Comon sense video card heat solution

[gingaaar]

Hi all,

After glueing another fan to the back of my Ge-force card I wondered (and not for the first time) why the hell they dont put the chip and heatsink on the other side? Heat rises and all that....

Anyone else sat on the bog and thought this?

Cheers,

Ging.

 

[Deathknight]

Dunno if this is the actual reason or not but the typical airflow in a case is in from the bottom front and up and out the back. This way cool air is coming directly up onto the video card.

 

[mazir]

Maybe it has something to do with the side of the road people drive on. Maybe if you get a video card from Britain it will point in the other direction.

Seriously though you raise a valid point. I just got to ripping the HSF off of my GF3 and installing a Zalman chipset cooler heatsink ($7) with an 80mm Panaflo ($3) fan at 7V over it. It's not touching the card but connected to a spare PCI bracket which let's me place it just about anywhere I want. It's a very cheap affective way to cool the vid card. Virtually silent too.

I have it overclocked to 230/520 with this solution which is just 10 less core than what I could get with a Crystal Orb.

p.s. I'm British myself so no offense meant if by any chance anyone understood it that way.

 

[cursor]

You're right. That DOES make sense. However, there's no way you'd not have problems if you did that. Some jacka... er... idiot would buy the card, and put it in a p2 350.... BOOM capacitor or something blocks it. Customer service nightmare across the distribution channel.

Thus I have to hang a 60cm fan off of my nic to blow on my Radeon 8500 that overheats whenever I play a 3d game.

 

[DaddyB]

Ive wondered why they dont put the gpu/hsf on top of the card before, thinking the same thing as you (heat rises). I have also seen this question asked before and the best reason I have heard/thought of is that dust settles on top of your cards, so the HSF would get covered with dust. Dont forget we are the minority, most people think if they open up their computer it will break or something so they dont clean out the dust.

If you have ever left your computer closed for a few months then peeked in side you will see that all of the pci/agp cards are coated with dust, especially in OEM systems with low case flow and only one (exhaust) fan making a negative case pressure.

 

[residentevil2]

i do s fan sanwich where i have a fan in the back cooling the bakc side as well as the front works wonders

 

[Xevuhtess7]

would it screw anything up to epoxy a heatsink to the backside? or are there circuitry there..... cause ive heard about people putting ramsinks on the backside of their ram.

 

[residentevil2]

yes it would in the back of most of tdays cards thier are tiny little holes right behind the card where the gpu is so anything you put thier would leak

 

[equalizr]

thats exactly what i did..read my other thread

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=129392

 

[HeXenViRii]

life would be simpler on the other side

 

[gingaaar]

Well, I suppose it gives me something to do with all the old P3 and 486 DX fans that I have lying around... Hey thats funny, I never did find a good P2 fan....

 

[xbiker321]

my guess is the video card companies thought if they put the core/memory on the other side the gpu fan might obstruct air flow with the cpu HSF. Also the intake fans are blowing from the bottem of the case so the gpu fan sucks in the cool air, if it was on the otherside it would suck in the warm air from the cpu HSF.