[SOLVED] Several cramped components, is this safe or could cause a short?

[Cyber_Akuma]

I have a rather cramped setup. I have an air cooler, a NVMe, a soundcard, and a GPU all sort of jammed close within the same area barely clearing each other, and I am wondering if it's safe that everything is so close.

For the NVME, it's a 4.0 NVME and it's plugged into the only 4.0 slot on the motherboard. That slot is also the only slot without a heatsink, so I installed one. Issue is, since the soundcard is going to be sitting right on top of it, I had to get a low profile one. I found the lowest profile one I could get, and tested to see if it would clear the Soundcard.

At first, I was very worried, because it seemed like the soundcard was resting directly on the heatsink, and I wasn't sure how safe this would be:

https://imgur.com/meosOvL

View: https://i.imgur.com/meosOvL.jpg


However, once I screwed it in, it seemed to rise up a little and clear the heatsink by a tiny bit:

https://imgur.com/OSAPq8h

View: https://i.imgur.com/OSAPq8h.jpg


Is the above ok? (Not a fan of heatsinks that just attach by clips/silicon bands, but not much options for me).

However, once I screwed in the card, I had a new problem. Like I mentioned, the soundcard is jammed very close between the CPU cooler and the GPU, it's the only slot I really can put it in without effecting my GPU's link speed. I measured everything and got that it should JUST fit. However, while it did just barely fit, once I put the screw in, it seems to make it lean to the side a bit and touch against the fan on the CPU cooler:

https://imgur.com/1wanrxS

View: https://i.imgur.com/1wanrxS.jpg


It's touching a rubber part, and clearing the metal parts of the cooler (I am pretty sure) but again, I am not sure how safe this is, or if this just looks fine? (The GPU is not installed yet in any of these photos).

Also, is it safe to put black electrical tape on the back of the sound card? From the photos, it looked like the back of the soundcard was smooth and it was almost like a backplate, but now that I have the card in my hands, there are soldered pins sticking out the back a bit. Can I put electrical tape over these? Or does that risk the tape falling/melting off and causing even more problems? Or is there something better I can use than tape that would fit in such a tiny clearance?

 

[SkyNetRising]

What model motherboard is it?
Are you putting soundcard into PCIE x16 slot?
Soundcard doesn't need x16. Put it into x1 slot.

 

[Karadjgne]

it's the only slot I really can put it in without effecting my GPU's link speed.

A gpu in slot #1 uses pcie lanes directly from the cpu. The remaining slot/s use pcie lanes from the chipset. Nvme only uses x4 bandwidth, so even with a shared connection, it's not affected. You could use the sound card in a lower slot and not affect link speeds at all.

 

[Cyber_Akuma]

A gpu in slot #1 uses pcie lanes directly from the cpu. The remaining slot/s use pcie lanes from the chipset. Nvme only uses x4 bandwidth, so even with a shared connection, it's not affected. You could use the sound card in a lower slot and not affect link speeds at all.

There is only one other slot I can use it in, an x8, and the manual says if I use that slot that will knock down the x16 GPU port to x8.

 

[Karadjgne]

Unless your gpu is stronger than a rtx3090, you aren't going to soak the bandwidth of pcie 4.0 x8 anyways, moot point about link speeds.