CPU Fan preventing me from installing my graphic card in PCI E1 (first slot)

[Ballistic]

I bought Cooler Master V8 GTS and after Installing it I found out that I can't fix my Sapphire RX 480 graphic card in first PCI slot. The fan is so big that it extend outside to shadow over the first PCI slot, meanwhile the Mobo guide recommending that If I'm going to install single Graphic card it should be in PCI_E1 x16.

I believe that "x16" is referring to the bandwidth speed which means that If I'm going to install the graphic card on the second free slot PCI x8 means I'm going to throttle my graphic card speed...right ? Is there any solution for this issue ? Do I have to throw this brand new CPU cooler and buy something smaller or there is workaround ?

[Deleted]

if it really doesn't fit, one option is to use pcie extender
example:

[the boar]

does it fit if you take the plastic shit off the cooler?

[Extremity]

You can use an extender, sure, but giving the motherboard model might help. I've had motherboards where a slot could run at different speeds, and one would clock down once the first was in use... I can't remember if that was the specific behavior, but I do know that I had one slot that would run at different levels based on whether or not the first was in use. Shit, now I can't even remember if that is right and am going to spend an hour hunting for my last mobo's manual.

Anyways, yeah, gimme the model number and maybe you've got an option other than an extender. Don't worry about extra latency or anything with an extender, it's been benchmarked several times and anybody telling you'll have issues is telling wive's tales - do try to get a shielded one though, if you go this route.

Edit: If you can still return the cooler, that's an option too. I'm still a TREMENDOUS fan of CPU water coolers. They're sealed systems that you install and forget and are TINY. I have a tiny little box on top of my CPU, and two "pipes" (thin) that route to a small radiator that is simply mounted behind a case fan. The water cooler plugs in where the heatsink would on the mobo and you can control it the same you would a fan. I run INCREDIBLY cool, it's silent, and I have a RIDICULOUS amount of clearance in my case. On top of that, it's only like 50-60 bucks. If you're going to replace your GPU because of this, I'd consider replacing the cooler instead. Further info on the water cooler: Like I said, it's a sealed system. It's all assembled, you don't have to do anything fancy. The "box", the actual water cooler, just bolts on top of the CPU like any heatsink, except for being fifty times smaller. You still use thermal paste. The radiator is a square the size of a fan and you just put it in front of or behind a case fan, and screw it to the chassis as usual. You can do a few different setups; case, rad, then fan (rad wedged between case and fan) or case, fan, rad. You can also use dual fans for extra cooling where the rad is wedged between two; case, fan, rad, fan. The air direction matters, of course, and I have my radiator with an intake fan so the cool air being sucked in passes through the radiator. That also means the air is being heated up by the radiator as it flows in the case but I've got other fans to compensate, and would rather keep the radiator as cool as possible than have it near an exhaust fan and blow hot air from inside the case over the radiator.

The two pipes connecting the cooler to the rad are just inflow/outflow. Water goes through radiator, cools, goes back to cooling unit. Increasing heatsink fanspeed in your bios or fan controller software increases the pump speed. I average 34c on my CPU 90% of the time. It *might* go up two degrees or so under heavy load and constant gaming, and that's with my CPU pretty significantly overclocked; and did I mention it's dead quiet? Seriously, I know I'm ranting, but it's one of those things I'm SO happy with that I feel the need to share the wealth.

[Ballistic]

does it fit if you take the plastic shit off the cooler?

Yes of course, My Mobo is Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium


I either have to use water cooler or check this PCI extender thingy. There is no option in BIOS settings to make other slot act as X16 ? I'm at work right now and I can't check if this is possible or not.

[Ballistic]

Well, someone certainly overpaid for their mobo. I'd probably replace the ugly cooler you bought with something better looking that will allow you to fit your GPU in the first slot.

I didn't over paid for Mobo, Xpower family is the only one that carries 8 SATA ports which all I'm going to use so I couldn't go less.

[TheDeeGee]

Put the Graphics card in the third PCI-E Slot, from what i read it's 8x Speed.

My 1070 also runs at 8x due to my Soundcard needing a PCI-E Slot as well, and my CPU only supports 16 Lanes. When i run a Benchmark i get the same scores as everyone else.

As long as it's a PCI-E Gen3 8x slot there isn't a performance loss (perhaps 1-2%).

[Deleted]

Well, someone certainly overpaid for their mobo. I'd probably replace the ugly cooler you bought with something better looking that will allow you to fit your GPU in the first slot.

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro...air+hydro+h110 like this! I absolutely fell in love with this cooler, which has been in my main setup for a while now. , you can put the radiator in the upper side of the case, leaves so much room to work with.

[Firatha]

Edit: If you can still return the cooler, that's an option too. I'm still a TREMENDOUS fan of CPU water coolers. They're sealed systems that you install and forget and are TINY. I .

I agree with this just buy a closed loop water system like this corsair H100i GTX or one of its cheaper smaller siblings there very easy install no maintenance aside from airing out the rad.

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro...air+hydro+h110 like this! I absolutely fell in love with this cooler, which has been in my main setup for a while now. , you can put the radiator in the upper side of the case, leaves so much room to work with.

Yup that's what I have right now an older 100i V1 one of those works perfect.

[Fascinate]

Well the simple answer is if you can return the cooler do so, i suggest a cryorig r1 ultimate as an upgrade. If not, you can use an 8x slot you really wont notice a difference.

[saus]

The real world difference between using x16 or x8 slot is neglectable.
We're talking about an average of 1% difference.

So go ahead and just plug it in the x8 slot.

Though your mobo page shows PCI-Ex16 as 4 slots. It will prolly kick back 1 to x8 if you go SLI/X-fire and you are confused with that.

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro...air+hydro+h110 like this! I absolutely fell in love with this cooler, which has been in my main setup for a while now. , you can put the radiator in the upper side of the case, leaves so much room to work with.

Nah don't go with Corsair ones, they often die on firmware update. (like my H100i did)

[Ballistic]

Put the Graphics card in the third PCI-E Slot, from what i read it's 8x Speed.

My 1070 also runs at 8x due to my Soundcard needing a PCI-E Slot as well, and my CPU only supports 16 Lanes. When i run a Benchmark i get the same scores as everyone else.

As long as it's a PCI-E Gen3 8x slot there isn't a performance loss (perhaps 1-2%).

I will do that thanks.

That's what https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16816124045 and the like are for. You overpaid.

You don't get it, the issue isn't in the Mobo here it is between the CPU Fan and the Graphic card, w/e is the Mobo the CPU fan will conflict with the graphic card or at least it become adjacent to its back plate.

[Ballistic]

Oh I know what the issue is, I told you to replace the cooler with one that doesn't look like something an 8 year old obsessed with hot wheels designed. I also helped show you how you could have had the same functionality without overpaying for a mobo in the future. Happy to help.

Dude you have an issue, please get help.

[Extremity]

https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Hydro...air+hydro+h110 like this! I absolutely fell in love with this cooler, which has been in my main setup for a while now. , you can put the radiator in the upper side of the case, leaves so much room to work with.

Mine is similar to this, although my radiator is half the size and fits behind one standard fan near my rear exhaust fan port. Even still, it's MORE than enough cooling. I can't imagine a bigger radiator is a bad thing, but in my experience it's certainly not needed and my system is cool as ice under *heavy* underclocking and significant load.

If I got one like that, I'd probably mount the radiator at the top of my case. I've got the THOR-W and it has "spines" at the top that you can seal to make it look smooth (or quiet it if its loud inside) or open for airflow, with like three fans capable of being at the top. I only have one big fan there, but it'd be a perfect place to mount that radiator.

Now you've got me thinking of getting a new cooler. I don't need to, but I notice I hear a faint clicking sound from me sometimes - it usually just means the RPMs are too low, though. My ASUS system controller software that came with the mobo controls my fans, and obviously it thinks its just a standard CPU fan. I just had to change the fan settings and also put a baseline minimum.

On top of that, my case has two physical knobs in the front that are meant for fan control; each can have four fans connected, by plugging the pins into their wiring harnesses instead. Because the knobs are there I couldn't justify not using them I connected one inlet and one outlet fan to each, and the rest to my mobo. I'll admit that it's not to just reach over and twice one of two knobs if I want more air coming in or being sucked out, it's pretty cool, but I just leave them cranked 99% of the time.

Aaaaand I'm rambling.

Water cooling used to be this crazy super-nerd-only thing where you had to build your own setup and it was major epeen points in the nerd/tech community if you invested the time, and not to mention the *money*, into a solid water cooling solution.

Now you can drop 50 bucks and get a plug-and-play option that works great and you can literally forget exists. I cannot stress enough how nice it is both in terms of performance/ease of use and SPACE! I have so much space in my case that I'll never go back to a standard heatsink. I mean you're adding like 3/4 of an inch of height to your processor, that's it. It's insane. Honestly, I don't give it too long before this is ABSOLUTELY standard. Some "performance" brands (alienware, etc, places you should NEVER PAY FOR A COMPUTER) are already putting in water CPU coolers, but only as an extra feature. They're also charging way, way more than they should because to a majority of the population saying "water cooled" makes it sound like "ULTRA AMAZING TOP END PERFORMANCE" and they're willing to drop $300 for it. In reality, with a normal cooler being 50 bucks or so and a top of the line being around $100, its not going to be long before its completely mainstream. Seriously, fan-based heatsinks have nowhere to go but... well, away. There are some great ones out there for sure, some incredible ones, but why keep investing in finding better performing air-based heatsinks with how mainstream water-based is becoming?

Before you know it, every prebuilt computer from Dell to HP is going to be water cooled, seriously. Especially any sort of performance computer. Tremendous free space in the case, reliability, lack of moving parts, and best of all its going to let them save money by taking cheaper processors and overclocking them to levels they can only achieve thanks to the increased cooling capacity. They're going to make a killing by being able to advertise an extra 1ghz or whatever without actually paying for better hardware. It's going to happen, I promise you.

OH GOD I'M RAMBLING AGAIN AFTER JUST SAYING I WAS RAMBLING OH GOD

[Beckers]

Dude you have an issue, please get help.

He's an asshole. But he's also right. Learn to take advice too.

Infracted - Mythbredor

[pansertjald]

Dude you have an issue, please get help.

You need help with that attitude. The man was just telling you how you could have avoided spending 400 Euros on a mobo for just 2 extra sata ports, when you wont be using 70% of what that mobo can do.

[Arbiter]

I didn't over paid for Mobo, Xpower family is the only one that carries 8 SATA ports which all I'm going to use so I couldn't go less.

There's definitely cheaper. Asrock has a couple for roughly $150 that have 8 SATA ports, for example. And as mentioned there are adapters for that very reason. It is a pretty useless decision to pay for a motherboard that's worth more than the GPU and probably the CPU.

I also agree that the cooler is pretty ugly and not even really worth the money compared better options.

Never the less you should have no problem using the GPU in another slot if you didn't want to purchase another cooler. All 4 slots should be x16 when using single GPU. At least that's what the specs suggest, but even then x8 should be more than enough to get the full performance of the 480. Specs could be off though seeing as how they don't always give the full story and I didn't look much into whether its the case or not (all being x16 does seem off).

- - - Updated - - -

Dude you have an issue, please get help.

Honestly he gave you pretty solid advice. You might not have liked the attitude but he was spot on. And frankly your attitude was no better. The money that you could have potentially saved instead of wasting it on an overpriced motherboard and a huge ugly cooler could have even been spent on a better GPU or something else you need/want.

He also gave you the only option there is to be able to use the GPU in the first slot.

[Mythbredor]

Please keep the discussion civil and on topic.

[Ballistic]

Never the less you should have no problem using the GPU in another slot if you didn't want to purchase another cooler. All 4 slots should be x16 when using single GPU. At least that's what the specs suggest, but even then x8 should be more than enough to get the full performance of the 480. Specs could be off though seeing as how they don't always give the full story and I didn't look much into whether its the case or not (all being x16 does seem off).

Only first slot is x16, and it will act as x8 if I went CF/SLI

Honestly he gave you pretty solid advice. You might not have liked the attitude but he was spot on. And frankly your attitude was no better. The money that you could have potentially saved instead of wasting it on an overpriced motherboard and a huge ugly cooler could have even been spent on a better GPU or something else you need/want.

I didn't give the full story behind my selection of the Mobo or any other hardware, but one of them was to use the full 8 SATA ports and even my new brand Sapphire RX 480 8 GB is temporarily card till AMD release the new VEGA.

If you all read again the thread topic it is an issue between the CPU fan and installing the the graphic card in the first slot. Let us put it in points what could be solution resulting from this thread as previously posted or could be:

1- PCI extender.
2- return this CPU fan and get one smaller.
3- go for water cooling.
4- change the speed of different PCI slot in the BIOS to become X16, which I think this is not even possible but anyway I had thought about it.
5- use the X8 slot.
6- others.

I would be happy and accept any of these solutions and discuss about it, but what happened is he/others attacking my Mobo choice when it wasn't open for discussion from first place. The title of this thread isn't about advice for best selection of Mobo. Changing the mobo won't make difference because the problem is in the CPU fan so his advice is correct for the wrong thread....got it ?

Anyway I solved the problem as per other helpful posts, thanks all.

[Kagthul]

Your attitude sucked. Got it?

Infracted - Mythbredor