10Gb Network card + GPU heatsink = ?

[Mr Evil]

I think this might be [H] enough to post here. I bought a 10Gb network card, a Solarflare SFN7022F, and tried to use it in a fanless computer. It overheated to the point that it shut itself off, since it's a server card that assumes a large amount of airflow. Rather than add one of those noisy fan things, I replaced the heatsink with one from an old Radeon 280X.

Here's the card with the puny stock heatsink:

And with the new, manly heatsink. I had to hack it up a bit to make it fit. Two of the six heatpipes had to be cut, but the remaining four are sufficient:

I also stuck a small heatsink to a voltage regulator chip that was quite hot:

Here it is installed. Since the card is PCIe 3 x8, it had to go in the x16 slot where a GPU would normally go. The case fan isn't connected.

And finally, an infra-red image of it not being too hot anymore:

The hot thing in the corner is an A320 chipset. I would put a bigger heatsink on it, but there's this network card with an oversized heatsink that gets in the way...

There are a few more photos and description on my website for those whole like dry, boring details.

 

[Dan_D]

That machine has so much ghetto shit going on.

 

[legcramp]

Nice, thanks for the awesome pics, love the heatsinks. My 16-port raid card also overheated and started making this really annoying whiny noise but fortunately the case I used it in has a side-panel fan slot that fixed it.

What thermal gun do you use/recommend for something like this?

 

[cdoublejj]

i got some wierd heat pipe coolers for sitations like that chip set. mostly strange salvage. i hear you can bend heatpipes slowly but surely.

 

[workshop35]

I think this might be [H] enough to post here. I bought a 10Gb network card, a Solarflare SFN7022F, and tried to use it in a fanless computer.

lies!

Kidding aside, that's pretty cool. Things like this is why I have a box of random heatsinks from old builds/board.

 

[Mr Evil]

What thermal gun do you use/recommend for something like this?

I used a Seek ShotPro to take the thermal image for this. I can't really make a recommendation becase it's the only one I have ever used, so I have nothing to compare it with. I'm happy with it though. I bought it because 1) It's shaped like a compact camera rather than the "gun" style, so it fits in a pocket easily, and 2) It's the cheapest one I could find with a 640x480 resolution, which is high enough that the thermal images are usually usable on their own without a visible light image overlayed.

i got some wierd heat pipe coolers for sitations like that chip set. mostly strange salvage. i hear you can bend heatpipes slowly but surely.

Not a bad idea. Maybe I could even take the heatpipe off a motherboard that uses one on the VRM/chipset.

 

[mvmiller12]

I had the same overheat problem with an Intel dual 10Gb RJ-45 NIC in a liquid-cooled system, so I just used a Koolance chipset cooler and plumbed it into the loop with some QDCs for easy system maintenance.

 

[Mr Evil]

I had the same overheat problem with an Intel dual 10Gb RJ-45 NIC in a liquid-cooled system, so I just used a Koolance chipset cooler and plumbed it into the loop with some QDCs for easy system maintenance.

I can see you posted a photo of it here: https://hardforum.com/threads/sick-of-intel-x540-10g-cards-with-fans.1975250/#post-1045239135
Looks nice! I wouldn't be surprised if your card uses even more power than mine, since it takes more to push 10Gb over copper than fibre. Hopefully it won't take too many years until the power consumption is brought down enough that 10GbE can be integrated onto motherboards.

 

[rhkcommander959]

What the heck is that copper wire cpu heat sink??? Neat mod

You can get motherboards now with 2.5 and 10gbe at least on lga 1700

 

[zandor]

My sfn8522-plus seems fine heat wise so far, but it's right next to an exhaust fan at the top of the case. I'm using a bequiet Dark Base Pro 900v2 and ended up mounting the mainboard upside down since it was the only way I could get it to fit with a top mounted AIO without blocking a slot. I had the usual problem with the mainboard power connector crashing into the heatsink.

Some years ago I had a Mellanox ConnectX VPI Infiniband card in my rig. That one overheated on me, so I zip tied a slot cooler with the slot part ripped off to the back of one of my GTX 680s (SLI/surround rig) and rigged it to run on 7V. That did the trick and might have kept the 680 cooler too since it was blowing on most of the backplate. It was a 4GB 680, so good chance it had ram on the back side of the board.

What are you doing with the Solarflare? Just general 10Gb networking or are you playing with the special features? I pretty much bought mine so I could play with the TCPDirect API, which is why I went for the -plus model. $300 for a used pull on eBay. But it's a current product and a new one is over $1k, so that's not too bad. But that's because of the proprietary software. Solarflare uses the cards like dongles. A normal one without the software licenses baked in is around $300 new. I'm running Mellanox in my other 10G machines. I only need one Solarflare to play with the APIs.

I can see you posted a photo of it here: https://hardforum.com/threads/sick-of-intel-x540-10g-cards-with-fans.1975250/#post-1045239135
Looks nice! I wouldn't be surprised if your card uses even more power than mine, since it takes more to push 10Gb over copper than fibre. Hopefully it won't take too many years until the power consumption is brought down enough that 10GbE can be integrated onto motherboards.

Good chance it does, though the OPs board is an SFP+ card and usually used with fiber or DAC cables. Solarflares are high performance server NICs. They're quite popular in the high frequency trading business. Also the 7000 series is out of production, though still supported. I have an snf8522-plus from 2016, and the 7000 cards are an older design than that. Old + fast = high power consumption.

10GbE has been available on high end desktop mainboards for a while. A few have 5GbE, and 2.5 is all over the place. I haven't been playing continuous attention, but there were plenty of 10GbE options in late 2020 last time I built a rig.

 

[Nobu]

What the heck is that copper wire cpu heat sink??? Neat mod

You can get motherboards now with 2.5 and 10gbe at least on lga 1700

The "NoFan"

 

[NattyKathy]

I see so many bodges going on here and I love it. DIY or die!

 

[Mr Evil]

What the heck is that copper wire cpu heat sink???

Nobu already mentioned it, but to be more specific it's a Nofan CR-80EH. It does a decent job of working completely fanless with low-power CPUs.

You can get motherboards now with 2.5 and 10gbe at least on lga 1700

I must be behind a bit, because I hadn't noticed. I can see a few with 10Gb on-board from a quick search now though. I have one with 2.5Gb already, but that's not really a big enough step up from 1Gb.

What are you doing with the Solarflare? Just general 10Gb networking or are you playing with the special features?

I just wanted a faster connection now 1GbE is so much slower than an SSD. The SolarFlare card was the newest 10Gb card I could find that was still reasonably priced.

 

[notarat]

I have two Aquantia AC107s next to each other in my case. Instead of getting crazy with swapping out heatsinks, I just designed a 3D Printed Plenum with a fan that pressurizes the plenum and exhausts all heat from the cards out the back of the case. Seemed easier than modding the hardware

 

[Mr Evil]

I have two Aquantia AC107s next to each other in my case. Instead of getting crazy with swapping out heatsinks, I just designed a 3D Printed Plenum with a fan that pressurizes the plenum and exhausts all heat from the cards out the back of the case. Seemed easier than modding the hardware

You can't just waltz into a thread and say that you've done something like that, and then not at least post photos.

 

[zandor]

I just wanted a faster connection now 1GbE is so much slower than an SSD. The SolarFlare card was the newest 10Gb card I could find that was still reasonably priced.

Fair enough. They're good cards at least performance wise, though I'm surprised to hear you ended up with a SolarFlare because of cost. The non-plus versions aren't too bad price wise though, and since it's an older model and not a lot of people even know about them I guess I could see that.

I have two Aquantia AC107s next to each other in my case. Instead of getting crazy with swapping out heatsinks, I just designed a 3D Printed Plenum with a fan that pressurizes the plenum and exhausts all heat from the cards out the back of the case. Seemed easier than modding the hardware

1. PICs dammit!
2. Anyone [H]ard enough to be running 2 10GbE interfaces in one rig should be running fiber.