NV30- the fan will last how long, we must dust it how often?

[Geeforcer]

And i'll tell you this - i dont need a "pizza engineer" to tell me if a pizza tastes like shit or not. You figure out the analogy.

The analogy doesn't exactly work in this thread: Some people have already drawn conclusions about the taste of the "pizza" without knowing how it was cooked and more importantly, without tasting it.

 

[Evildeus]

That's a great thread

 

[DemoCoder]

Would you get off of your f@nboi highhorse for a momeent and stop the witch-hunt? Stop looking for f@nboi's and you might stop seeing them. If you cant see how this HSF is "above and beyond" standard cooling, then you are blind. I guess next thing is, you'll be telling us that YOU are a thermal engineer. Oh wait... You arent. So iguess you wouldnt know whether or not one would be needed to discuss this thing.
And i'll tell you this - i dont need a "pizza engineer" to tell me if a pizza tastes like shit or not. You figure out the analogy.

Show me where I made an assertion that it didn't go "above and beyond" standard cooling. Who gives a damn? If I buy a new sports car, you can bet it goes above and beyond the standard exhaust system of a Honda Civic.

What I said was, heat, dust, and fan issues are not simplistic. I am not a thermal engineer, but I know one, and I know that more goes into deciding how to get heat out of the system than the level of discussion going on in this forum. I mean, do you honesty believe Nvidia engineers didn't consider issues like DUST and MTBF for the moving parts of the system?

Listening to the way people talk in this thread, it's almost like they imagine the following conversation:

Engineer #1: "Gosh, Wally. ATI released a new card, with 256-bit bus and 8 pipelines. Hey, our card ships in a few months, but let's go redesign it at the last moment to beat ATI."

Engineer #2 (Wally) "Golly Gee, Gee-Whiz Herman. We'll also need to overclock it way past what we though! Oh, I know, I'll call up ACME HeatSinks INC and slap on the biggest fan we can find!"

Enginee #1 "Great, let's ship it!"

The point is, the design of the cooling system on the NV30 was not a last minute decision. It was designed months ago and put through lots of simulation of the effects, including vibration, sound, airflow, dust, failure rate.

You just don't slap together these things at the last minute based on what your competitor is doing. If you can't understand that, then you are blind. So before start talking about fan failure rates, super-hot exhaust, or dust clogging up the system, you better do the math.

 

[flf]

I just ordered one of the Zalman ZM80A-HP passive video card coolers. You know, one of the one with the front & back surfaces connected with a heat pipe. Some 1000 square inches (edit: 1300 cm^2, my bad) of cooling area. I like that.

But what I really like is that it doesn't have a fan at all. You see, it's for the wife's Abit Siluro 4200. The damn fan quit spinning. I cleaned it a bit, but it's all gummed up and isn't moving enough air to keep the chip cool enough. Locks 3D games in a couple minutes every time.

So, I don't like noisy fans. I don't like having fans gummed up with cat hair.

Of course, I do have 5 cats. Go figure. And the wife won't let me shave them to keep down the fluff.

 

[LittlePenny]

Off topic and perverted.

And the wife won't let me shave them to keep down the fluff.

Yadda Yadda women yadda yadda not wanting their pussys shaven.

And did anyone else read this new guys name as...
Short Stocky Bald
Member

 

[g__day]

You can bet the design engineers on everything from the Titanic to the Spaceshuttle worked on their stuff too!!

DemoCoder this is not an attack - its an open question that I'd love NVidia to respond too. It looks problematic to the non-engineer. I am not attacking their engineers - I just want assurance their engineers have no concerns in this area and why.

 

[Evildeus]

You can bet the design engineers on everything from the Titanic to the Spaceshuttle worked on their stuff too!!

DemoCoder this is not an attack - its an open question that I'd love NVidia to respond too. It looks problematic to the non-engineer. I am not attacking their engineers - I just want assurance their engineers have no concerns in this area and why.

I don't think his response was aimed at your normal concern, but more at the response .

The only think i can tell, is wait and see (as everything on the NV30)

 

[martrox]

I myself see no big deal with the fan on the NV30..... aside from the possible noise. Fact is you shouldn't use PCI slot 1 on many motherboards as they use same interrupt as the AGP slot.... And as many have said, with today's advanced chipsets including so much, you should have plenty of slots. And if you are using an older MB.... just why would you bother getting a FX? Will the fan get clogged up? I would hope enough designwork has been done to either prevent this or at least nVidia will let users know what they need to do, such as periodic cleaning. While many here think I'm biased to ATI, I do try to maintain some objectivity. (accually, I'm biased to the best card out there....and IF the NV30 will do better than the 9700 by a goodly %, I'll have no problem with having one - which I'll get just to check out anyway) This thread is beating a nonexistant horse to death. Now, just how many out there would consider purchasing this cooling setup for their 9700's or GF4's? Hmmmmm......

edited for spelling....what's new?

 

[Mariner]

I tend to think that when NV30 was on the drawing board, they were planning two separate versions initially:

1. "GeforceFX" standard with 'normal' fan/heatsink combo which would have been clocked around 400/400 or maybe a little bit higher.

2. "GeforceFX Ultra" with the super-duper fan/cooling system/leafblower. This would have been clocked at 500/500 and marketed as the extreme choice for the enthusiast and overclocker.

Due to the late arrival of NV30 and impressive performance of R300, I'd guess that they have decided not to release the 'standard' GeforceFX, at least to begin with. From all we've heard about projected performance, this would be only on par with R300 (this assumes that NV30 at 500Mhz does, indeed, have 20-30% speed increase over R300 @ 325Mhz).

NVidia obviously don't want to release their best-ever chip to only perform on par with the competition's chip which was released much earlier. I expect the NV30 'LE' with a normal fan will be released a couple of months after the top-end NV30 with the crazy fan.

 

[Grall]

[FanATIc]
Oh god, did you see the size of that thing? That fan is huge.... I thought .13 was supposed to be smaller and cooler That board is bigger than a Ti4600... and you can forget about overclocking, if that thing needs that sort of cooling just to run at normal speeds.
[/FanATIc]

"That's no moon... It's a space-station."



*G*

Edit: Okay, to give this post a purpose to exist, let me just comment a little of what people have said:

Democoder:
Sure, a sports car probably has a more advanced exhaust than a Honda Civic, but I'd still not want that sports car if it occupied two parking spaces in width because of that exhaust system. That's what annoys many of us. It's an overkill solution. I would never consider such a monster no matter if Nvidia OR ATI was the manufacturer, not even had I had a free PCI slot to waste - which I don't.

Martrox:
That AGP and PCI1 share same interrupt on certain boards is irrelevant, PCI devices are capable of interrupt sharing. My GF3 has been placed on IRQ3 for some reason, sharing that interrrupt with my TV card and one of my USB2 boards. Neither located in PCI1 by the way. If you run Win2k or XP, chances are ALL your devices might end up ON THE SAME IRQ, no matter which slot they sit in.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

..It's too big to be a space station.

 

[jb]

I would like to see just how hot the air is coming out of it as well as how load it is. I will admit if does not appear to be the most elegent solution but if it works then kudos for them. Spider legs coming out of the back..good one!

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Engineer #1: "Gosh, Wally. ATI released a new card, with 256-bit bus and 8 pipelines. Hey, our card ships in a few months, but let's go redesign it at the last moment to beat ATI."

Engineer #2 (Wally) "Golly Gee, Gee-Whiz Herman. We'll also need to overclock it way past what we though! Oh, I know, I'll call up ACME HeatSinks INC and slap on the biggest fan we can find!"

Enginee #1 "Great, let's ship it!"

Actually, I'm willing to bet it went something like this:

Back in Spring '02)

Engineer #1: "Gosh Bobby, the low-k 0.13 process is not working out as we hoped. There is no way we can get our NV30 part out based on it this fall, and we see no clear solution at this time. I think we're going to have to scrap low-k for this round...."

Engineer #2: Gee, Greg, if we target the same 500 Mhz clock rate without low-k, our power consumption will go way up...is that OK?

Engineer #1: No problem Bobby....I'm confident that the reduced clock rate of 350-400 Mhz for the non low-k NV30 will still be able to beat ATI's next part, surely only in the 250 Mhz or so MHz range.

Engineer #2: Gee, that's swell!

July '02:
Engineer #2: Hey Greg...What were you saying again about ATI clocking well under 300 MHz?!

Engineer #1: Applesauce! I believed my own CEO's hype about 0.13 being "required" for such a next-gen part. Looks like we'll need to get the clock rates up to the original target that we had for the low-k part if we want to have a chance at beating ATI's 9700 Pro.

Engineer #2: Awww Schucks...how are we going to do that?

Engineer #1: Hey Alice...where's that vacuum cleaner?

 

[Evildeus]

Joe DeFuria> ROFLMAO

 

[GetStuff]

Engineer #1: Applesauce! I believed my own CEO's hype about 0.13 being "required" for such a next-gen part. Looks like we'll need to get the clock rates up to the original target that we had for the low-k part if we want to have a chance at beating ATI's 9700 Pro.

Maybee .13 was required for such a next gen part because their target clock was always 500Mhz?


And what makes you think NVIDIA wasn't aware that .15um had the ability to clock at 325Mhz. Are ATi the only ones with this knowledge?


I pretty much stand with DemoCoder...

 

[Althornin]

You just don't slap together these things at the last minute based on what your competitor is doing. If you can't understand that, then you are blind. So before start talking about fan failure rates, super-hot exhaust, or dust clogging up the system, you better do the math.

Who said anything about last minute?
HELLO?
The 9700 has been out for MONTHS.
Thats plenty of time to redesign a HSF to be able to clock your design high enough to beat thge 9700.
and i'd also call that a "last minute" change...

 

[Geeforcer]

With all that talk of loosing a PCI slot I looked in all the systems I have here and not a single one of them has a PCI card right under the AGP. It could be just the motherboard design, but the slot right under AGP is free even if you have every single PCI slot filled.

 

[OpenGL guy]

With all that talk of loosing a PCI slot I looked in all the systems I have here and not a single one of them has a PCI card right under the AGP. It could be just the motherboard design, but the slot right under AGP is free even if you have every single PCI slot filled.

This isn't the case with the motherboards I have.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Well, I'm a thermal engineer, and the only issue I see is that case spikes should be supplied to keep the PC from wandering across the floor due to the excessive thrust provided by the fan...

Sorry, couldn't resist, and that joke hadn't been made yet.

I am a mechanical engineer though with some experience in thermal design, and my comments are that:

(1) The FX Flow looks from an outside point of view to have been an "after the fact" solution to increase performance for competitive reasons. I highly doubt they targeted that level of heat output initially.

(2) The general layout of the system should indeed be more efficient than typical cooling solutions, and if used in conjunction with a small-ish fan could make an essentially silent cooling solution for less demanding GPU's.

(3) Dust problems could go either way, depending on what filtering if any is used.

 

[RussSchultz]

With all that talk of loosing a PCI slot I looked in all the systems I have here and not a single one of them has a PCI card right under the AGP. It could be just the motherboard design, but the slot right under AGP is free even if you have every single PCI slot filled.

This isn't the case with the motherboards I have.

The top PCI slot on the MB is rendered unuseable on most PCI/AGP motherboards as the AGP faces down and the PCI faces up. The cards share the same external plate opening.

This double wide card will actually kill two PCI slots (though only one above other AGP solutions).