Why do they make video cards upside down?

[Ackmed]

I coulda swore it was in the AGP specs for cards to be like that. Not sure about PCie specs. And yes, Asus is making a card with the fan on the other side.

Here is mine.. in the right case, you can have them "rightside up", pic of them.

 

[TheRyuu]

Well, with water cooling, it really doesn't matter which way the card is 🙂

 

[BFG10K]

Perhaps some, but not the newest Asus AM2 board.

Here's mine:

Click.

As you can see it has a crap-load of space to invert the cooler.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Perhaps some, but not the newest Asus AM2 board.

Here's mine:

Click.

As you can see it has a crap-load of space to invert the cooler.

That certainly would work on your board, but I think that is the exception more than the rule. I know I couldn't just put the cooler on the other side of my X1900XTX, and have it fit my motherboard or case properly. Then again, mine is already upside down.

Originally posted by: Ackmed
I coulda swore it was in the AGP specs for cards to be like that. Not sure about PCie specs. And yes, Asus is making a card with the fan on the other side.

Here is mine.. in the right case, you can have them "rightside up", pic of them.

Yeah, but like I said about the Lian-Li V-series, you need cards that exhaust out the back or you have a huge pocket of heat built up in the rear of the case. I know that you've experienced this too becasue you and I were among the first people to pick up the NV5 rev. 3 for our 7800GTX's. I knew exactly why you wanted that cooler instead of the stock fan...

I also got an EX-34A for mine, which helps bring in air from the front, but it eats up three 5.25 drive bays (leaving me with only one for my DVD-R), plus it breaks up the overall look of the case which bugs me a bit.

Originally posted by: Howard
How is the PSU a heat source? Even if it was oriented such that the vents were on the top, the fan would certainly overcome any fanless convection. And with CPUs drawing the power that they do, they shouldn't be exhausting the heat anyway. Higher temps decrease service life and increase noise (fan speed varies wrt temperature).

The PSU in the case that I'm referring to is in the bottom of the case. So, any heat radiated from the top of the PSU rises into the case heating up anything above it. In a standard case, the scenario is reversed since the PSU is at the top, plus it has a fan that can help exhaust the heat from the rest of the components as well as its own. The fact that the PSU in a standard ATX case only gets "dirty" air isn't ideal either, but Lian-Li trades clean air to the PSU for poor air circulation for the video cards. Really, what it needs is better exhaust for the video cards. It appears to address this need in the PC-201B, which is what I was commenting on.

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
So, any heat radiated from the top of the PSU rises into the case heating up anything above it.

I don't understand. Why would there be any heat radiated from the top of the PSU?

 

[Ackmed]

Because of how that Lian Li case is. The PSU is seperate, in the bottom. With air flow keeping it from putting warm air into the rest of the PC.

 

[ForumMaster]

you could just get a PCI fan to blow the heat out if your card's cooler doesn't already do that.

 

[josh6079]

Some PSU's don't put off that much heat. For instance, my OCZ Powerstream 520W has two fans, one that takes air from inside the case, pushes it through the PSU itself, and then another one at the back of the PSU that continues to flow it out of the case. The PSU itself is in a solid casing with no holes to vent any kind of heat it may have inside of it. This is at the bottom of my TJ-07, and directly above it is an alum. barrier. The PSU being at the bottom doesn't necessarily heat up the coolest part of the case.

 

[sodcha0s]

Originally posted by: avi85
Why do they make video cards upside down?
It's horrible for heat dissipation.

This seems like something that wouldn't be too hard to change.

As has already been mentioned, with active cooling it makes no difference. People have had the idea that heat rises pounded into their head, when in fact that isn't the case. Heat does not rise, period. Warm air rises because it is less dense than cooler air. Heat always travels from a warmer to a cooler place. If you have good airflow in your case and have active cooling on your video card heatsink, it won't matter how it's mounted.

 

[dev0lution]

Would you rather have your active VGA cooling solution sucking up cool air from the bottom of the case or warmer air descending from the CPU or being blown from the front?

 

[CP5670]

So is there any benefit to the inverted ATX layout? The motherboard tray in my stacker case can be flipped over to use that configuration, but I haven't tried it out. I have put in two additional 80mm fans in the top PSU area, so there shouldn't be any heat buildup there.

I found that attaching two extra 120mm intake fans to the front using cable ties dropped the GPU temperatures by a good 5 or 6 degrees. One of them is set up to pretty much feed air right into the video card.

The inverted heatsink idea is interesting but wouldn't work on many motherboards. The X1900 cooler will definitely not fit on the other side for me, as the CPU heatsink only clears the card by about half an inch.

I put the PSU at the bottom of the case since it's easier to clean up the cable clutter there and there is a large grate under it that it can suck in air from.

 

[hans007]

the main thing is that the way most atx boards are designe the cpu is above the video card.

if all the circuitry and heatsinks were on the other side of a typical graphics card they would intrude into the "CPU" area and possibly block things etc.


in btx the cpu is way at the front, so you dont have that problem as the whole heatsinks into the center of the board thing is by design.

 

[hardwareking]

those inverted atx cases are pricey.U could get a 7900 gt for the price of one of those.Or a pentium d 930.
But i guess its worth the features.Like the PSU at the bottom gives a lot more working space,when installing the motherboard,HDD etc...

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: josh6079
Some PSU's don't put off that much heat. For instance, my OCZ Powerstream 520W has two fans, one that takes air from inside the case, pushes it through the PSU itself, and then another one at the back of the PSU that continues to flow it out of the case. The PSU itself is in a solid casing with no holes to vent any kind of heat it may have inside of it. This is at the bottom of my TJ-07, and directly above it is an alum. barrier. The PSU being at the bottom doesn't necessarily heat up the coolest part of the case.

my truepower is similar, solid & dual fan, yet it still makes the top of my case damn warm under load, i really wouldn't want it at the bottom of my case..