Is PNY a good brand of blower-style GPU's?
mwasielewski1990
Posts: 317
So, let me briefly explain. I'm looking to upgrade from my 1080ti blower to an RTX model. The problem is, I have a micro-atx tower, and frankly due to very limited space and airflow inside it I'm kind of constrained to blower-style cards. My Gigabyte blower is operating at a stable 68 degrees (custom fan curve) under full load in DAZ, and sometimes around 76-ish degrees in games. My question is - is 2080ti's thermal performance manageable in a micro atx tower (for a blower fan)?
I was thinking about this model:
https://www.pny.com/GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-11GB-Blower
What I like about PNY is they actually give a 3-year warranty based on the date of purchase, as opposed to the date of manufacturing of the product (like MSI).
But on the other hand, there is very little reviews of this brand on the internet.
Does anyone have a PNY card and had to RMA it? How was the customer service?
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Comments
The 2080ti puts out roughly the same heat as a 1080ti.
That's good news. Have you had any experience with PNY? Or maybye you can recommend other blower-style 2080ti 's?
I have never owned a PNY but blower cards aren't really a thing any more so you may not have many options.
PNY is supposed to be among the top in RAM & storage in quality. They used to be known as a cheap but quality off-brand. The prices are mostly on par now with the more well-known brands though.
Actually, for a very long time (perhaps still?) PNY was Nvidia's manufacturer of choice for their entire line of Quadro workstation cards.
I don't know about PNY, but I've had nothing but satisfactory experiences with these to date:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L1P4KWQ
I can't say the same for Gigabyte mobos, but I'm happy with the GPUs.
Don't all the stock cards come with blowers? That's your basic run-of-the-mill stock card.
So, why would one stock card be better than the other, if they're sold by different sellers? They all come from the same maker, nVidia, so they're all the same to me.
Nvidia no longer makes their reference designs blowers. They have axial fans now. so a blower style card is a pretty major deviation from the reference card.
Yeah, I do see the 2080ti Founder's Edition has two axial fans now. I would think blower designs are standardized across the board, so I wouldn't have any concerns getting a 2080ti with a blower on it fron PNY. If I had $1,400 dollars to blow. :)
Uh ... the GPUs all come from the same maker. No necessary reason the rest of the components (or the performance) are the same.
It's a $700 chip. It makes no sense to use cheap components to sell a board with an expensive GPU.
It may not makesense but it is standard.
This is the cheapest 2080ti I can find:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-dual-rtx2080ti-o11g/p/N82E16814126247?Item=N82E16814126247&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https%3a%2f%2fpcpartpicker.com%2fproduct%2fJQNv6h%2fasus-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-11gb-video-card-dual-rtx2080ti-o11g&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-w4ej0mWcnIyL8N1X8HFpuw
Lots of bad reviews.
Then there is one of the widely accepted top quality ones like the Kingpin
https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-11g-p4-2589-kr/p/N82E16814487450?Item=N82E16814487450&nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=afc-PCPartPicker&AFFID=2558510&AFFNAME=PCPartPicker&ACRID=1&ASID=https%3a%2f%2fpcpartpicker.com%2fproduct%2fdxL48d%2fevga-geforce-rtx-2080-ti-11-gb-kingpin-gaming-video-card-11g-p4-2589-kr&ranMID=44583&ranEAID=2558510&ranSiteID=8BacdVP0GFs-58hZDqhkGHSW508brMpLBw
EVGA makes a great blower 2080 ti for $999. If you're not in a rush, I'd sign up for an email alert to see when they're in stock again. You can Google search for someone's EVGA associates code and get a discount. The 2080 ti would come out to $950.
I have two of these in my system with no complaints.
Don't be like me. Frequent the manufacurer's support message boards and get a feel for the issues people are having and, most importantly, those people's level of satisfaction with the remedies the manufacurer provides. That is the absolutely most relevant information.
Relative to my earlier comment, the point that I was trying to make was this:
Nvidia's most lucrative product line (read expensive) is the Quadro workstation card lineup (not to be confused with the NV Quadros that are cheaper cards designed primarily for OEM use in bog-standard corporate desktop PC's - completely different animals). The Quadro cards are targeted at corporate customers that place a premium on reliability and stability as it relates to productivity, because that affects their bottom line. It is not that they do not care about performance, they do, but not over stability and reliability. Since Nvidia makes more money selling a Quadro card than they do selling a roughly equivalent GeForce card, they obviously want to deliver cards that have the stability and reliability that those corporate customers demand. That is at least part of the reason why Nvidia chooses to have the Quadro cards manufactured by one, and only one, company to whom they have licensed the exclusive rights to do so. Since they have granted those exclusive manufacturing rights to the same company for years and years, I would think that it is reasonable to assume they are satisfied with that company's ability to consistently produce their premium cards with the required quality. And that company has been PNY from the beginning. And all of the Quadro cards, insofar as I am aware, use blower fans.
So, does PNY make good video cards with blower fans? Apparently Nvidia thinks so if they have given them exclusive rights to manufacture their most expensive cards on the market. Now, whether that translates to every consumer card they make is something that may not be certain, but I think it is fair to say that they are more than capable of doing so.
Just to be perfectly clear, I am not a PNY fanboy, nor am I affiliated with that company in any way. These are just the facts as I understand them.
I have a lot of experience with Quadros. The cooling on those cards are essentially irrelevant. The GPU's, the actual chip, is undervolted compared to the equivalent consumer part. This is both to keep heat down and to increase reliability and lifespan. Teslas, which are the same cards with the video outs removed, have no fans at all. That's because Quadros and Teslas are primarily meant for deployment in workstations with lots of airflow or servers with brute force airflow (2U cases generally have 4 or 8 80mm fans that move ~150cfm each).
As to Nvidia believing in PNY? Do not make me laugh. They specified every aspect of the card but don't have PCB manufacturing facilities so they found someone who did. PNY is a very small player in the world of making graphics cards and that was probably a main factor in the decision. Nvidia probably couldn't get any of the big manufacturers, the actual ones not the guys who just but brand names on cards made by others, to take on such a limited production volume.
Counting on the engineering on those to make a consumer card in a low airflow case good is not a terribly good idea. PNY may or may not make a good consumer card, I have no experience, but they have nearly no presence in the market which says something.
Those are not blowers, they're overclocked montrosities.
That's what blowers are for. They move hot air outside the case, because there's little room inside, so they're made especially for small cases with low airflow. If you have a small case and only need one graphics card, then a blower card is ideal for you.
You argument was that no one would use cheap components in a flagship graphics card. They clearly do. There is no such thing as a high end blower card, you might think about why.
Actually blowers are pretty much useless. Using a case without airflow for anything is a bad idea. Finding some kluge to make it not actually shut down when used is not "good."
I work with server chassis. While Quadro's have blowers they are irrelevant in use, which is why they don't even bother on Tesla's, they are pretty much always oriented to not exhaust out of the case. If I could I'd turn them off, and remove the card's cover entirely but time, because we just push 600cfm or more through the case and that cools them.
You also will not find any sort of production workstation mounting Quadro's that relies on the blower for anything, it wasn't that long ago that most of the lower end Quadro's simply didn't bother with fans at all. The case is moving enough air that the blower fan could fail and you'd never even notice.
Hardly useless. They are important also because they are so much slimmer. Two 1080s could not fit in adjacent 8/16 slots because of the huge fans. But the blowers are crammed in there with about a millimeter space between them. The fan is recessed into the rectangle that is the card. They just handle heat much better. My case used to get so hot I gave myself a first degree burn once with just 2 1080tis. Now with 4 2080ti blowers, it sounds like an F-16 spooling up during renders, but my whole office gets hot but the case doesn't that much. I wouldn't even get a non blower now even for a single GPU setup... they just seem to be more serious, and better engineered.
They are not. There is a reason Nvidia abandoned the blower style for their reference designs. You can look at the performance comparisons between the 1080ti reference and AIB 1080ti's to see the difference. All that extra heatsink really matters. That some users continue to think they should shove stuff into cases without sufficient airflow is not proof that blowers are any good.
I own a blower card too and have bought cards from PNY in the past and haven't had any overheating issues over 4 years of use. That is proof enough for me.
And I specifically avoid overclocked cards with dual or triple fans, because I want my card to last, and not burn up at takeoff.
I have 4 blowers crammed into a box that really shouldn't have even 2 non-blowers (three would not have even physically fit, let alone four), with about a millimeter of space between the three actually directly on the motherboard. My system runs cooler than it did with 2 non-blowers, and the room gets hot instead of my cards; My admittedly meager understanding of how Thermodynamics works says that the blowers are doing what they were designed to do, and doing it well.
No amount of argumentation in the abstract is going to change that.
I pointed you to data establishing the facts. You choosing to ignore it won't make it go away.
But that's my point... it's already gone away.
You hypothesizing about why Nvidia did what they did, when you can't POSSIBLY know even half the engineering story as a mere user of their products and not privy to their design process, are not facts.
Rendering the benchmark scene in 1:15 on "useless" blowers, on the other hand, is.
1) Blowers made build physically possible.
2) Performance better than expected.
3) System is reliable.
That's what the OP wanted to know about, not abstract theorizing that doesn't help him make his $1500 decision.
It's not hypothesizing. Nvidia has said they dumped blowers because they made their reference cards not actually reference because no one cooled cards that way. As to the cards being objectively worse there is literally thousands of tests proving that. I have 2 GPU system, both with radial fans. I bought my case specifically for serious use and it moves a lot of air when the front fans ramp up during a render. That's all that is needed. Blowers are a bad solution to a situation you should never have. Why do you have a low airflow case with 3 GPU's?
Yes, terrible indeed, as evidenced by the existence, performance, and reliability of my system. I wish that all other aspects of my life would work out so badly.
Anyway, OP, if you are still even following this ridiculousness, a blower might be just what you need. Like you, I was space constrained, cramming 4 cards into a case and motherboard really only meant for two at most, and again, like you, I was concerned about heat. Blowers solved both those problems, and I couldn't be happier with the results.
Just for the record... Video cards do not get nearly as hot, while rendering, as they do while playing games. They only use a fraction of the cards components, within the GPU. It is literally about 50%-75% less power consumed, than when playing a game. Thus, about 50%-75% less heat to get rid of. Not a problem for even the worst fan-styles to blow away.
EG, My Titan-V consumes 320-380watts, while playing games. When rendering, it consumes 95-115watts. My Titan-Xp consumes 300-400watts, playing games. When rendering, it consumes 140-200watts. My Titan-X (Maxwell) cards consume 380-390watts, playing games. They consume only 150-180watts while rendering. (Measured "at the wall", removing the "system baseline", but retaining the "power-supply losses in those calculations". Using the "Kill-a-watt" power meter and a typical amp-meter, to confirm the values.)
P.S. Wattage consumed = Heat generated. Since "Wattage is a measure of waste-heat, generated in any electrical device, matching Amps*Volts=Watts." Thus, how efficiency is measured, by how little heat, versus total output of function, within a device. My Titan-V cards draw nearly half the wattage of my Titan-X cards, but they do 8x faster renderings. Thus, they are done in one minute, where the other card is still rendering 8 minutes later, to get to the same quality. Producing and consuming up to 16x more power, in the process. A 100 watt light produces 100 watts of heat, but the light it produces is not equal. An Incandescent light 100w of power = 100w of light, but a LED light 100w of light can be produced with only 13w of power. Or, on the reverse, a 100w LED would produce 770w of incandescent light. That is why they say the LED lights are "more efficient". (Using the term, "100w equivalent brightness", instead of saying that it draws 100w, as it only draws 13w, which is indicated on the device and the box. It produces 13w of heat, as opposed to the 100w of heat from a typical incandescent bulb.)
Left on AUTO FAN-SPEED, with my fans only going to max, when near-throttle temps are about to make my card start slowing-down... My fans also reflect the same as the numbers. They run about half-speed, the entire time, while rendering. I use MSI-Afterburner to control the fans with custom profiles. This also lets me know when the fans are dirty, because the fans will rise to 100% in a render, if they are clogged or rise to 50% while being idle. Normally, at idle, the fans are dead-silent on the lowest RPM that is possible for each card.
Yes, I'm still following the thread :) What kind of blowers do you have?
I got these... the price has even come down a bit.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L1P4KWQ
Marketting and cost-cutting ignore sense. (I'm saying that is what is happening here.)