Why are GPU cards not made taller to fit a 120mm fan ??

[chaparral]

I always wondered why do nvidia or ATI not make there highend GPU cards taller so they can have a 120mm fan and much bigger (wider) heatsink as standard...

As almost all of todays highend CPU coolers are made 160mm tall so they can take 120mm fans.

so why are today GPU cards not make any taller



Am guessing one the main reasons is because of the low height of PCI slots

 

[Martini1991]

I always wondered why do nvidia or ATI not make there highend GPU cards taller so they can have a 120mm fan and much bigger (wider) heatsink as standard...

As almost all of todays highend CPU coolers are made 160mm tall so they can take 120mm fans.

so why are today GPU cards not make any taller



Am guessing one the main reasons is because of the low height of PCI slots

In majority of cases, that would get in the way of intake fans.

 

[chaparral]

In majority of cases, that would get in the way of intake fans.

Maybe if the case had a side mounted fan

 

[drunkenmaster]

In majority of cases, that would get in the way of intake fans.

Not really, for two reasons, most cases don't have sidepanel fans, and secondly, if gpu's had started getting wider say 5 years ago when they should have, any case you'd bought in the last 4 years would be either an inch wider to accomdate the extra size, or mount sidepanel fans on the other side of the panel as several cases already do.

Yes they should have done it ages ago, why they don't, I have no idea.

Look at the thread with the special offer on the Gigabyte 480gtx, thats basically the standard cooler every card should have, with only sli/xfire versions for tri/quad fire being dual slot with crappy fans, which is WAY less than 5% of the market.

The problem is, if AMD/Nvidia made all cards like that at default, what would Gigabyte do to make a special better cooled, overclocked, cooler/quieter card, they wouldn't have anywhere to go, its a shame but Nvidia/AMD have very little reason to have great default cooling, because they'd only be hurting their own partners.

Theres a few cards out with wider pcb's, I just can't remember which ones, a few of the MSI or Asus overclocked versions of things, maybe one of the Nvidia duallie cards.

 

[Exsurgo]

Pretty much every case has 2 or 3cm to extra on the sides between the Graphics card and case side They fans. Most cases have much much more space. Reference cards are pretty much always going to be blower designs, but if manufacturers start putting 100mm + blower fans on their cards, they will probably move 50% + more air than the inadequate ~70mm fans that most cards have. They would also do this at lower noise levels.

Also means they can increase the reference clock speeds etc and increase their ranges benchmark scores etc. Why they have not done this I do not know.