NVIDIA Announces RTX A6000 48 GB Professional Graphics Card Accelerators

[InVasMani]

That fan must be drawing air from the 4th dimension in Pic No.2

Small print says availability 2 - 4 weeks, so early January.
It's not a Launch yet.

I don't see how they can operate effectively being that close together and not get hot or overheat.
Blower fans are not designed for that style of cooling and require an air gap to individually draw air in.

Sometimes they have a air inlet cutout on the PCB that can draw airflow from the back-plate side of the PCB plus if it had one of those it could even draw a bit of airflow from the bottom card. It's not as ideal as having a airflow gap to draw in more air, but might work well enough in practice depending on the heat output of the GPU design.

Here's a example and if the PCB is like the RTX 3080/3090 reference PCB would allow plenty of airflow to be drawn from the rear PCB side of the GPU. The photo's provided really don't give much indication what the opposite side looks like unless you've got x-ray vision.

 

[Caring1]

It has cutout on the back

Your point?
Where is the air going to come from if the fan is blocked by another card?

 

[Vayra86]

Your point?
Where is the air going to come from if the fan is blocked by another card?

The not covered side? You're looking at topside here. So if this was the top GPU, that cutout would do the trick and if its the bottom, the normal radial fan thing happens.

This is not an exhaust you're looking at here, that happens at the slot end in both cases.

 

[Caring1]

The not covered side? You're looking at topside here. So if this was the top GPU, that cutout would do the trick and if its the bottom, the normal radial fan thing happens.

This is not an exhaust you're looking at here, that happens at the slot end in both cases.

Yeah I know what side I am looking at, but blower fans don't blow through like an axial fan, the second fan will be starved for air.

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah I know what side I am looking at, but blower fans don't blow through like an axial fan, the second fan will be starved for air.

I know they aren't blowing through, but if the cutouts are half/half on each side both GPUs will be getting the same air intake, right? Maybe the top fan can also run in opposite direction? It would need to for the right airflow push.

Anyway I doubt many people place them this close together these days.

 

[Cheeseball]

Yeah I know what side I am looking at, but blower fans don't blow through like an axial fan, the second fan will be starved for air.

These types of GPUs usually go into to server racks like these:


These server racks are cooled through a dedicated CRAC/CRAH infrastructure, so basically air conditioning from 15C to 27C (not the room but the casing itself). We have a small data center on-campus that houses these.

Anyway I doubt many people place them this close together these days.

In consumer ATX cases and the like, you're right as the GPUs shouldn't be that close together (especially for blower-types). However in data center servers they are packed tightly, but aren't starved for air due to the cooling system I mentioned above.

 

[InVasMani]

Your point?
Where is the air going to come from if the fan is blocked by another card?

It's flipped when installed so the top card in the configuration can draw air from the cutout on the top of the PCB unrestricted by the 2-way configuration perfectly fine. Additionally it can draw air thru the cutout on the card below it as well which can draw air unrestricted like normal while some of that cooler air intake can get drawn into the top card. I get the criticism on the tight spacing and blower intake though it could be done better perhaps. It can use a 2-slot or 3-slot NVLink bridge as well it's not as big a issue as you're making it out to be. As mentioned it'll probably go in a rack case in many or most instances. Another thing to note in a rack case it would be on it's side and draw in air better thru the PCB cutout.

 

[Crackong]

It has cutout on the back

I see.

My bad

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Small print says availability 2 - 4 weeks, so early January.
It's not a Launch yet.

I don't see how they can operate effectively being that close together and not get hot or overheat.
Blower fans are not designed for that style of cooling and require an air gap to individually draw air in.

Dual GPU setups frequently ran like this a decade ago. The fans still create enough suction, they just get REALLY LOUD doing so.

And many of these will end up in server racks which already operate on the concept of positive air pressure. They'll be fine.

 

[z1n0x]

Using cardboard for the shroud, that's innovative.

 

[watzupken]

Sometimes they have a air inlet cutout on the PCB that can draw airflow from the back-plate side of the PCB plus if it had one of those it could even draw a bit of airflow from the bottom card. It's not as ideal as having a airflow gap to draw in more air, but might work well enough in practice depending on the heat output of the GPU design.

Here's a example and if the PCB is like the RTX 3080/3090 reference PCB would allow plenty of airflow to be drawn from the rear PCB side of the GPU. The photo's provided really don't give much indication what the opposite side looks like unless you've got x-ray vision.
View attachment 179737View attachment 179738

This design to me is a double edged sword. On one hand, it allows more air flow, be it inflow or outflow, depending on the cooler. On the other hand, Nvidia had to drastically shrink the PCB, resulting in a super cramped board that is populated with a bunch of very hot components. I don't know how hot will the PCB get and will it be a problem for all the components on it in the long run.

 

[Nater]

@Nater Curious what you're using these accelerators for.

SolidWorks.

 

[Berfs1]

I understand I am very late to this topic, but I just wanted to kind of make more sense into this design. This isn't intended for 4 way SLI or for cards to be stacked right next to eachother. The A40 is meant for that, and is meant for server racks, as they will have the fans to cool those passive heatsinks. In most current generation motherboards, if you have 2x PCIe x16 slots, they usually is more than 1 slot in between, meaning you could do 2 way SLI for triple slot cards, and that will have enough airflow for two cards that are dual slot width.

 

[arconz]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I am curious how loud these blowers get under full rendering load... I am considering this card's smaller sibling the RTX A4000 16GB - a major annoyance with the 3000 series was not having that VRAM option.

The A4000 is quite a low power GPU at 140W, but would it be louder than 3000 series cards...? The fact its a single slot design is actually concerning because the heatsink is smaller... :/

 

[Nater]

I just got this e-mail a little bit ago. I haven't found any US based resellers that have it in stock. (A4000)

 

[arconz]

I just got this e-mail a little bit ago. I haven't found any US based resellers that have it in stock. (A4000)

Got that email weeks ago too, still nothing. At least nVidia is being coinsistent and not limiting its trolling to gamers. Jensen really is a sick @#$%.