Enclosure Top Mounted Air Cooled GPU Location

[Mark13]

On air cooled systems with vertically mounted MBs not using a riser cable for the GPU, I notice that almost all cases mount the MB with the PCI slot and thus the GPU below the CPU. Only a few cases such as the Raijintek Metis Evo reverse this and mount the GPU above the CPU. I was wondering if this would bring any cooling advantage in an air cooled system due to the heat produced by the GPU? Thank you in advance for your thoughts & comments. The Streacom DA2 case would be good to test this out as it has a rear panel that can be reversed to try both orientations.

 

[tinyitx]

There are many factors, eg if a card is a blower card, exhausts via front+rear, exhausts along top+bottom edge (with or without a 'pass-thru' design like the Nvidia 3070/3080/3090).

Hot air rises and so the card's exhaust will rise directly to the top without passing through the CPU region in the Metis Evo. But this 'advantage' almost never happens in reality as the 'hot air rises' phenomena only applies when air is still. Unless the case is a 'passive' design, air inside will most certainly be actively forced to go in certain air paths and this basically determines the cooling effect. In general, it is hard to say. It mostly depends on the design of the case itself.

But, disregarding the CPU, a display card should be better positioned at the top to intake cool ambient air than being positioned at the case bottom.