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Old RTX 3080 GPUs repurposed and modded for Chinese market as 20GB AI cards with blower-style cooling
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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what is the appeal of blower-style cooling?, i always heard about it being worse for cooling
Blower fans are better if you want a bunch of cards in one system. Open air coolers dump too much of the hot air back into the case and are usually thicker. For non-gaming loads it's frequently better to have more cards at less than max speed.
They're really only worse in the sense that they can be louder. In a datacenter/mining rig/etc where you don't care about noise at all, they're pretty much the best solution to cooling a large amount of cards as they blow air out near the outputs instead back into the rack.
Thanks – and what is the quieter solution vs. blowers? Liquid?
Most mainstream solutions will be quieter than a blower at full tilt (i.e. the normal GPU design on having fans on the face that blow air back into the case). That said, blowers aren't inherently stupidly loud or anything. I've got a reference model blower 5700XT and have the fan curve set that I can't ever hear it with my (open back) headphones on and never really go above 80C. If I said fuck it I could turn the fan curve up and have it sound like an original Xbox 360, but my temps sure would drop!
Oh, simply having a fan does not a blower make then!
Blower is specifically referring to coolers that are designed to blow air through the GPU heats ink and then out the back of the case. In contrast, open air coolers use (typically more numerous and larger fans) to force air at the GPU heats ink but without much concern for where it goes after that, so the air ends up partially blown out the back of the case, and partially recirculate back into the rest of the case where the case fans are hopefully promoting enough exchange that ambient temps remain sufficiently low. The recirculation is less than ideal, but is offset by the larger fans and heatsinks for a typically quieter and cooler solution. The fans can be larger because they are blowing on the larger side/cross section of the heat sink. Pass through are a somewhat newer variant of open air coolers common on newer Nvidia cards that push or pull air through a heat sink that is not blocked on one side of a pc so air flows though the heat sink with less back pressure for more efficient dissipation at the expense of a more compact PCB to put all the GPU components on
The quietest solution is passive but you won't get very good performance out of that.
It's all a balance
Passive would be like a heat sink?
Yeah, big hunk of metal, lots of fins, lots of passive airflow.
Yes exactly. Only a heat sink and no moving parts.
The liquid system really just helps move the heat to a new place in your rig. To get rid of it, in general the bigger the fan the more air it can displace at a lower speed, which in turn means less noise.
A good liquid system which moves the heat to a radiator at the top/front/back (depending on where your have clearance) of your case and big fan or fans to push it out would probably work best