Any suggestions on GPU choice?

Boca Raton Community HS
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B.I.G wrote: Well I have

B.I.G wrote:

Well I have mixed feelings there, yes blower-style is great to get the heat out of the case. But yet every blower style fan, be it AMD or NVIDIA,  failed me in the past and I had to get a replacement - which is an absolute pain in the rear. And with the single slot Workstation cards: their cooling is completely inadequate, the fan has to spin at 3000-4000 rpm which is very loud and I don't see how at that speed it can last long. Time will tell if materials have improved but alone for the noise I'd wish for a top down dual or triple fan cooling and then just install another 1-2 fans to create an airflow that sucks the heat out.

 

I have not yet had a blower in the RTX Axx00 GPUs fail and they have done a great job with cooling and are not actually that loud in my opinion (still louder than the consumer GPUs though). The RTX 6000 GPUs ARE loud though. I think the A4000 (single slot) is also a good GPU, I know Ian uses them so he could address their cooling/noise better than I can. Also, since most of our workstations are from a major OEM, we have 5 year warrantees on those, which for us is a huge selling point. 

Keith Myers
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You shouldn't have to worry

You shouldn't have to worry about longevity in blower fans that run at 4000 rpm.  They are server class fans with double row ball bearings with 50,000 hours or more life expectancy.   And being for server usage, noise factor is not a concern.

 

B.I.G
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Well we are talking about the

Well we are talking about the workstation cards based on RDNA, the server cards would be the AMD Instinct based on CDNA. And yes I know those Instinct cards are used in systems where you are not allowed get close to without wearing hearing protection.

But for a workstation where a human is sitting constantly in front, noise very much is an issue. But if the fans are of high quality as you say that would be quite reassuring at least. I couldn't find any information on that with the AMD cards tough.

Boca Raton Community HS
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B.I.G wrote: Well we are

B.I.G wrote:

Well we are talking about the workstation cards based on RDNA, the server cards would be the AMD Instinct based on CDNA. And yes I know those Instinct cards are used in systems where you are not allowed get close to without wearing hearing protection.

But for a workstation where a human is sitting constantly in front, noise very much is an issue. But if the fans are of high quality as you say that would be quite reassuring at least. I couldn't find any information on that with the AMD cards tough.

 

When the RTX A6000 GPUs run at 100% fan speed, you can easily talk over them. I do everyday in my classroom. 

Keith Myers
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So here is an example that

So here is an example that goes against the belief that only workstation cards use squirrel cage or blower style fans. Dual row ball bearings.

RTX 3080 Turbo

Asus RTX 3080 Turbo

Happy to see the return of this type of product again.  Dual slot width and exhausts hot air out of the chassis to avoid dumping gpu heat onto the rest of the case components.

Nvidia has pressured the OEM's to not release blower style cards after the Turing generation.  Glad to see that either Nvidia has let up on the pressure or Asus is just ignoring this and releasing a product that consumers want to use again.

 

N.B.  I never had any blower style gpu card lose a fan. Ever.  OTOH, I've had several axial style gpu fans die on me.  Last count I think was 4 fans out of about 20 gpus.

 

Boca Raton Community HS
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Keith Myers wrote: So here

Keith Myers wrote:

So here is an example that goes against the belief that only workstation cards use squirrel cage or blower style fans. Dual row ball bearings.

RTX 3080 Turbo

Asus RTX 3080 Turbo

Happy to see the return of this type of product again.  Dual slot width and exhausts hot air out of the chassis to avoid dumping gpu heat onto the rest of the case components.

Nvidia has pressured the OEM's to not release blower style cards after the Turing generation.  Glad to see that either Nvidia has let up on the pressure or Asus is just ignoring this and releasing a product that consumers want to use again.

 

Completely agree with this. I am really surprised this might be coming from Asus and not PNY, but then again, that might cut into their workstation card sales. 

B.I.G
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Boca Raton Community HS

Boca Raton Community HS wrote:

When the RTX A6000 GPUs run at 100% fan speed, you can easily talk over them. I do everyday in my classroom. 

Instict cards are different, they have passive coolers and rely on the airflow of the server unit. For example I think this was a Cray balde server that you can just stack up in a rack. They take up to 6 Instinct cards with one Epyc CPU and are cooled by 4 fans where a single fan is consuming 130 watts. You can imagine the noise.

 

Keith Myers wrote:

N.B.  I never had any blower style gpu card lose a fan. Ever.  OTOH, I've had several axial style gpu fans die on me.  Last count I think was 4 fans out of about 20 gpus.

Well to be fair the fans didn't fail they wore out and got so loud that I had to replace them, they probably had failed eventually but noise was what made the replacement necessary. The last time this happened was in 2017 with a GTX 780. So maybe today and with workstation cards this is different. If it wasn't for my bad experiences I very much prefer the blower style myself.

An other option would be to funnel the air straight to the CPU and GPU, one guy did this with 3D printed parts, but you can also use cardboard and cut out openings in the case, then install one fan for each the CPU and GPU and who cares where the air goes if fresh, cool air from the outside goes straight onto the heatsinks. I did this once in my young years, works like a charm but don't have the time for this any more I buy ready systems now and no dealer will cut your case open and give you warranty on that system.

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