Anyone ever think of why graphics cards face down?

[Davidh373]

I've always wondered this. Since heat rises, and these things get hot, wouldn't it be better to have the chip/ fan face upwards rather than downwards?

 

[Blain]

They don't face down in a standard ATX desktop configuration.
They don't face down in a BTX tower configuration.

 

[Davidh373]

uhh... the PCI E port is definitely facing the direction that causes my card's fan to blow downwards, same with two of my friends. Many custom builds on youtube also support this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh1HQ64HcmE

note @ 0:13 , if the motherboard was standing vertically (as it would be in any mid tower type case) the fan and chip would be facing the floor.

 

[MJinZ]

I think you are confused...

On a bench, the GPU faces sideways (like in your vid) so it makes no real difference.

In a case, the GPU faces down, and thus takes cooler air from inside the case and expels it out of the case directly in the back.

 

[Davidh373]

AHH, so that's an intake fan? That makes so much more sense. Then the fan brings air into the bottom and out the back. I was thinking like "WTF, all these technology advancements and I'm the only one to notice this?!" lol.

 

[betasub]

LOL, turn your case upsidedown, and the difference in temperature won't be the first thing you'll notice

 

[Zap]

LOL, turn your case upsidedown, and the difference in temperature won't be the first thing you'll notice

"Why do my DVDs fall out?" :hmm:

LOL

The side that components are on is standardized, so it isn't "why do graphics cards face down" but more of "why do all cards face down."

Actually, ISA and VLB faced up, but PCI, PCI-X and PCI-E face down.

 

[Davidh373]

I haven't been around long enough for ISA and VLB (never even heard of them!). My first computer was actually an HP with PCI-E (Geforce 7300!), my family's first computer was a dell, so I didn't tinker with that much.

I guess the reason why I said graphics card is because I've not really noticed it with other cards. The only other cards that have coolers (that I know of) are sound cards and I don't have one, so I've never had to deal with any other cards.

 

[WildW]

Memory hazy, but I remember some motherboards from long ago that had both ISA and PCI slots. I seem to think that these boards had "shared" slots, which is to say an ISA and PCI slot next to each other sharing the same backplate-gap, and you could either plug in an ISA or PCI card into the same physical gap. As a result, the PCI cards ended up upside-down relative to the ISA slot.

I always imagined that something like this was how PCI cards all came to be upside-down. I'd guess that the intake-fan airflow benefits are a bonus that wasn't thought about when PCI first appeared. There just weren't hot-running cards way back then.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah, since ALL PCI-E, PCI, and AGP cards "face" the same direction, you'd have to flip ALL PCI-E, PCI, and AGP card designs. Otherwise, there'd be space conflicts if you put a "right-side" and a "wrong-side" card next to each other.

 

[betasub]

Memory hazy, but I remember some motherboards from long ago that had both ISA and PCI slots. I seem to think that these boards had "shared" slots, which is to say an ISA and PCI slot next to each other sharing the same backplate-gap, and you could either plug in an ISA or PCI card into the same physical gap. As a result, the PCI cards ended up upside-down relative to the ISA slot.

Yes, I recall this back around before the time the ATX format became standardised.

Motherboards that could take, say, 6 expansion cards might have 4 PCI & 4 ISA slots, with 2 of each arranged to share a backplate. To fit all those slots on the motherboard required PCI cards to be flipped (mirror-image?) compared to the ISA card layout.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It wasn't just that, for a brief period, there were cards that needed to plug into BOTH PCI and ISA AT THE SAME TIME. I knew an artist friend with a capture card. They used the ISA bus for interrupt support, since that hadn't quite been worked out yet with PCI.

So that's why they ended up the way that they are.