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Why aren't video cards square?

O

onefish

n00b
Joined
Jul 12, 2012
Messages
9
With the onset of mammoth CPU air coolers and commonplace wide cases like the Antec P280, it's come to the point where there is ample space between the top edge of a video card and the case door. Why do high end video cards get longer instead of wider? Wouldn't a nearly square card with a single 120mm or even 140mm fan work better? You would still have access to the case back panel screws. I imagine very high end dual slot cooling would be much easier to build this way.
 
My first guess would simply involve cases. A lot of cases, as you mentioned do have extra room for width, but many cases do not, and I suspect the later category outweighs the prior in general. But this may not be the case for people with high end cards.

As for whether it would be better, it probably would lead to some better cooling solutions and *possibly* more efficient placement of stuff on the pcb.
 
I have to agree with JS, about the cases.

However, it may also involve isolating certain components from the heat source as much as possible.
 
Yeah, I was mostly thinking for higher end cards where slim cases are (very) unlikely.
 
I think it would be awesome if we could modularize GPU's. Plug that sucker into a self contained, self cooled, compartmentalized GPU bay and isolate from other cards and the rest of the system. Totally hot swap-able of course for troubleshooting purposes.
 
As others have said, case design it the biggest factor. Cases are longer than they are wide.
 
A lot of tower CPU coolers with 120mm fans just barely fit in many cases. You'd run into exactly the same think with such a video card. Plus, I doubt that a 120mm fan would work very well when strapped directly on top of a heatsink. It's not the same as using the fan to push air through a finned heatsink. You have a large dead area at the fan hub that would pose a problem.
 
That also puts more weight on the PCI-e slot the further you move outwards. Not to mention mounting it with the slot bracket would be awkward.
 
Skillz said:
That also puts more weight on the PCI-e slot the further you move outwards. Not to mention mounting it with the slot bracket would be awkward.
Click to expand...

But video cards are screwed down, usually on two slots nowadays.
 
Because the OEMs need these things to fit in FH or HH slots, and the economy of scale benefits are lost when you start introducing a third, radically different form factor. Servers and rack-mounted workstations still only typically use 3U space for the motherboard/cards, which means anything taller than the standard full-height card is not going to work.
 
McTurkey said:
Servers and rack-mounted workstations still only typically use 3U space for the motherboard/cards.
Click to expand...

I suppose I wasn't taking servers and rack-mounts into consideration, but I'm not sure Sapphire sells many boxed Radeons to server farms.
 
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