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

[Mize]

One thing that concerns me is that, in newer shots, the exhaust port is below the intake.

I'm not a "thermal engineer," but I'm a phd materials scientist who designs sensors for use at temps up to 1600 C so I know a teensy bit about heat transfer and fluid dynamics and I'm of the opinion that they should have put the exhaust port on top to reduce "thermal feedback" (recirculation of exhaust air).

YMMV.

Mize

 

[Bambers]

Every motherboard I've seen has the slot below filled with a PCI slot.

I'd also say that I think a few people in this thread were having a joke, something that a few people didn't quite pick up.

and just incase anyone wanted to call me a f*nboy I thought the 9700s default heatsink was a bit too big when it was released.

 

[BRiT]

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 excludes the NV30 from being used in any/all of the small-form-factor cases, such as Shuttle's SS51G. Now if only Shuttle would produce an nForce-2 based system. It would be perfect fit for an ATI-AIW-9700Pro.

And all of my motherboards, have the ACM/CMR/crap port on the very very bottom of the board. The slot under the AGP on all my boards are PCI. Even the new nForce-2 boards have a PCI slot right under the AGP.

--|BRiT|

EDIT:
Epox nForce2 board pics showing PCI right under APG slot.
http://www.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDAplus?=1
http://www.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RGAplus?=1

Link to Abit KT400 series board pics showing PCI right under AGP slot.
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/kd7g/images/KD7-G_large.jpg

Their P4 board BE-7 does have PCI under AGP slot.
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/be7raid/images/BE7_Raid_large.jpg

It is only their MAX series of boards with all the integrated features that have additional space below AGP port:
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/nf7-s/images/NV7-8X-large.jpg

 

[Geeforcer]

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

I use primerely ABIT boards.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of space between AGP and the first PCI slot.

 

[DrT]

Voodoo SLI

Remember back when the Voodoo 2 took up two PCI slots and you still needed an AGP card? It wasn't that big of a deal them, and it won't be that big of a deal now.

I don't think Nvidia will lose many sales because NV30 will take an extra slot. And I also expect that there will be a lower clocked model that only takes one slot.

 

[BRiT]

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.

On my motherboards, Intel slot-1: ABIT BE-6, AMD Socket-A: Epox 8K7A, MSI 6830, MSI KT4VL, and soon to be Epox 8RDA+, the AGP and PCI-1 slot do not share an external slot.

--|BRiT|

 

[jjayb]

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

Taken from Beyond3d's own interview with Nvidia's Geoff Ballew:

The developer documentation was quoting vertex throughput rates of 1.5 times GeForce4's throughput on a clock for clock basis, which would equate to 3 Vertex Shaders.

The 1.5 number is old, because we actually have 3 times the vertex performance of Ti4600, at 500MHz.

Sounds to me like 500mhz wasn't always the target speed.

 

[Dave Baumann]

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.

What???

Have people on this board forgetten what PC's are like?

PCI cards face down as well. If you have an PCI slot under you AGP card this can be filled as they are both facing down.

 

[RussSchultz]

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.

What???

Have people on this board forgetten what PC's are like?

PCI cards face down as well. If you have an PCI slot under you AGP card this can be filled as they are both facing down.

Oh, Hrm. Maybe I'm thinking ISA and PCI.

Oh well, chalk one up to the old fart.

 

[Crusher]

I usually leave the first PCI slot free anyway, for two reasons. Some cards have issues with IRQ sharing if they are placed there, and leaving it empty allows a little more room for air to flow around the video card's fan.

I would also say that while this type of heatsink and fan may be overbearing, that doesn't mean that the "standard" heatsink and fan solutions should be viewed as adequate. I've always thought that most of the heatsinks and fans included on recent video cards have been severely lacking, mostly due to the space limitations surrounding the AGP slot. While this particular solution might be excessive, I have no problem with giving up a PCI slot for a better-than-typical cooling solution on a card, just as I have no problem giving up a RAM slot to have a decent heatsink on my processor.

 

[Randell]

I have had one of these under my GPU since my extremely hot passively cooled V3 taking up that slot anyway:

http://www.theoverclockingstore.co....5fa169daf9b0bfc7b21cddb0db7&codeid=800006

As an 'option' to have that slot used for more effective cooling I'd be happy for an 'option' to take the Geforce FX OTES style solution as it is obviously more effectve and probably keeps system temps down as well as no hot air from the GPU enters the system.

Surely sucking in outside air is better than using the already heated case air, even if the outside is tainted a bit by heated exhaust air.

 

[stevem]

One thing that concerns me is that, in newer shots, the exhaust port is below the intake.

I'm not a "thermal engineer," but I'm a phd materials scientist who designs sensors for use at temps up to 1600 C so I know a teensy bit about heat transfer and fluid dynamics and I'm of the opinion that they should have put the exhaust port on top to reduce "thermal feedback" (recirculation of exhaust air).

Unless the motherboard is vertically mounted & the GFFX is horizontal. A minor mod to make the I/O airflow non-parallel should reduce recirculation. It may not even be a large problem depending on velocity & laminar vs turbulent flow. The placement of the I/O ports will also depend on the direction of fan rotation.

Caveat: I ain't no "thermal engineer" either...

P.S. There have been enough hints to suggest that this may not be a production level board design, although perhaps retained on a headline product aka V5 6k.

 

[noko]

I guess clipping on a dust buster is ok nowdays. Since the R300 vpu seems to have alot of headway, now if ATI follow suite and up the voltage a little I am sure they could have a 400mhz plus card, easily wasting the NV30 master design in a matter of a month. To predict accurately heat transfer coefficient changes due to buildup of dust would be very hard to calculate since the enviroments which the card could be exposed is too varied. From cat hairs, insects, smoke and your typical unknown dust source. In other words Nvidia doesn't really know and can't know all the problems that can arise from this setup. Cables hanging over the exhaust and intake port could have dramatic flow restrictions in itself. I think it is very laughable to think that the Nvidia engineers had this envision from the onset .

 

[Mize]

Unless the motherboard is vertically mounted & the GFFX is horizontal.

Duh on my part. I was picturing the card installed vertically which is far from common nowadays. Oops.

As for the lost PCI slot I too have a slot cooler next to my video card (and suck fans on the case blowing on both the vid and cpu).

Mize

 

[Nagorak]

One thing that concerns me is that, in newer shots, the exhaust port is below the intake.

I'm not a "thermal engineer," but I'm a phd materials scientist who designs sensors for use at temps up to 1600 C so I know a teensy bit about heat transfer and fluid dynamics and I'm of the opinion that they should have put the exhaust port on top to reduce "thermal feedback" (recirculation of exhaust air).

YMMV.

Mize

When they designed it they probably forgot the AGP card goes in upside down.

 

[KimB]

Duh on my part. I was picturing the card installed vertically which is far from common nowadays. Oops.

As for the lost PCI slot I too have a slot cooler next to my video card (and suck fans on the case blowing on both the vid and cpu).

Mize

Speaking of which, I was wondering...how much good could a little "fin" between the two slots do? That is, it might be a good idea to attempt to divert the two airflows away from each other. Then again, this might do nothing but add turbulence/reduce airflow...

(Btw, I'm talking about inside, not outside...you could definitely put one outside if you're worried about heat contamination...and it would probably work quite well).

 

[CMKRNL]

All the original info I had on NV30 suggested that it was targetted at 400Mhz. I'm not entirely sure at what point they decided to move this up to 500Mhz.

About the cooling system: It looks ridiculous today, but then again so did heatsinks and fans on GPU's 3 years ago. You can be certain that ATi and others will follow suit as they try and push their GPU's towards the Ghz mark.

 

[Grall]

I can't ever accept any cooling solution that blocks the use of one expansion slot, that is simply rediculous. They'll simply have to start putting all the caps and other tall components on the opposite side of the card so they can fit one fsck of a big, FLAT heatsink on the front side instead or something like that Zalman heatpipe double-sandwich thingy.

I don't mind heatsinks and fans and such, but there ARE limits...!

*G*

 

[Bigus Dickus]

All the original info I had on NV30 suggested that it was targetted at 400Mhz. I'm not entirely sure at what point they decided to move this up to 500Mhz.

That would seem to fit with observation. The "slower" clocked GF FX will probably launch at 400MHz with a "normal" HSF... making an educated guess that is.

I think the fan looks ridiculous as well, but I'm not personally offended by it. I share the sentiment of some others... if all we were going to be offered was the 400MHz version to begin with, then I think it's great that there is an "extreme" option being offered that's a no-holds-barred push it to the max option (and the price to match).

The only problem is that doesn't leave nVidia much breathing room for their traditional clock bumped "refresh."

On a more scientific note, I think recirculating "heat contamination" as some of you are calling it is a minor concern at best. The relative velocities of inlet and outlet streams should keep inlet stream temperature very close to the ambient temp... ambient behind your case that is. If nVidia's engineers are worth their pay, they have already designed the flow paths to reduce mixing effects, and since that shouldn't be a difficult task with the inlet/outlet spacing and fluid velocities involved, I think the final mixing should be minimal - small enough to need not worry about doing any "modifications" to help.

 

[Nagorak]

I can't ever accept any cooling solution that blocks the use of one expansion slot, that is simply rediculous. They'll simply have to start putting all the caps and other tall components on the opposite side of the card so they can fit one fsck of a big, FLAT heatsink on the front side instead or something like that Zalman heatpipe double-sandwich thingy.

I don't mind heatsinks and fans and such, but there ARE limits...!

*G*

I kind of agree with those above: these newer, larger, meaner heatsinks are probably here to stay. I can't help but wonder about the added stress on the boards as the heatsinkgs get bigger and heavier though. It almost seems like we need a new AGP standard where the GPU fits into a socket on the motherboard like a CPU. You could couple that with add-on DDR memory slots for video cards... I don't know, I guess we probably won't see that happen (and it would add a lot of other problems to the mix), but it would be nice if newer motherboards were revised so there was a larger gap between the AGP and 1st PCI slot.

Also, why are all the newer cards all using the stupid external power connector...what happened to AGP Pro? They could even make it an either/or thing, but not taking advantage of AGP Pro slots that have been available on many motherboards for years seems kind of lame...