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Why haven't GPUs gone triple-slot?

Quartz

Quartz

Quartz

Soldato
Joined
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High end GPUs are one of the greatest consumers of power in your PC. CPU air coolers can be huge. But GPU air coolers are not. So why haven't high end GPU coolers gone triple or even quad slot?
 
As above but quad slot would be just stupid as they need airflow too not just big coolers. Bigger coolers are not a good selling point, can droop the card without support to hold them up and would need a big case. Also dont forget no point if you watercool it ! A high end gpu as you say cries out for water cooling if you are that way inclined not a massive cooler.
 
The Turing cards from EVGA is the first time I've seen triple slot as a standard. Before that it was niche cards like the Titan Z and ultra high-end SKUs like Asus Matrix Platinum. But yeah, triple slot coolers have been a thing for a long time now.
 
I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen multislot cards with a fake PCIe fingers to fit into another slot for stability.
 
bru said:
I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen multislot cards with a fake PCIe fingers to fit into another slot for stability.
Click to expand...
Interesting idea but what about motherboards that have nothing/PCI/only an x1 slot?

If they're were optional/removable that'd be pretty sensible. Like a side panel on the shroud.
 
Why can't we have single slot again please. Especially for water-cooling I remember have a pair of gtx 480 with a slim xspc razor blocks very nice and very compact.
 
dazzerd said:
Why can't we have single slot again please. Especially for water-cooling I remember have a pair of gtx 480 with a slim xspc razor blocks very nice and very compact.
Click to expand...

Most, if not all, EK blocks are single slot. I actually wonder whether performance would be better if EK didn't impose that restriction.
 
Tom B said:
Most, if not all, EK blocks are single slot. I actually wonder whether performance would be better if EK didn't impose that restriction.
Click to expand...

It's like saying would performance be better if my radiator was bigger etc. I'm pretty sure yes the performance would be better if the block was bigger. (to a point, it's not a linear scale, at some point you'll hit the limit of how fast heat can transfer off the die and after that the limit of how fast heat was transfer off water and then the limit of your room tempreture). The first limit is probably why the blocks are quite thin - EKWB probably has testing that suggests making the blocker thicker doesn't make too much difference due to limitations in how fast heat transfers off the die

As for air coolers, I'd be super keen on a quad slot card - doesn't matter if I need a bracket to hold it up, single card owners have almost no use for the other slots under neath so may as well use up that space, just like giant noctua cpu coolers do
 
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