Forced Air Cooling for a Tesla M2090 GPU?

I recently bought a second hand Tesla M2090 board to use in a cheap GPU workstation. The problem is that the M2090 is a server card with a passive heatsink. To run it at an acceptable temperature without modification, you need forced air cooling like is commonly used in rackmount servers. These cards draw 225W TDP and are known for running hot. Does anything think it would be possible to implement forced cooling in a desktop case, or possibly a 3U or 4U case?

Here are the board specs with some photos:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/43395/tesla-m2090-board-specifications.pdf

Here is a photo of the card on someone else's system. It has some kind of airflow slot at the end of the card:



I've done quite a bit of research on water cooling. EK actually makes a waterblock for this card, but it's $140 and I would still need to get a reliable pump/radiator/reservoir. It looks like water cooling will add at least $300 to the system cost when it's all said and done. Then you have to deal with maintenance, leaks, etc. I would like to avoid that if it all possible.

FYI- I'm thinking of running this on a LGA 1150 server motherboard and a Xeon E3 1200 series Haswell CPU so I can get ECC support.

Make an adapter to attach a good quality 80mm or so fan. You can make a mockup out of thin cardboard, then make a permanent one out of hard plastic or something.

@brian:
Hi,
No, you don't need rackmount cooling, but yes, it will work brilliantly as a desktop.

I stuck a set of water-cooled EVGA/WC-GTX-580/3GB and 3 x M2090/6GB's in an 1151. I already had several water-cooled boxes awaiting guts. I've used Koolance GPU220 and GPU210 waterblocks; I'd suggest the 220. I'd note, too, that the 220 option is a, comparative, breeze to build. Be sure to save the heat-spreader plate and bolts/nuts; you can toss the heatpipe contraption. I had been intending to await the Rev 2.0 boards for Cannonlake/SkylakeE, but, frankly, I've succumbed to "the itch" to just build something ... NOW.

I assume that you, as I, have a specific need for DP. Of the re-built boxes, one uses 3x140-CoolGate-P/P + 3x120-XSPC-RX-P/P and runs an 8350 @ 5.1 (just a test-build with spare parts). Another pre-built is 3x120 + 2x120-XSPC/RX also in push/pull got the 1151. FTW, the daily-driver on which I'm writing this runs an old i7-920 @ 4.1 (205x20) 24GB + 1TB-SSD boot with XSPC-120x3-RX-P/P; it has 4xGTX-460/2GB as sort of a CUDA SP-backup/quicktest box. The Fermi-based TESLA cards work well on DP computation; the Fermi GTX cards do well on SP with the GDDR noted above. I run very high order matrices of stochastic differential equations with excellent throughput. Eventually, I'll run 6xM2090 + 1xGTX-580/3GB (I have four of them altogether.) in the current AMD-8350 box.

So, to cut short, I'm doing what you're thinking about doing; it works. It's a hoot to keep up with (long-since) former colleagues running high-end, big-iron by using these kinds of ghetto-rigs and selectively targeting ones computational market. Happy hunting!

This may help

briancopp said:

I recently bought a second hand Tesla M2090 board to use in a cheap GPU workstation. The problem is that the M2090 is a server card with a passive heatsink. To run it at an acceptable temperature without modification, you need forced air cooling like is commonly used in rackmount servers. These cards draw 225W TDP and are known for running hot. Does anything think it would be possible to implement forced cooling in a desktop case, or possibly a 3U or 4U case?

......

I've done quite a bit of research on water cooling. EK actually makes a waterblock for this card, but it's $140 and I would still need to get a reliable pump/radiator/reservoir. It looks like water cooling will add at least $300 to the system cost when it's all said and done. Then you have to deal with maintenance, leaks, etc. I would like to avoid that if it all possible.

FYI- I'm thinking of running this on a LGA 1150 server motherboard and a Xeon E3 1200 series Haswell CPU so I can get ECC support.

Click to expand...

I was studing the overlay of the quadro 6000 and tesla 2090 and found out that they are the same apart the fan connector tha is missing in m2090 and video connectors aswell.

I figure that id you solder the pins of the fan to the board and get a m6000 shroud, you can get a fully active cooled system.

I got the image of the boards at EKWB site.

used theyr images superimposed in Gimp with the m2090 layer with color transparency in order to sort out diferences.

hope this helps.

my main dificulty has been to grab a defective quadro 6000 or its cooler

you might look at a 780 or Kepler titan cooler.

I happen to have found a titan cooler laying around......
the number of these that were watercooled might make it easy to find one.

scratch that, his is Fermi based, perhaps a gtx 580 cooler?

caddi daddi said:

I happen to have found a titan cooler laying around......
the number of these that were watercooled might make it easy to find one.

scratch that, his is Fermi based, perhaps a gtx 580 cooler?

Click to expand...

GTX580 gets close but not as much as quadro 6000
As you can see bellow, there are quite a few obvious diferences, althought you can't say they are totaly incompatible without trying, but I prefer a more straitghtforward approach.

https://www.ekwb.com/configurator/upload/pictures/Nvidia-580GTX-PCB.jpg

To give you a better idea this is the address of picture of nvidia quadro 6000:
https://www.ekwb.com/configurator/upload/pictures/motherboard_picture_big_quadro_angle22.jpg

Tesla 2090:
https://www.ekwb.com/configurator/upload/pictures/Nvidia_Tesla_M2075_PCB_40940.jpg

as you can see, most ovious diferences are the non existent fan plug, aditional memory chips and power plug on 2090 (marked in red)
what you see below is an image of both superimposed with green as transparency on the m2090 on top layer



I am going to receive my m2090 on 2nd November. I have a Sintech graphics board tester. i will power it and measure absent fan power pins to see if they are powered or not. If not, I will try motherboard's fan plug.
asus p8Z77WS + xeon 1280 + 16 GB ecc udimm + seasonic 850 bronze modular + nvidia quadro 6000 (not much to brag about)

The OP's post is almost 2 years old and he hasn't signed back on since making the original thread/post.

but, an interesting project none the less.

True, but still actual as lots of people are still buying these.
I came into this forum looking for an easy solution. Maybe i may contribute with an easy answer
You might call it the "poor guy's supercomputing", but the fact is, m2090 is still out there along with a short sighted design
Anyway, I feel that forums aren't just about bragging rights, they are also a solution repository. And thats why I'm contributing. Going to the store and buy a ready made waterblock, goes against the my "poor and skilled man's" concept.

No worries, always happy to see a solution, just wanted you guys to not be posting @ the OP or awaiting a response from them

all good mate, in fact, if i dont get the quadro 6000 cooler, I'm already dreaming with perspex sheets and fans