I have 8010 fans laying around that I got from ebay when I wanted to use them as case fans for Hassium. And I've seen some 8010 fans sold on Amazon.
I want to start off the technical discussion with this: it all comes down to testing in practice to really know.
But I do have some thoughts on this matter in theory (please correct me if I'm wrong):
- Thin fans don't have to have low static pressure. They have lower total pressure than thicker fans. They can achieve same static pressure as a thicker fan, but at the cost of having lower velocity pressure.
- Pressure is measured over a surface area, so an 80mm fan with y/4 static pressure would push a column of 80mm-diameter air with as much total static pressure as a 40mm fan with y static pressure pushes a column of 80mm-diameter air. This means that a 80mm fan with a lower static pressure number can still push a column of air with more pressure than a 40mm fan with a higher static pressure.
- There's no denying that the 90 degree turn will cause turbulence. I cannot comment on how much that will impact performance.
For all intents and purpose of this case, I have always disregarded anything below 970 and the Nano.
Inno3D is 172mm, so it will fit in my case after all, because I shrunk the length allowance from 180mm to 172mm.
Gigabyte is 172mm, and there's only one of them? Some sites quote it as 170mm though.
In my opinion, the incentive for manufacturers to make cards less than 170mm is not for specific computer cases, but the marketing buzz of a "Mini ITX card". It makes buyers associate their mITX motherboard to a mITX gpu.
The only reason I see for 180mm cards to exist is twin 80mm cooling fans. But why do that when you can just use a single 120mm fan? Quieter, less power draw, and you actually have 10% more surface area... That is why I believe 170<X<180 will continue to be very rare, if not increasingly so.
Trust me though, it was a very difficult design decision to make. The idea of a UCFF machine, and the idea of preserving component compatibility, are both really hard to give up...
I think what I've currently decided is to stick with this configuration, allowing up to 172mm. The "sub-4L" is too cool of an idea to give up.
But when the next-gen GPUs come out and if there's an overwhelming amount of worthy GPUs that fall within 172<X<180, I will concede and lengthen it a bit. I'm willing to wager there won't be.
