Join the Discussion - To hell with nVidia's definition of SFF ready. What should be the actual SFF standard?

Reply to thread

Message

You do have some points, but you are blatantly ignoring the airflow path and mounting geometry possibilities opened by a radiator where the air passes through lengthwise rather than the typical orientation. You say it requires "space that could be used for radiators, intake/exhaust fans or airflow", but seem to ignore the fact that this space is likely squeezed in between the GPU or GPU riser and the table the PC is standing on, meaning it's a highly restrictive area with large flat planes blocking airflow on both sides, likely with very small gaps around the edges. As such, you have no guarantee that a conventional radiator in that type of space will perform any better, and depending on the fans, it might very well do worse. This also forces you to have a very messy airflow pattern in your case, with any type of front-to-back flow being impossible. On the other hand, using something like this "rad card" (though without the portions making it PCIe slot mountable) as a radiator you could make a compact sandwich of the motherboard and GPU, with a full cover block on the (now 1-slot) GPU and something like an Eisbaer Solo LT on the CPU, bookend the each side (not front or back) of this sandwich with radiators, put a couple of small intake fans in the front to provide overall airflow including across the boards for VRM cooling, and you'd have an extremely compact fully watercooled PC. Sure, you'd need to figure out a PSU solution, but a FlexATX unit or something like a MeanWell AC-DC unit would fit perfectly next to either of the radiators without blocking any airflow whatsoever, or even as an extra layer in the motherboard+GPU sandwich if that fits better with the geometry. My point is: a radiator like this gives us new options for layouts that have previously been either extremely impractical or plain impossible. Does that mean it is the best radiator in a vacuum? Of course not! (Cue joke about radiators not working in a vacuum, I guess?) But if "what is the best cooling solution" was the question we asked here at SFF.network, we would all be building 2-3-4 radiator full tower builds. This can let us get more cooling capacity into a smaller volume than what has previously been possible. And that is great. This is of course discussing a potential DIY solution rather than the pre-built rad card itself, but I think we've all seen enough projects here ripping apart AIOs and using parts of them to know this is by no means exotic here.

<blockquote data-quote="Valantar" data-source="post: 207638" data-attributes="member: 5738">You do have some points, but you are blatantly ignoring the airflow path and mounting geometry possibilities opened by a radiator where the air passes through lengthwise rather than the typical orientation. You say it requires &quot;space that could be used for radiators, intake/exhaust fans or airflow&quot;, but seem to ignore the fact that this space is likely squeezed in between the GPU or GPU riser and the table the PC is standing on, meaning it's a highly restrictive area with large flat planes blocking airflow on both sides, likely with very small gaps around the edges. As such, you have no guarantee that a conventional radiator in that type of space will perform any better, and depending on the fans, it might very well do worse. This also forces you to have a very messy airflow pattern in your case, with any type of front-to-back flow being impossible. On the other hand, using something like this &quot;rad card&quot; (though without the portions making it PCIe slot mountable) as a radiator you could make a compact sandwich of the motherboard and GPU, with a full cover block on the (now 1-slot) GPU and something like an Eisbaer Solo LT on the CPU, bookend the each side (not front or back) of this sandwich with radiators, put a couple of small intake fans in the front to provide overall airflow including across the boards for VRM cooling, and you'd have an extremely compact fully watercooled PC. Sure, you'd need to figure out a PSU solution, but a FlexATX unit or something like a MeanWell AC-DC unit would fit perfectly next to either of the radiators without blocking any airflow whatsoever, or even as an extra layer in the motherboard+GPU sandwich if that fits better with the geometry. My point is: a radiator like this gives us new options for layouts that have previously been either extremely impractical or plain impossible. Does that mean it is the best radiator in a vacuum? Of course not! (Cue joke about radiators not working in a vacuum, I guess?) But if &quot;what is the best cooling solution&quot; was the question we asked here at SFF.network, we would all be building 2-3-4 radiator full tower builds. This can let us get more cooling capacity into a smaller volume than what has previously been possible. And that is great. This is of course discussing a potential DIY solution rather than the pre-built rad card itself, but I think we've all seen enough projects here ripping apart AIOs and using parts of them to know this is by no means exotic here.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Valantar, post: 207638, member: 5738"] You do have some points, but you are blatantly ignoring the airflow path and mounting geometry possibilities opened by a radiator where the air passes through lengthwise rather than the typical orientation. You say it requires "space that could be used for radiators, intake/exhaust fans or airflow", but seem to ignore the fact that this space is likely squeezed in between the GPU or GPU riser and the table the PC is standing on, meaning it's a highly restrictive area with large flat planes blocking airflow on both sides, likely with very small gaps around the edges. As such, you have no guarantee that a conventional radiator in that type of space will perform any better, and depending on the fans, it might very well do worse. This also forces you to have a very messy airflow pattern in your case, with any type of front-to-back flow being impossible. On the other hand, using something like this "rad card" (though without the portions making it PCIe slot mountable) as a radiator you could make a compact sandwich of the motherboard and GPU, with a full cover block on the (now 1-slot) GPU and something like an Eisbaer Solo LT on the CPU, bookend the each side (not front or back) of this sandwich with radiators, put a couple of small intake fans in the front to provide overall airflow including across the boards for VRM cooling, and you'd have an [I]extremely[/I] compact fully watercooled PC. Sure, you'd need to figure out a PSU solution, but a FlexATX unit or something like a MeanWell AC-DC unit would fit perfectly next to either of the radiators without blocking any airflow whatsoever, or even as an extra layer in the motherboard+GPU sandwich if that fits better with the geometry. My point is: a radiator like this gives us new options for layouts that have previously been either extremely impractical or plain impossible. Does that mean it is the best radiator in a vacuum? Of course not! (Cue joke about radiators not working in a vacuum, I guess?) But if "what is the best cooling solution" was the question we asked here at SFF.network, we would all be building 2-3-4 radiator full tower builds. This can let us get more cooling capacity into a smaller volume than what has previously been possible. And that is great. This is of course discussing a potential DIY solution rather than the pre-built rad card itself, but I think we've all seen enough projects here ripping apart AIOs and using parts of them to know this is by no means exotic here. [/QUOTE]

Verification