Airflow question

[Kronos]

I have currently a Evga RTX 2080TI Black FE and will be upgrading to a RTX 3080 but I was wondering if I went for the triple fan variant rather than the FE would I have any issues with airflow?
In the image below you can see the PCIE x16 slot where the current card is and the PCIE x1 where I have a soundcard.
Will the soundcards position have a detrimental effect on air supply to the fans(s) of the 3080?

 

[Kronos]

I would imagine your sound card is actually in the PCIEX4 slot, as surely the 2080TI is a 2 slot width card.

Replacing it with a triple fan RTX3080 shouldn't be a problem

Should have checked the position of the sound card before starting this thread and you are quite correct.
So a triple fan GPU will not have issues?

It's always better to have no obstruction anywhere of course, but it should be fine. You could have course also run some benchmarks with and without sound card and see what that does to the temperatures, but I'd be surprised if you could measure a difference that's not in the margin of error anyway.

Great, thanks for that.

 

[Kronos]

What kind of clearance do you have right now? If it's tight, probably shouldn't go tighter.

I would estimate around 3cm's.

 

[Kronos]

Do you really need the soundcard? Something wrong with on-board audio?

I personally thin kit is better as it lets me have far more control, but as to whether I need it, that is debatable?

 

[Kronos]

I find it simpler to switch from headphones to speakers with the soundcard and although not a audio nerd I do feel sound is better with the card so would prefer to keep it provided it does not obstruct airflow to GPU.