Graphics card and power supply question

bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
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10,510
Hi folks,

I have a question about the placement of my graphics card and power supply. The case is a Cooler Master Scout case with a bottom mount power supply, and the fan takes in air from the bottom of the case, so it faces downwards. The mobo is a ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 and the GTX650 TI is located on the bottom PCI-E x16 slot. The fan for the onboard cooling faces downwards towards the power supply and there's about a 1/2 inch gap between the fan and the top of the power supply.

Is this going to "suffocate" the fan on the GTX to where it can't properly cool itself? I've also thought about flipping the power supply over and mounting two fans on the door to feed more cool air, which in the end might be better for the power supply as well. Any advice would be great, thanks!
 
If you only have a single graphics card it is suppose to be placed in the PCIE2 slot because that is the only slot with 16 PCI Express lanes.

From your description you currently have it in the PCIE4 slot that only has 8 PCI Express lanes.

The fan on the power supply is an intake fan. If you have the power supply fan facing upward it will fight with the graphics card's cooling fan(s) for the same cooling air. Whichever fan is stronger will starve the other of cooling air.

The first thing you should do is move the graphics card into the proper PCIE2 PCI Express slot on the motherboard.

Second, leave you power supply alone, it's already mounted in the correct orientation.
 

bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
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10,510


I tried placing the card in the PCIE2 slot, but both of the PCIE x1 slots are next to it, one above and one below. My wireless card and Sound Blaster sound card are both PCIE x1, and the other slots are standard PCI slots so I can't use my cards on those.
 

Place the card that is currently in the PCIE3 slot into the PCIE4 slot.

Didn't you know that a PCIE x1 card can be placed into any size PCIE slot?

Hopefully that won't cause the PCIE2 slot to operate in x8 mode. You can check if that's the case using GPU-Z.
 

bravozero

Honorable
Apr 17, 2012
8
0
10,510


Ah, that I did not know. It's been a while since I last built a computer, stuff has changed a lot. The last computer I build used an AGP slot for the video card and dual core processors weren't out yet, lol.

I will try swapping the cards around and seeing what happens, that will also allow me to do more cable management from the power supply.