GTX 275 Card length

[bas94041]

I'm looking into purchasing a GTX275 series card but hesitate as it appears that these cards are too long to fit into my Antec SOLO case. Are any of these cards made that do not exceed the 10 inches that would fit the Solo without a case mod?
Why are all these Nvidia 200 series cards so long that they will not fit into many mid size towers? Can't believe that these cards couldn't be reduced by the inch or so that would fit but every manufacturer seems to follow the reference design that will not fit many cases by less then an inch.
Yes, I know I could change my case and yes, I know that I can cut away a couple pieces of hard drive mount that would accommodate these cards but would prefer to keep the case as is.
With all the discussion of GPU die shrink what about a PCB shrink? These video cards are absurdly large.

 

[ViRGE]

If I recall correctly, the GTS 250 had an inch and a half chopped off compared to the original 9800GTX+, so that would be 9" and fit in your case. That's going to be the fastest NVIDIA card you can get that will fit. I do not know the sizes of ATI's cards, but I believe the 4850 and 4870 may both be below 10".

As for why these cards are so long, it's both for cost and necessity. On the cost side of things, additional layers on a PCB are both more engineering intensive to design, and cost more to fabricate. So if they could shrink the design (and there's no guarantee they could right now) it would likely cost more to do in the short-run. Meanwhile if you've ever seen the 275's PCB, it's rather packed, so the length is probably necessary at the moment.

Anyhow, the SOLO would be one of the few mid-sized cases that doesn't have 10.5" of room. While the ATX spec calls for 9.6" for the motherboard, virtually everyone leaves some space behind the board for installation purposes and so that it's easier to reach edge connectors. It's that wiggle room that NVIDIA is residing in. Unfortunately I don't have access to the PCIe spec documents, so I'm not sure if the spec defines a maximum length (i.e. 10.5" is a fully-standardized length) or not. I would imagine NVIDIA is no more happy about the length than you are, but they would likely have had to compromise something in the initial design (e.g. drop the core frequency in order to reduce power usage in order to use smaller VRMs) to achieve that. So they go with 10.5", giving themselves as much space as possible while still fitting in most cases.

Die shrinks are sometimes accompanied by a PCB shrink, but we'll just be back up to full size when the next-generation of cards hits.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
If I recall correctly, the GTS 250 had an inch and a half chopped off compared to the original 9800GTX+, so that would be 9" and fit in your case. That's going to be the fastest NVIDIA card you can get that will fit. I do not know the sizes of ATI's cards, but I believe the 4850 and 4870 may both be below 10".

I think the original 9800gtx was actually 10.5"...the GS250 is 9" though. The 4870 is about 9.5" long.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: ViRGE
If I recall correctly, the GTS 250 had an inch and a half chopped off compared to the original 9800GTX+, so that would be 9" and fit in your case. That's going to be the fastest NVIDIA card you can get that will fit. I do not know the sizes of ATI's cards, but I believe the 4850 and 4870 may both be below 10".

I think the original 9800gtx was actually 10.5"...the GS250 is 9" though. The 4870 is about 9.5" long.

And the 4850 is also 9".

Then some companies make shorter cards (and generally more power efficient). Sapphire makes 8.25" 4850s, and Gigabyte makes 8.25" GTS250s.
Also, remember the power connector sticks out slightly. My HTPC case has about 9" to 9.5" of clearance, but even the 8.25" GTS250 is a tight fit that slightly bends the card and severely bends the power cable.

Note, only the 1GB GTS250s are guaranteed to be shorter, 512MBs are often re-badged 9800GTX+'s at 10.5".

 

[ronss]

i have a nvidia gtx 260 and ati 4890...they both are huge....though i believe that the nvidia might be a tad bigger. high end cards today require LOTS of room...

 

[imported_Asianman]

actually, there are full towers that the GTX 275 won't fit in. I tried putting one inside my Gigabyte Aurora case, it would not go in at all.

 

[ajaidevsingh]

I had to rip the floppy/ hdd holder from my full case to fit the gtx275 in. Now My hdd is in a cd drive case.