ASUS Gives GeForce RTX 3070 the Turbo Lateral Blower Treatment

[Chrispy_]

That's easy since there were gpu bilateral blower fans that vented out the front and back. yep found one and it's even a consumer card. hd7990 reference.

I see three axial fans. Completely bone-stock axial fans.
If you're talking about this image below, it's not a real card, it was a fan-made photoshop added to a pre-reveal leak article:

and it was just as fake as this one:

The closest I can think of is the old GTX 690 card and it's another axial fan, not a lateral/radial fan. Nvidia never made that mistake again, because it was a cooling disaster, lol.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

> ASUS designs these cards for cases with airflow restrictions

Shower thought:

If you actually want to slap RTX 3070 into airflow restricted case, just buy a better case first.

So we should only use greater-then-midrange GPUs if we have big ATX cases with lots of fans on them? Cases like the danA4, in win bk623, silverstone FT03 and associate designs, ece, by design need blowers because they are small cases with limtied footprints and limited cooling ability. There's no reason such computers should be limited to the likes of 3060s.

 

[TheDeeGee]

For the aviation fans out there.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

You really think ASUS is only selling this to retail?

Never said that lmao. Reading comprehension is hard, isn't it?

I somehow doubt you know exactly where are they selling it to and in what form it will be used besides retail though...

So we should only use greater-then-midrange GPUs if we have big ATX cases with lots of fans on them?

No, that's not how logic works.

Cases like the danA4, in win bk623, silverstone FT03 and associate designs, ece, by design need blowers because they are small cases with limtied footprints and limited cooling ability. There's no reason such computers should be limited to the likes of 3060s.

And yes, cramming power hungry GPU into case with restricted airflow is a bad idea. You can do what you want with your hardware, doesn't make it a good idea.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Lol, show me a blower fan on a GPU that isn't lateral, until then it's superfluous.

Hold on...trying to think up something witty involving a blower and a front yard full of leaves...
lateral airflow is always superfluous, I think...

 

[MrGRiMv25]

Hold on...trying to think up something witty involving a blower and a front yard full of leaves...
lateral airflow is always superfluous, I think...

If you want to blow leaves, get hold of an old FX5800 dustbuster, perfect for the job.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

No, that's not how logic works.

And yes, cramming power hungry GPU into case with restricted airflow is a bad idea. You can do what you want with your hardware, doesn't make it a good idea.

It's not a bad idea when you have teh appropriate cooler, like say, a BLOWER. With a BLOWER, a high TDP GPU can be used in small restrictive cases without issue. Shocking I know.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

It's not a bad idea when you have teh appropriate cooler, like say, a BLOWER. With a BLOWER, a high TDP GPU can be used in small restrictive cases without issue. Shocking I know.

Or you could've, you know, bought less restrictive case, and be able to comfortably use quieter card.

Shocking, I know.

BTW you are the one bringing up "small" (unlike newspiece, and myself up to this comment) repeatedly, so it needs to be addressed, that originally it was just about "airflow restricted" cases and there is no equivalency between case having modest footprint and poor airflow. Nevermind that such small case may not even fit it in the first place, making whole OT moot anyways.

 

[Valantar]

I disagree "lateral" is declaring the direction of airflow, so it's use isn't unwarranted.

IMO radial is a better wording (combined with traditional/non-blower fans being axial). One type of fan directs airflow along its axis of rotation, the other along its radius. Simple and relatively self-explanatory. Lateral is okay as a term, but given that there's no applicable matching term for other types of fans it's not the best designation.

Lol, show me a blower fan on a GPU that isn't lateral, until then it's superfluous.

Technically any fan is a "blower", in that it blows air, so ... yes, the term is used colloquially (at least in the PC space) to denominate radial/lateral fans, but it doesn't really mean anything at all.

 

[lexluthermiester]

this gpu will most likely make its way to pre built systems.

Or in systems for people who want the heat blown out of the case and are not bothered by noise.

ASUS today rolled out the GeForce RTX 3070 Turbo graphics card. Given that the company built lateral-airflow coolers for even the 350 W RTX 3090, such a card based on the RTX 3070 should come as little surprise. ASUS designs these cards for cases with airflow restrictions. The card is strictly 2 slots thick and full-height. It uses a lateral blower-type cooling solution that uses a vapor-chamber plate and a copper channel-type heatsink; and a lateral fan that uses double-ball bearing. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors located along the tail end, rather than on the top.

Now if they'd only make one of these in white...

 

[Caring1]

Technically any fan is a "blower", in that it blows air, so ... yes, the term is used colloquially (at least in the PC space) to denominate radial/lateral fans, but it doesn't really mean anything at all.

I'll agree with Radial being the better designation for "blower" fans, but literally the majority of fans in use now on GPUs are lateral, ie side mounted, with the odd exception.
Perhaps they could increase the size of the fan to increase it's cooling benefits, much like the old Ice-Q designs.
I'm not sure if Lex is being sarcastic but white would be nice too for these, I believe Asus has made a white Radial fan GPU in the past.

 

[Chrispy_]

the majority of fans in use now on GPUs are lateral, ie side mounted, with the odd exception.

You are trolling, right?

side/edge/top/bottom are all utterly meaningless words these days - upright tower cases have vertical GPU mounts or horizontal mounts. SFFs sometimes flip the GPU upside down, or hang it from the roof. I think there are twelve orthogonal orientations possible for a GPU, that's four 90-degree rotations around three axes - good luck trying to work out what face is the 'side' instead of the front, back, top, or bottom.

In all seriousness, when it comes to fans, there are fans that blow along their axis of rotation and fans that blow away from the their axis of rotation. Either direction could be "lateral" depending on the direction of heatsink vanes and which way is parallel to the floor in the specific GPU/Case combination in question. In case I need to explain etymology, lateral literally means 'sideways' and since you can talk about both an axial fan and radial fan in orientations such that the airflow is 'sideways', it's pretty damn clear that 'lateral' isn't really a word that should be used with fans, ever, because it's completely ambiguous and open-ended in its interpretation; That's literally why we call them axial and radial.

It's as oxymoronic as 'falling sideways'.

 

[phoenix007]

Is this card semi passive?
I can’t find any reviews or details.
As it is a RTX 3000 series it should have a 0 db mode , but at the same time using a radial blower style fan it may not
Does anyone here know?

 

[Chrispy_]

Is this card semi passive?
I can’t find any reviews or details.
As it is a RTX 3000 series it should have a 0 db mode , but at the same time using a radial blower style fan it may not
Does anyone here know?

No. These blower-style cards require the fan to run all the time because it's not an open heatsink that works passively.

I've used third party software to test cards like this in idle-fan-stop or 0dB modes and they rapidly heat up without the fan spinning because the completely enclosed shroud means that even the low amount of heat produced at idle has nowhere to go.

 

[phoenix007]

No. These blower-style cards require the fan to run all the time because it's not an open heatsink that works passively.

I've used third party software to test cards like this in idle-fan-stop or 0dB modes and they rapidly heat up without the fan spinning because the completely enclosed shroud means that even the low amount of heat produced at idle has nowhere to go.

Thank you Chrispy for making that clear.

Would you say that even in a case with 90 degree motherboard rotation (like silverstone Fortress) and positive case pressure that semi passive mode on a gpu using radial fan is a bad idea?


By the way, what is your preferred software to control a radial gpu fan?

 

[Chrispy_]

Thank you Chrispy for making that clear.

Would you say that even in a case with 90 degree motherboard rotation (like silverstone Fortress) and positive case pressure that semi passive mode on a gpu using radial fan is a bad idea?


By the way, what is your preferred software to control a radial gpu fan?

Maybe it would work. I don't think you'd feel much air coming out of the expansion slot cover, so I doubt it would do very much.. Air always takes the path of least resistance and the squirrel-cage fan and long heatsink of a blower card are going to be like an impenetrable dam compared to the rest of the well-ventilated case. Passive cooling on a big open heatsink works because the heatsink fins are short in the direction that's open to case airflow; Hot air in contact with the fin surface only has to convect itself a tiny distance of half an inch or so before it is free to to get swept away by the case airflow. The heatsinks in a blower card are 10-20 times further away from case airflow, so you're only going to be using convection for 1/10th-1/20th of the heatsink.

You can't usually enable 0-rpm modes on cards that don't allow it - you have to BIOS edit or find a compatible BIOS from a card that has it and that's getting harder every generation.
For a 3070 fan control, I'd use MSI afterburner.

 

[phoenix007]

Thanks again
Very helpful info