Why aren't we seeing triple-slot GPUs?

Q

Quartz-1

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
May 20, 2011
Messages
4,257
With SLI and XF on the way out, surely there's no reason for GPUs to not occupy more slots than they do. The dual-slot design must impose significant cooling limitations, simply from the size of the heatsink. A bigger heatsink would allow for quieter coolers, for a start.

So, why not?
 
I've seen some triple slot GPUs. I actually used to own an r9 295 x2 that had a triple slot cooler. Sold it to someone on these forums.
 
There have been a few 3 slot GPUs in the past, eg. ASUS MARS series :

316e8aaa-3c02-4538-9bd9-f714e0f5dca4.jpg
 
777 said:
R.I.P. vertically mounted motherboards.
Click to expand...

in fact vertically mounted motherboards does suffer *less* than typically mounted ones, they have less tension on the PCI-E slot and less bending on said slot, because it's the case who offer the support to the cards and not the slot itself.

90° rotated mobos doesn't suffer from this:

gpu_sag_comp-jpg.62578


GyiA0.jpg
 
My single slot 1080 Ti takes offense to this discussion..
20171015_104755.jpg

to be honest though the real answer to your question is 95% of motherboards are laid out for dual width cards for multi-gpu configs..
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
There have been a few 3 slot GPUs in the past, eg. ASUS MARS series :

316e8aaa-3c02-4538-9bd9-f714e0f5dca4.jpg
Click to expand...

As you noted they do exist. The reason they never caught on is that they don't offer enough additional performance relative to their higher cost to be justifiable. The premium was too high for most air cooled gamers, while the money is no object crowd just slapped a water block on the card and called it a day.
 
DanNeely said:
As you noted they do exist. The reason they never caught on is that they don't offer enough additional performance relative to their higher cost to be justifiable. The premium was too high for most air cooled gamers, while the money is no object crowd just slapped a water block on the card and called it a day.
Click to expand...

It's a better idea to have an AIO water cooler by the time you don't get enough cooling performance with a dual slot setup. I just wish more of those were offered on the market when a new card gets released.
 
kasakka said:
It's a better idea to have an AIO water cooler by the time you don't get enough cooling performance with a dual slot setup.
Click to expand...

Why? An AIO uses up a fan slot and you better hope that the tubing is long enough.
 
DanNeely said:
As you noted they do exist. The reason they never caught on is that they don't offer enough additional performance relative to their higher cost to be justifiable. The premium was too high for most air cooled gamers, while the money is no object crowd just slapped a water block on the card and called it a day.
Click to expand...

Exactly, the extra space can't be used economically. If you used a massive and expensive 3 slot copper heatsink, the performance would still be worse than a cheaper water solution.
 
My aorus 1080 ti was a 3 slot card... but i bought a water block for it when I got the card so can't really say how well the cooler worked
 
There's no reason for it. Unless NVidia/AMD through power to the wind and just build the most powerful GPU they can adequately cool it's simply not necessary to use that much space and that much material to cool a GPU with the exception being if you want to go fanless. 2 and 2.5 slot cards are easily dissipating the heat form 250-300 watt cards
 
I think chassis airflow for graphic cards is more concerning than a dual-slot cooler. You can use a 5 slot cooler and the issue still remains the same: how do you expel those hot air out efficiently without negatively affecting your entire system temps.
 
realworld said:
I think chassis airflow for graphic cards is more concerning than a dual-slot cooler. You can use a 5 slot cooler and the issue still remains the same: how do you expel those hot air out efficiently without negatively affecting your entire system temps.
Click to expand...

In some mITX gaming cases they solve the issue of limited volume to hold the heat on its way to the 140mm big and slow fans on the top/back of the case by having the card's cooler placed directly against a GPU sized air vent so it can expel hot air out of the case using its biggest side not the smallest one.

Even without that a single 120/140 mm fan moves enough air to theoretically empty/refill the case every second or so. As long as you've got decent internal airflow you should be reasonably OK.
 
It's overkill, and way harder to fit in a case.

Dual-slot coolers were utilized once cards got over the 110w threshold, as blower cards were getting incredibly long just to keep them cool.

Dual-slot blowers can handle cards up to 250w at the same length. And the extra depth also makes it possible to use axial fans to reduce noise levels.

This single-fan heat-pipe axial cooler is capable of handling a 120w GPU.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487261

The dual-fan version could easily handle 250w fairly quietly, and triple fan is overkill for most cards that are not overvolted.

Adding a third slot of depth adds extra cooling capacity, but it's not the massive improvement we saw going from 1 slots to two.

If power consumption doubled to 500w, there might be a case for going triple.
 
What the F do you want a triple thick card for? you lose so many other slots doing that retarded design. I only wish GPUs were going to start coming out single thin.
 
tangoseal said:
What the F do you want a triple thick card for? you lose so many other slots doing that retarded design. I only wish GPUs were going to start coming out single thin.
Click to expand...
What the F do you need all those extra slots for?

There are at least a few triple slot cards on the market now; the higher end Zotac cards being what comes to mind first.

It strikes me as likely that compatibility with smaller cases is the reason this isn't more common. Weight could conceivably also be an issue. The non-reference design cards I've handled in the last couple of years have all had a tendency to sag, and I could see this being even worse if you put a bigger, heavier heatsink on them.
 
tangoseal said:
What the F do you want a triple thick card for? you lose so many other slots doing that retarded design. I only wish GPUs were going to start coming out single thin.
Click to expand...

For gaming PCs, People plug in cards, other than GPUs these days?
I could see wanting the more traditional 2 slot for an mATX+mGPU or mITX setup.
However, for ATX mobos, most of them only support 16 PCI-e lanes between 2 slots anyways, so they can't even do a proper 3x or 4x SLI setup.
 
MrDeaf said:
For gaming PCs, People plug in cards, other than GPUs these days?
I could see wanting the more traditional 2 slot for an mATX+mGPU or mITX setup.
However, for ATX mobos, most of them only support 16 PCI-e lanes between 2 slots anyways, so they can't even do a proper 3x or 4x SLI setup.
Click to expand...

Yeah because everyone is 100% pure gaming. I am 99% but 100% of the rest of the 1% I use my PC for work and other tasks oh and my 10g fiber optic card to my NAS, etc....
So yeah we do.
 
StormClaw said:
Says who?
Click to expand...

Says the steady decline in titles that can take advantage of it. Says the removal of 3+ card SLI for newer generations of cards. Says DX12 making multi-card support a job for the game developer not the driver developer optimization specialists. Says the increasing use of temporal processing effects which combine data from the current frame and the previous one that make multi-card implementation much harder because it greatly increases the amount of data that needs shared between cards to do alternate frame rendering.
 
MrDeaf said:
For gaming PCs, People plug in cards, other than GPUs these days?
I could see wanting the more traditional 2 slot for an mATX+mGPU or mITX setup.
However, for ATX mobos, most of them only support 16 PCI-e lanes between 2 slots anyways, so they can't even do a proper 3x or 4x SLI setup.
Click to expand...

But there's no real-world benefit over existing dual-slot triple-fan cooler. It's just Penis Enlargement for the sake of Penis Enlargement.

So the card is large and harder to install, it costs more, and needs to be properly supported.

Do you not see why there's a pittance of a market for these behemoths? And that's exactly what we have available - you can buy a SELECT FEW triple-slot GPUs. That will not change anytime soon.

We went dual-slot because we HIT THE LIMITS OF COOLING PHYSICS at 150w and above. But we're not going above 300w for anything but specialty cards anytime soon, so dual-slot is plenty.
 
The logistics don't add up. The bulk of the sales are in mid-range GPUs, and I imagine the bump in cost for manufacturing and shipping 3-slot coolers isn't worth it given the cost/benefit equation.
 
tangoseal said:
Yeah because everyone is 100% pure gaming. I am 99% but 100% of the rest of the 1% I use my PC for work and other tasks oh and my 10g fiber optic card to my NAS, etc....
So yeah we do.
Click to expand...

But do all those cards use up all your slots?
 
It seems most people here don't care about noise. Triple slot cards enable bigger heatsinks and/or bigger fans. I have my GPUs modded with standard 120 mm fans and they are silent under load the same as idle. No, I don't want crappy and noist AIOs and I have no interest in proper WC, which would still be at least as loud, if not louder, than my current setup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top