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GPUs are just getting bigger and bigger...

beany_bot said:
How long before everything ceases to advance? I think we are pretty close now. How long before our RAM has it's own fan? The north bridge? It's coming....
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I remember some motherboards over 10 years ago where either the north or south bridge had a fan, maybe because it had a GPU in it. And there are obviously aftermarket fans for RAM but that seems a bit crazy (but maybe will be necessary at some point looking at how big the RAM heatsinks are getting).

Let's just hope they can keep developing smaller manufacturing processes, until we have a transistor which is just a couple of atoms :eek:
 
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beany_bot said:
It's a problem / stalemate we are all rapidly approaching regarding tech in general. Heat.

Back when I started building PC's there wasnt a single Fan in a PC. The CPU had a passive cooler and that was it. Then the CPU got a fan. Then the case got a fan. Then the GPU got a heatsink. Then the GPU got a fan, Then the north and south bridges got a heatsink, GPU's got multiple fans and massive heatsinks. then the Ram got a heat sink.

We can all see the trend. It's a bit worrying. Are CPU's and GPU's are limited by heat production now. Just look at the heatsink on GPU's now. They are utterly ridiculous when you think about it. Sure we develop better technologies that allow more speed at the same temp, but they are really just sticky plaster solutions, they aren't revolutionary and only buy you another year or so. How long before everything ceases to advance? I think we are pretty close now. How long before our RAM has it's own fan? The north bridge? It's coming....
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I don't quite agree here - thing is the cooling technology changed a few years back with the introduction of heat pipes which increased efficiency for air cooling but at a cost - space. Heat pipes mean more space is required as a general case. Paradoxically the 10x0 cards have a lower power envelope than the previous generation (and product less heat as a consequence). OTOH you can't fight physics - you need a lot of surface area to cool with air/heatpipes and one of the few ways card manu's can differentiate is with cooler design. Add on top a general desire from end users to have quieter cards and that means slower fans = bigger fans = bigger surface area to achieve the same cooling etc. I suppose we could go back to the days of tiny high speed delta fans and small heatsinks but I suspect it'd be like having a dentist constantly drilling through your skull..
When my 1080s arrive i'm expecting an overall drop in temps and power consumption. I will however make them look tiny with waterblocks :)

BTW in most cases ram sinks are marketing - there were some fun tests a while back showing some made cooling *worse* and often you find ram sinks are badly fitted with poor thermal contact.

Motherboards generally (for me) have got more passive cooling thesedays - NB/SB fans seem to have disappeared in recent years again due to better cooling designs/heatpipes or just lower processes in production.
 
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As mentioned HBM can aid in making a video card smaller, but its down to the thermal engineers to figure out ways how not to undo that work with a heatsink that bring the card upto whats considered standard gpu lengths (10.5 inches or so). The nano was a good step in that direction.
 
This does not bode well. My MSI Gaming 970 just about fits when the removable hard drive cage is in, and as of yesterday, that removable hard drive rack is now essential, due to having more than 2 hard drives. If the 1080ti, big Vega release and they are bigger... I'm going to be in a spot of trouble.

Though... I could get a bit creative and grab a 5.25" to 3.5" converter to put my hard drive in the empty disc drive bay slots. And then I can remove the current hard drive cage just fine. So it's not the end of the world for me, I guess thanks for drive bay adaptors.

Edit: Something like this?
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/icybox-ib-168sk-b-3.5-sata-trayless-mobile-rack-hd-037-bt.html
 
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subbytna said:
That'll teach you for having a weird upside down case :p
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My case is correct (Heat rises ;))
Cold air intakes at the very bottom /Heat output at the very top

It all them PC cases that you can buy that have front intake fans & rear output fans that are weird & wrong........:p
 
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mahius said:
This does not bode well. My MSI Gaming 970 just about fits when the removable hard drive cage is in, and as of yesterday, that removable hard drive rack is now essential, due to having more than 2 hard drives. If the 1080ti, big Vega release and they are bigger... I'm going to be in a spot of trouble.

Though... I could get a bit creative and grab a 5.25" to 3.5" converter to put my hard drive in the empty disc drive bay slots. And then I can remove the current hard drive cage just fine. So it's not the end of the world for me, I guess thanks for drive bay adaptors.

Edit: Something like this?
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/icybox-ib-168sk-b-3.5-sata-trayless-mobile-rack-hd-037-bt.html
Click to expand...

Squire, if you are going to be able to afford a 1080Ti at whatever horrendous price they release it at, you can afford a new case ;) :p
 
David Bisset said:
my old blower 7850 is I think 29.5cm so all these cards sound short to me :p (The HIS IceQ Turbo blower thingie... it's pretty massive!)
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My stepson has that and it fits in my case so no chance it's bigger than 26cm

Edit sorry non turbo...that is big!
 
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This is a Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming in a Raven RV05 (over 300mm long) so a 1080FE should fit easily in a RV02

007.jpg
 
mahius said:
This does not bode well. My MSI Gaming 970 just about fits when the removable hard drive cage is in, and as of yesterday, that removable hard drive rack is now essential, due to having more than 2 hard drives. If the 1080ti, big Vega release and they are bigger... I'm going to be in a spot of trouble.

Though... I could get a bit creative and grab a 5.25" to 3.5" converter to put my hard drive in the empty disc drive bay slots. And then I can remove the current hard drive cage just fine. So it's not the end of the world for me, I guess thanks for drive bay adaptors.

Edit: Something like this?
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/icybox-ib-168sk-b-3.5-sata-trayless-mobile-rack-hd-037-bt.html
Click to expand...

Vega cards will be small, they'll be HBM2. If they choose to do another 'Nano' model, it should be smaller than the (Fiji) R9 Nano, since there's no way the biggest Vega chip (I expect there to be two of them initially) is going to be 600mm2 (like Fiji) again.

Even if GP102 is 600mm2, AMD won't want or need to go anywhere near that for Vega. Given the low density of Pascal (in order to get higher clocks and alleviate their heat issues), their dies have to be big, and Polaris has a large IPC increase over GCN 1.2 (Fiji and 380/X), with Vega taking it even further ... Pascal has a small fall in IPC relative to Maxwell.

My guess is maximum 475mm2 for big Vega, 330-350mm2 (GP104 size) for smaller. Small should thrash 1080. Big ought to thrash GP102. Should have far more OC'ing headroom, like Polaris, too.

I expect the PCBs (coolers & heatsinks will extend further on some cards) to be absolutely minute.
 
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