Vertical Video Card Mounts

dvsman

dvsman

2[H]4U
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Dec 2, 2009
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So I was watching some youtube videos and saw the channel creators PCs that had their video cards mounted fan side "up." I had never seen this type of vertical mount before and now that I have, me wants!

For those that don't know either it looks like this pic (sample from google)

g0ptuafvqo6z.jpg


Does anyone have experience with these? I know there are different makes / companies making these. I'd be interested to hear.
 
My EVGA ATX case shipped with one of these brackets. I think they are a poor tradeoff for visual appeal, given that they reduce airflow to the GPU sink. I wouldn't recommend trying it with an exclusively PCIe-slot-powered vidcard. There are routing issues to the first PCIe slot even if your card has auxiliary power socket(s).
 
I've seen several cases that have provisions for this, but it looks like it would reduce airflow in most cases that I've seen.
 
I was looking into this but the only way I'd consider the vertical mount would be change it to water cooled.
 
They are great as long as there is 2-3 expansion slot lengths away from anything so it doesnt impede airflow. If you have a fan blowing fresh air towards the cards intake fans you might be able to get away with a tighter clearance but i wouldnt do it unless it at least is 1 dual slot GPU of space away from obstruction.
 
The other problem IMO is that most cases that have this option have the bracket so the card sits "upright" and therefore the cable needs to be longer which is usually more difficult to find.
 
dvsman said:
So I was watching some youtube videos and saw the channel creators PCs that had their video cards mounted fan side "up." I had never seen this type of vertical mount before and now that I have, me wants!

For those that don't know either it looks like this pic (sample from google)

View attachment 158277

Does anyone have experience with these? I know there are different makes / companies making these. I'd be interested to hear.
Click to expand...
That's a feature of some mid-high end cases. It's not without its problems.

First, in many cases, it requires the card to be mounted very close to the case's side panel, which restricts the amount of air the fan can ingest. This is experienced by the user as a hot-running graphics card, which can limit performance on newer cards that throttle back if they get too hot.

Second, it requires the use of a PCI-E riser cable, which is often not included with the case, and also fairly expensive. A cheap one costs about $30, and it's not out of the question for a really good one to cost over $100. The cheap cables don't always work very well. Thermaltake had some problems initially with the one they included in the Core P5 where it would fail to run at PCI-E 3.0 speed. They eventually came up with a revised version that does work.

Third, you basically commit to not using the rest of your PCI-E slots when you install the graphics card this way. I guess maybe some cases don't require this, but Thermaltake's do, unless you use multiple riser cables.

Water cooling is the obvious killer app for this, since it allows you to show off your fancy graphics card AND your fancy water jacket.
 
Thanks for all the feedback, guys. Most of my rig builds now are just one (or 2) m.2 NVME drives. No more cards, slots or other drives being used / installed except of course for the GPU, so flipping the GPU sideways shouldn't be a problem.

The issue of being too close to the side panel / window is somewhat concerning, but given that the Corsair Air 540 is a short wide blocky square (not standing rectangle like most generic cases), I'm hoping i'm good with width clearances.
 
My Thermaltake p5 came with one. While it looks cool, it blocks me from using some of the pcie slots which I normally populate. So you essentially give up the slots just to have the video card mounted like this. I removed mine and it’s back to the normal orientation now.
 
jmilcher said:
My Thermaltake p5 came with one. While it looks cool, it blocks me from using some of the pcie slots which I normally populate. So you essentially give up the slots just to have the video card mounted like this. I removed mine and it’s back to the normal orientation now.
Click to expand...
On the plus side, the P5 has two or three different spots you can mount the card in, so you don't generally experience the heat problem with it, unless you use the one that's furthest out.

I'm not using this feature on mine either, but mainly because I didn't like the way I had to route my coolant hoses, and I wanted to use the cable for my graphics card necromancy bench.
 
I've got too many expansion cards to bother with something like this. I like it for simple configurations well enough, but I'm not sure I'd do it myself even if I didn't need the rest of my expansion slots.
 
What's the point of buying an ATX motherboard if you cover up all the expansion slots with a riser cable? I can see a mITX or something if you're into that.
 
kirbyrj said:
What's the point of buying an ATX motherboard if you cover up all the expansion slots with a riser cable? I can see a mITX or something if you're into that.
Click to expand...

Arguably, there is a far better selection of ATX and E-ATX motherboards out there. Plus, those motherboards can handle more NVMe drives.
 
jmilcher said:
My Thermaltake p5 came with one. While it looks cool, it blocks me from using some of the pcie slots which I normally populate. So you essentially give up the slots just to have the video card mounted like this. I removed mine and it’s back to the normal orientation now.
Click to expand...

Dan_D said:
I've got too many expansion cards to bother with something like this. I like it for simple configurations well enough, but I'm not sure I'd do it myself even if I didn't need the rest of my expansion slots.
Click to expand...
kirbyrj said:
What's the point of buying an ATX motherboard if you cover up all the expansion slots with a riser cable? I can see a mITX or something if you're into that.
Click to expand...
These are all reasons i havent done it yet. however thre is a case coming to market that does verital GPU without those drawbacks.

Enthoo-Luxe.jpg
 
well technically that is a mini ITX build in the bottom. But i will be using it to move my GPU down there to mount vertical and still have full use of the other expansion slots.
 
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