Why ports are not perpendicular?

[chx]

All the video cards are using PCB mounted ports seriously hindering airflow. But a dual slot video card has some 40mm across and that'd be aplenty for either a full sized DP or a HDMI connector across. Of course the cross section area would be the same but I believe a shorter but wider rectangle is better. So why is this not done?

 

[Nenu]

Not all.
The 1080ti FE has a flat line of ports close to the card.
The 2nd slot is purely for air output. The metal grid gets in the way a bit, such is life.
They got rid of the DVI connector.

To answer why the ports are not oriented 90 degrees, they wont fit in the slot.

 

[GlacierNine]

Bit of a hard question to decipher, but:

the reason is in this picture: http://www.mysuperpc.com/build_your_own_computer/video_card_installed_computer_back.jpg

See the graphics card. It's backplate is chrome. The case is grey.

Note, that even though a dual slot graphics card is installed, there is still a grey bar across the entire back of the GPU.

This grey bar is part of the case. Therefore, all ports need to be able to fit in the space where that grey bar is NOT going to block them.

If you flipped a DVI port on it's side, there's nowhere near enough vertical space to be able to put it anywhere that wouldn't interfere with where that grey bar is. Thus, it wouldn't fit. Fortunately, there is ample space if you put the port horizontally, so that's what every manufacturer does.

 

[Armenius]

I think that from a manufacturing standpoint it is also easier to integrate display outputs when they are parallel to the PCB.

 

[GlacierNine]

I think that from a manufacturing standpoint it is also easier to integrate display outputs when they are parallel to the PCB.

I think that the two are interrelated. 10

Back in the old days a lot more ports were round - DIN, PS/2, Coaxial, RCA, 3.5mm etc. I think the most likely answer is that, back when *all* cards were single slot, because the need for high performance cooling hadn't come about, the width of a slot was determined by the size of a round port.

When things came along that needed more pins than a round port could accomodate while remaining robust, the expectation was, "fit them in a single ISA slot", where, naturally, they had more room to expand the port sideways than up or down, so we got parallel ports, VGA, DVI etc.

As they were only intended to fit in a single-slot solution, the connectors available to OEMs were all manufactured to mount lengthways to any PCB they were used on.

Fast forward to two slot cooling solutions, and the OEMs simply wouldn't have had a choice but to continue using connectors designed for single-slot cards.

As more ports were required, the ports extended into the second slot as well, but by then, the form factor of cases had been as I described above - and had been that way since the ISA days.

Changing it would have required a case manufacturer to make a case that had double-wide openings in the expansion slot area - or to make the crossbars removable, which would both add to the complexity and cost of the product, without offering any actual benefit to consumers at all, unless a corresponding GPU manufacturer were to design a new GPU interface standard that would require/benefit from that feature.

Since there's no market for that whatsoever, and the current standards work fine for the market that *does* actually exist, that hasn't happened.



That said, I think OP's suggestion that this would improve cooling, is off-base. At the end of the day, if there is enough open-area on the backplate for hot air to leave without encountering restriction, it really doesn't matter what shape the openings are. Air is a fluid and will simply flow through the path of least resistance.

Removing the crossbar could allow a little extra airflow out of the case of course, but that implies that there's enough restriction to warrant doing it, and most blower-type cooler designs simply don't push enough air out of their fans for restriction to be a major issue. Plus, even if it were to really take advantage of that, you'd need to start removing connectors and ports, in order to make space for mesh on the back of the GPU through which that air could flow. (Granted, reference 1080Ti cards actually did this, but nobody was very happy about it, since many of us still quite happily truck on with our DVI ports)

Really, what would be a better, more achievable, and more forward-thinking solution to the problem, would be to replace larger ports like HDMI, with smaller, ideally multipurpose ports, like USB-C/Thunderbolt, which is quite capable of carrying HDMI signal or displayport signal, but is much smaller and several could fit in the same backplate area as a single DVI or HDMI port.

 

[Nenu]

Before I fitted an Accelero III cooler to my 1080ti FE I removed the mount plate from the card and sealed air routes back into the case to see if it made a difference.
I got a 2C drop in load temps.

The card moves in its slot unless wedged in place, this can damage the PCI-E slot.
I dont recommend this hack.

ps I was able to do this because my tower case lays on its side inside a table (I turned into a big PC case) so the card was upright with no gravity pulling it to the side.