yet another "who's stupid, me or manufactors" thread: video card designs

[DeathAngelLST]

I was thinking...40-50mm fans can be pretty loud when pushing 12CFM or more. The GPU is located in a weird position in video cards, same about memory chips. So i came with this idea:

http://www.rgv.brturbo.com/overclockers/video-card-design.PNG

Dark green: video card itself duh :p
Grey: bracket to fit it in pci slot
Yellow stuff: adapters, vivo, tv, dvi-i, whatever the hell manufactors want to put on their cards
White dots: capacitors (...)
Black squares: memory chips; they could be moved to somewhere further from gpu
Red square: gpu
Blue circle: a quiet 70/80/92mmx10mm thick fan rated at 15-20CFM cooling gpu and memory chips. *chips in the back would be "cooled" by heatsinks*
***Both gpu and memory chips would be under a big ass alluminium/copper heatsink**

Is it that hard to do something like this? If not, why no one came up with this before?

[timmyqwest]

It's not a bad idea really but i would imagine it's TOO hot with all that stuff so close together...

[DeathAngelLST]

Black squares: memory chips; they could be moved to somewhere further from gpu
Blue circle: a quiet 70/80/92mmx10mm thick fan rated at 15-20CFM cooling gpu and memory chips.

EDIT: Perhaps it could be used a 80-92mm fan rated at 30CFM, and still be quiet.

[Black_Paladin]

I think the reason manufacturers don't use large diameter fans on video cards is to not spread the flow around too much. Focused flow fans are usually preferred for CPUs and graphics card cores to fans that are spreading the flow around. The idea is to focus the flow on just the area where the core is. Besides, the small fans on graphics cards have a low cfm already so if you spread this air over a larger area than the core, you actually lose efficiency in cooling. What would be the ideal fan to cool the core of a grapahics card would be shaped like a tube and about the same diameter as the core. That way, you focus all the flow on the core. Needless to say, nobody wants something like a long tube on their graphics card taking out all the PCI slots. This is why it is best to use a large heatsink directly on the core and then fit a fan on the heatsink to cover the whole area of the heatsink (the same principle here, you don't want a fan with a larger diameter than the heatsink because you want to focus your flow just on the heatsink).

You see, even though it would be bad to have a large diameter fan directly on a core, it would actually be good to have a heatsink much bigger than the diameter of the core because if the core is totally in good contact with the heatsink, all the heat from the core will be spread over the heatsink.

You would want a large diameter fan if you were cooling your case and not a specific area. 120mm fans for instance are great as intake and exhaust fans for cases because these fans don't have to focus their flow on a small specific area.

In either case though, whether you are cooling a small area or a large area, thicker fans generally perform better as they can direct airflow better at where you point them to.

[Jawsome]

also I'd imagine it'd be hard to get the core at the exact same height as the ram chips, and there would be too much variation.

[Black_Paladin]

also I'd imagine it'd be hard to get the core at the exact same height as the ram chips, and there would be too much variation.

True, true...

[DeathAngelLST]

I didn't say the core and ram chips would have to be the same height. Manufactors could model the heatsink on them.

heatsink
___------___
ram gpu ram

And a bigger fan. If YS Tech made their Tip Magnetic fan for cpu cooling, why not the same for gpu cooling? The "almost no dead spot" works, doesn't it? With a smaller fan, YSTech's performs better than volcanos. So i say it can be done. 20CFM should be more than enough.

[mbigna]

Larger fans require more juice, and video cards are already pushing the limits of the current alottment for the AGP bus--that's why we have AGP Pro cards now.

[larva]

Heh, you've obviously never laid out a PCB. You are concerning yourself with superficial factors. Components end up where they are due to the tremendously complex circutry that connects them. Circuit boards (especially the modern multi-layer types) are heinously complex to lay out, and exactly where the components end up is more a function of what it takes to produce a PCB layout capable of running the high clock rates we demand than how pleasing their location may appear to the mind's eye.

What your are saying might or might not even be possible. It may be that the PCB layout dictated would only be capable of a tiny fraction of the clock rate needed, or might cost many times more to produce. Getting the cards to operate stably, overclock well, and be affordable are all concerns that dwarf how neatly the resultant design groups the components.

In short, we are making a video card, not a perch for the heatsink and fan of your dreams.

[OC Noob]

I don't think they would want to lose the few extra buck an 80 or 92 mm fan would cost over the dinky little things they use now. It would cut into profits and thats a no-no.

[PhobMX]

Originally posted by larva
In short, we are making a video card, not a perch for the heatsink and fan of your dreams.

LOL :burn: . A good solution for huge heatsinks would be to flip the video cards desing so they face up instead of down imo

[Gecedion]

Originally posted by PhobMX


LOL :burn: . A good solution for huge heatsinks would be to flip the video cards desing so they face up instead of down imo Take a look at some of the mini-systems with AGP, and see where that will get you :)

[Giblet Plus!]

Originally posted by PhobMX


LOL :burn: . A good solution for huge heatsinks would be to flip the video cards desing so they face up instead of down imo

The front page covered this. It's a great idea, but then it wouldn't technically be an agp card, since it wouldn't adhere to specs. Losing the agp name means losing sales. :(