I found there are a lot of 1080ti cards that have 2 slots cooling setup
here.
So for a riser-less build, is it really necessary to use gpus cooled by blowers or water?
Are all your rigs running blower type cards?
Do you have a favorite brand/model when it comes to 1080ti cards?
I'm pretty sure there are only 3 basic "cards" (and some variations on those) that are 3-slot wide on the 1080ti.
Gigabyte Aorus - which from personal experience is a MONSTER and cools very very well if you can give it space for the fans to access air.
MSI .... spacing the name, it's their highest-end air-cooled card
Zotac's highest-end card.
Might be a couple I missed though.
It's NOT needed to have water cooling or blowers in a 3-card build - they can be helpfull if you install your rigs in cases but there are SOME fan-cooled cards that also direct a significant amount of the airflow out the back of the card outside of the case - the Zotac Mini and Sapphire's "Nitro" series are good examples there.
It IS very very helpfull for the "3'd card" to be a short card, like the Gigabyte ITX or MSI's Aero shortie, or a Zotac mini if your middle card is LONG, to let the middle card get enough air for cooling.
If motherboard makers would SPACE THE BLOODY SLOTS OUT RIGHT that last wouldn't be an issue, but every single "3 PCI-E 16x slots" motherboard I've ever seen uses a 2-5-7 spacing which crams the last 2 cards too close together, instead of a SANE 1-4-7 spacing that would leave space for COOLING the middle card.
I've got only 4 blower-type cards on hand at this time - a pair of Sapphire reference-type 470s (which are so-so on cooling), an Asus "Turbo" 1070 (which is BAD on cooling if you can't keep the air intake area COMPLETELY CLEAR due to the excessive blockage on the output metal bracket - the card turns into a "POOR" cooling card if you remove the bracket entirely), and an old HIS IceQ HD 7870 that's a "2.5 slot" card with a HUGE blower on it that stays very cool indeed.
I've only got 2 1080 ti cards at this time:
Gigabyte 3-fan "Windforce" model, decent but not great cooling but 2 slots wide and CAN survive in the middle card slot if you have a VERY SHORT outside card - the Zotac does not work, the Gigabyte ITX does and the MSI super-shortie should also work.
Gigabyte Aorus - VERY nice cooling but doesn't play well with other cards due to it's huge size, except probably in a riser rig setup with WIDE spacing.
I just pulled the trigger on my next 2 "new" system builds - the Aorus along with a Ryzen and a big M.2 Ultra and probably one of the HDs from the current gaming system become the core of that, then the MB/RAM/CPU (AM3+ based) get used in my rationalization project grabbing the 3 GPUs from one of my existing FM2-based mining systems, then the AMD GPUs in the gaming system get used with that FM2 MB/APU/RAM to build a new dedicated MooWrapper system with.
I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with the MB that the 1080ti is currently in - it's the "failed experiment" Intel system I built a few months back, and I'm not sure if it would work with my pre-built "mining LINUX" setup (ignoring the iGPU on the G4600).
EVGA has some very nice pricing going on right now on their B-list page - but check them against Newegg, sometimes Newegg will BETTER that pricing by a few dollars on "refurbished" card offers for the same parts, and EVGA doesn't accept BitCoin for payment.
