AGP, and PCIe specifications define how tall the components are allowed to be on each side of the board. The backside is only allowed to have about .2 inches max (only enough for small surface mount components and/or solder tails of front-side through-hole components).

Deviating from the spec runs a high risk of being incompatible with a lot of systems and generating a lot of returns. Some cards have wrap around cooling solutions that put a heat sink on the back side of the board, but the non-conformance scares away a lot of business. The back side cooler could interfere with north bridge or CPU cooling or even have mechanical interference. Putting the GPU on the back of the board would worsen the problem since now you have even more of a deviation from spec.

Double slot solutions are easier to work with since many motherboards have spaced out the connectors to accomodate this. The extra height of the card is only interfering with other expansion cards which can hopefully be moved to other slots.

A lot of cases now use an inverted design with the motherboard mounted upside down and on the left panel rather than the right. The PSU is on the bottom of the case. This kinda solves the problem, except heat may get trapped under PCI cards.

This is a major noob question, but BTX is the case with the PSU on the bottom correct? I have been confused between that setup and "baby-ATX" motherboards.

searched some schema to show:

http://img.clubic.com/photo/01C6000000060022.jpg
http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/1 [...] ooling.jpg
http://img.clubic.com/photo/012C000000114355.jpg

that's BTX

Makes sense, thanks!

That's better to explain it than my schema's

Many Lian-li cases have solved this problem. the motherboard is mounted upside down on the other side (left side when viewing from the front) of the case. if you have the money, these are the best cases you will find. my Lian-li v2000b is one such model. Finish quality is second to none. Hard drives and powersupply often compartmentalized to separate heat zones but still have adequate airflow. Here is one such case, the Lian-Li V1000B Plus


Notice the Side fan in the upper left hand corner exhausts heat from the Pci Cards and that the CPU duct is at the bottom, the way god intended.
The Slots on the bottom left are HDD bays that have special screws that allow them to slide and lock in so easy youll cry.
Lian-Li V1000b on newegg

This is just one of the great cases like this they offer. look around.

They DO make cards with the heatsink assembly on the other side.

But really it makes less sense than revers ATX which has already been mentioned, having the cooler on the other side for a desktop means sucking hot air from the CPU/Memory side, when really it's cooler on the otherside. For a tower, buy a reverse ATX case, they're not expensive nor hard to figure out and you have the benifits your want.

Current design will persist as long as HTPCs and other use generic desktops that benifit from that flow, the need for inverted sooling just isn't there anymore, especially if your HSF assembly works like the HIS and draws the air out of your rig, you don't want that sucking waste CPU/Mem air either.

Best solution would be a 2 stage cooler that drew cold air in around the units and then back out again, but that'd be an even bigger cooler to achieve the same level of airflow.

And HIS style cooler with an AGP intake porthole on your case wold be best IMO, and best the way it's currently designed.