[SOLVED] Blowers/Open-air for workstation

[nloktionov]

Hello! Im buying my first workstation in a few days.
Case: thermaltake core x71 (with all the possible fans)
GPU: 2x 2070 super.
Mainboard: asus rog crosshair viii hero
Possible options for gpus:

1. Open-air cooling
2. Open-air cooling (1 is horizontally placed. one is vertically for the extra space)
3. Blowers

I cant afford water cooling. And i cant be sure that i will be compensated if something breaks (russia's capitalism)
Im not sure if theres enough space between a case's wall and a vertically placed gpu

 

[puw2]

Hello! Im buying my first workstation in a few days.
Case: thermaltake core x71 (with all the possible fans)
GPU: 2x 2070 super.
Mainboard: asus rog crosshair viii hero
Possible options for gpus:

1. Open-air cooling
2. Open-air cooling (1 is horizontally placed. one is vertically for the extra space)
3. Blowers

I cant afford water cooling. And i cant be sure that i will be compensated if something breaks (russia's capitalism)
Im not sure if theres enough space between a case's wall and a vertically placed gpu

I would advise for you to not go with 2 blower cards rather than 2 air cards. Blowers run really hot compared to air cooling, especially when you are putting in two cards.

"(1 is horizontally placed. one is vertically for the extra space)" That would harm your airflow in your case quite a bit, for a setup like this just place them both horizontally for best cooling.

If you'd be going with blowers, thermal throttling would be a major problem.

Of course as you know already, water cooling is absolutely the best option for SLI / CF.

 

[nloktionov]

I would advise for you to not go with 2 blower cards rather than 2 air cards. Blowers run really hot compared to air cooling, especially when you are putting in two cards.

"(1 is horizontally placed. one is vertically for the extra space)" That would harm your airflow in your case quite a bit, for a setup like this just place them both horizontally for best cooling.

If you'd be going with blowers, thermal throttling would be a major problem.

Of course as you know already, water cooling is absolutely the best option for SLI / CF.

Ty for reply. If i place them both horizontally they will stay tightly to each other. Isnt it going to be a huge problem for cooling?
I would really like to get water cooled gpus, but i cant afford them. and i will definitely break them

 

[grimfox]

You wouldn't be the first person to run two cards together is SLI like that. They will run hot. But probably still get enough airflow. I don't see many 2070supers with blower style coolers. You might be stuck with multi-fan coolers. Personally in a multi-card situation I feel like blowers would be better. You can rig up some fans or ducting to help push air into the cards. With multi-fan cards it's harder to feed them air because the intake for one and the exhaust for the other are so close.

SLI is kinda dead unless you have a specific workload for it.

With that in mind for the same cost you might consider a 2080super Your savings could just about pay for an EK water cooling kit. If water cooling is something you wanted to pursue.

I am assuming you don't already have the 2070s otherwise you wouldn't be asking about the cooler orientation.

 

[nloktionov]

You wouldn't be the first person to run two cards together is SLI like that. They will run hot. But probably still get enough airflow. I don't see many 2070supers with blower style coolers. You might be stuck with multi-fan coolers. Personally in a multi-card situation I feel like blowers would be better. You can rig up some fans or ducting to help push air into the cards. With multi-fan cards it's harder to feed them air because the intake for one and the exhaust for the other are so close.

SLI is kinda dead unless you have a specific workload for it.

With that in mind for the same cost you might consider a 2080super Your savings could just about pay for an EK water cooling kit. If water cooling is something you wanted to pursue.

I am assuming you don't already have the 2070s otherwise you wouldn't be asking about the cooler orientation.

I have only two blowers to choose from : ASUS TURBO GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER and Palit GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
I would definitely go for blowers if they were as effective as open air.

I wont use SLI. Workstations is for gpu renderning purposes

 

[grimfox]

I'd go with the ASUS blower. Just because I'm not familiar with Palit. I suspect palit is probably less expensive. If either of them have the option to be water cooled you might take that into consideration. If you can save up the money and have them liquid cooled at a later date.

For GPU rendering you may not need all 16x PCIe lanes. You might get equal performance out of one of the lower 8x slots if your motherboard has another lower slot. That would probably give you two full slots of airflow for the top card blower or multifan.

Another thing you could do would be to put one card on a riser cable and mount it further away from the top card. I think there's a mod/kit to convert 7 horizontal slots into 5 vertical slots. That would allow you to potentially install them with a slot between for airflow.

 

[Phaaze88]

Another vote for blower cards. Small spaces is where they excel for multi gpu.

NVIDIA Dual-Fan GeForce RTX Coolers Ruining Multi-GPU Performance

The new GeForce RTX series cards perform well in GPU based rendering, as individual cards, and have great potential for the future thanks to their new RT cores. However, when stacking them together to measure multi-GPU scaling we ran into some serious problems.

www.pugetsystems.com

 

[nloktionov]

I'd go with the ASUS blower. Just because I'm not familiar with Palit. I suspect palit is probably less expensive. If either of them have the option to be water cooled you might take that into consideration. If you can save up the money and have them liquid cooled at a later date.

For GPU rendering you may not need all 16x PCIe lanes. You might get equal performance out of one of the lower 8x slots if your motherboard has another lower slot. That would probably give you two full slots of airflow for the top card blower or multifan.

Another thing you could do would be to put one card on a riser cable and mount it further away from the top card. I think there's a mod/kit to convert 7 horizontal slots into 5 vertical slots. That would allow you to potentially install them with a slot between for airflow.

the mainboard has 3 pcie x16. Is it gonna work if i set my cards into slot 1 and 3?

 

[Phaaze88]

the mainboard has 3 pcie x16. Is it gonna work if i set my cards into slot 1 and 3?

No.
1-3 is for Crossfire, and requires no special bridge - or rather, the motherboard IS the bridge.
You're stuck with slots 1, 2, and a NVLink 4slot HB Bridge for SLI.

 

[nloktionov]

No.
1-3 is for Crossfire, and requires no special bridge - or rather, the motherboard IS the bridge.
You're stuck with slots 1, 2, and a NVLink 4slot HB Bridge for SLI.

im not goiing to use cross/sli

 

[Phaaze88]

im not goiing to use cross/sli

Ok, but you intend to run multiple gpus at the same time, right? And from the link I provided, this is where blowers do best.