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Pavel
Asked: 2013-01-24 06:23:28 +0800 CST

Can I safely use a 1U server with an actively cooled Nvidia GTX 680 video card?

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I'm about to configure some new GPU capable nodes for our needs and I was wondering if someone has any experience with using simple video cards like Nvidia GTX 680 (actively cooled with a fan) in a 1U server? The fan would be pretty close to the chassis (e.g. SuperMicro SC818G-1400B) and I'm not sure it will get enough cool air. In a usual ATX case the video card gets up to 80°C which is well below upper limit of 98°C.

Does anyone tried any similar configurations with activly cooled video cards in a 1U server and would recommend it?

Thanks!

physical-environment

2 Answers

  1. There won't be enough clearance in front of the fan entry on a 1U server, it'll overheat.

    I too use GPGPU cards (Tesla's in my case) for OpenCL/Cuda work but made sure I picked a machine that can scrub the heat.

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  2. I'd personally use a better chassis for GPU work. My preference is 2U because 1U is always a compromise in cooling and/or expansion. In my case, the systems that required the CUDA cards also needed additional 10GbE PCIe cards as an interconnect, so I was forced into a bigger chassis. That may not be the case for your environment, though.

    Edit: I have a quote here for a new 30-node GPU scientific computing cluster... The systems spec'd are these 2U chassis.

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