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Soldered side vid card cooling

It definitely gets fairly hot on that side if you've ever tried to put your fingers there when its working hard. I've often thought about letting a 90mm fan lie there and see what differences I get. Give me some time and I'll get back to this thread. Keep in mind I'm running a dual gpu card however.

edit: Doing the before temps, got the fan off my old pc.. results in half an hour

Results

With the fan placed to blow directly downward upon the gpu of the 2nd card, temperatures actually increased noticably across both gpus. Not so good.

The Fan (it was mounted using 2 elastics and 4 twist ties to an athlon xp)
Temps Without Fan
Temps With Fan

I imagine if you were able to push cold air across it, it may help. But clearly just dropping a fan there and letting it go is counter indicated.
 
never needed to, and i've had some hot cards in the past 6800nvidia, x1900xtati, 8800gt. never had anything to cool the backside, never had a card go bad
 
I guess you can hot melt glue one on but I think a well placed side case fan cooling both sides might do more good..
 
My results above would make me think if you want any cooling on the solder side of the card, you're gonna need a heatsink or something, as having a fan blowing on it didnt help, but hurt. If you don't think that makes sense, try it out yourself with an extra fan. I imagine results will be similar but maybe a case with low airflow might have some benefit.
 
Don't worry about it. People often feel heat on things like video cards and think it is doing harm, but these devices are made to take the heat. We tend to measure heat based on what is hot to our touch instead of what would be hot for materials like semiconductors.
 
This is starting to get interesting.....TidusZ ..Do you have 2 vid cards or a single 2 GPU card?
Modelworks: Heat is the major destroyer of electronics,it goes back to the transitor age.
My system: Opty 144@2.6-Asus A8N-e mobo, 7600 GT vid card, 2gb Corsair @2-3-3-8-1T, Sunbeam HS/120 mm fan and an open case w/ a 120mm exhaust fan....my system is cool.
From your responces so far, is a vertical solution good,or would a horizontial airflow be better?
Also, why haven't the vid card company's addressd this ?
 
its actually not that interesting, the back of the video card does not need cooling, or else it would have been implemented 10 years ago, when heatsinks were introduced on video cards. the backsides of video cards are still not being cooled for a reason, because they don't need to be.
 
I have a gtx 295, single card with a heatsink in the middle and two seperate cards sandwiched onto the heatsink. Air gets pushed through the heatsink and cools both cards, while the fan I placed on top of the soldered side was only hitting the one card which I believe is gpu 2 in my graphs above. Louisss, I don't think the question we're asking is if it's necessary to cool the back of the videocard but whether or not doing so will give cooler temps on the gpu and thus more stability/overclocking headroom, or even the ability to get good temps on stock cooling and saving money. I'm sure with the proper hsf on the back of the card you could drop temps a bit, but it's just not cost effective for Nvidia/Ati to do so. Heck, my $650cdn videocard came with cheap caked on TIM, they aren't exactly going all out on what can be done.

I was kinda hoping the fan woulda helped. It might be that my TRUE hsf is right above the videocard so it was getting warm air from there. It'd be interesting to see someone else try this.
 
Thanks ya'll for your input. As you can tell, I have an older homebuilt system (circa 2006). I've tweaked it to perform very well for the games I play ( single shooter space sims) which aren't being developed much these days.So, I don't need a expensive build.
I don't have any way of checking my GPU temps, but with my open case design and very good airflow, putting a elevated spare fan over the soldered side of my GPU won't hurt in my case.
TidusZ- Looks like you have a "Boss Hog" of a system that can run anything you throw at it now, or in the future. May your tweaking be productive!! I agree with your assumption that vid card companies don't look at cooling both sides of the cards....they're looking at the bottom line on profits.
Maybe someone will check this thread out that has a single open card and the ability to monitor GPU temps. It may help us to better OC our Vid cards.
 
Originally posted by: dawgtuff

Modelworks: Heat is the major destroyer of electronics,it goes back to the transitor age.
Click to expand...

It is but what you are not getting is what we consider hot is not hot for a semiconductor.
I see people all the time worrying because a chip is 50C . Even the cheap 2n39094 transistors are good to over 100C. What you feel as hot to your hand is not hot to a chip, it seems hot to us because we relate temperature to what we know best, our own body temp.

Trust me. I have been a EE for 15 years. There is no need for a heat sink on the back of the card.
 
Modelworks- I don't want to start a argument here, but even though a component can withstand heat doesn't mean it has to. Electrons flow through a component/circuit better when the circuits temp. is low. Which,in turn, prolongs it's life and OC ability. Also, variations of heat/cool(turning off/on all the time) can damage a component. That's one of the reasons for having climate controlled large scale computer rooms. Also, I didn't mean heatsinks....just a fan over the soldered side of the GPU. Hope I've clarified my point......Best regards.......Dawgtuff.
 
You are still in the mindset that what is hot to you is hot to a chip. They are designed with a specific temp range in mind. It is like having a floor designed to hold 2 tons then placing 1 ton on it and saying I shouldn't put another 500lbs on it because though its spec'd for 2 tons, it should not have to withstand 1.5 tons. You may extend the life of the product, but you will likely stop using it before the heat damages it enough to matter.

Server rooms are climate controlled because the hardware is designed with a set range of air temps for the intake. You would not want to put a server designed to run in 70-80F range in a room with 90F temps. The reason you will not see server rooms at 45F and other cold temps is because it is not necessary. The cost of keeping it that cold is not worth the possible lifespan increase of the equipment.

I see post all the time from people worried they are killing their pc because its not room temp inside the case. People need to calm down and realize its okay. It isn't going to die because its 30 degrees more than the room.

 
Ok....Your response to me is like comparing " Apples to Oranges". Floor loading has no relation to electronics. If you want, we'll agree to disagree with each other.
Also, what if server rooms COULD be run at cooler temps?Wouldn't the computers be run @ higher speed?. We're getting a bit off topic here.....All I'm saying is: Is putting a fan on the top side of a Vid card help cool the GPU for a better OC? The mission is to get rid of HEAT.
 
Bump......My question is at a standstill. Does anyone have an open single GPU card that has GPU temp monitoring to try out my question?
 
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