in the last max video we checked out the thermals of the case with two graphics cards that have at
least some ability to exhaust a portion of the heat outside the case but what about an aib card
that is side exhausting do those configuration inferences change here let's find out
welcome to machines more it looks like the nr200p max is still at sea right now at least for the u.s
market and freight seems to be piling up along the western coast of the us and i hope this situation
gets a little bit better but it sounds like in other regions like in australia you might have the
case or you might be getting it soon so good on you in the meantime let's take a look at the max
here so initially i did the thermal stress tests with this nvidia founders edition 3080 card and
this card's airflow design is rather special right and the key is that it has this blower
section that pushes a good deal of heat out this ion and this capability tends to be quite
expedient for sff cases at a high level we can just say this card dumps about let's say half
of the exhaust outside the case and unlike with a bigger case with more ambient case air volume
which can dilute some of that hot exhaust when we're talking about a volume of sub 20 liters
the impact of a hot gpu like a 3080 is very pronounced now even with the pulse 6600 xt
that was tested previously despite not strictly being a blower design the heatsink design is also
such that the heat fins help direct some of that exhaust outside the i o end of the case
and today i wanted to test a hotter aib cooler design this one here is the 3080
xc3 ultra from evga and it's rather unique in its own right because it's a two slot ish
aib 3080 and a sea of three three plus slot monster cards let's take a look at this card
first and in fact the heat fin orientation is very similar to most aibs on the market and the
predominant direction of exhaust will be out these two sides with a very small or insignificant flow
through section here it does have a vent on the i o end but that doesn't mean it will exhaust
meaningfully from there so before we get into the thermal results and implications just a
quick recap with the two cards tested previously the viable configurations with the glass panel
was that stock configuration with bottom intaking fans or you could also flip it the opposite way
with a top intaking radiator along with bottom exhaust fans and depending on which component you
want to prioritize you can choose that although my preference there was with the top intake bottom
exhaust since that means at least in a worst case scenario your cpu temps are still mostly in check
yeah 77 degrees on a cpu tends to be beyond what i'd like to see especially with the 3700x
and 80 degrees on a 3080 fe it really isn't too bad at all so with a vented panel we have the
same top intake and bottom exhaust combo that is viable and the stock radiator configuration
can be made to work by adding bottom exhaust fans to reinforce that negative pressure setup
now either is good but the negative pressure system does seem quite balanced with the caveat
that you won't get good results if you plan on swapping between the two included panels
that come with the max package so instead of cycling through every single configuration
again i focused in on the same configurations that tested well let's just take a look here
so this 3080 xc3 card runs close to the same power of the fe card which is about 325 watts
and it seems to settle in at around 70 percent fan so that's what i locked it to in order to get some
run to run consistency now 70 on this card is just a hair under 2000 rpm and with three of these fans
it's just a touch louder than the fe card here which was tested at 50 fans and the noise with
that card is about 0.5 decibels more and i kept the radiator and the case fans all at the same
speed as with the fe cards testing starting with the glass panel the stock configuration plus the
bottom intake yields thermals that are a bit higher than with the fe card about two two and
a half degrees higher on both components with the aib and this does push that cpu into temps that
are getting pretty high now but these gpu temps are still pretty good here i'd say and while the
reverse direction of airflow worked very well for the fe card well it's actually pretty bad here
and granted this is normalized to 25 degrees c ambient but it's a little bit too close to
90 degrees on the gpu for my comfort although as you might expect since the rad is intaking
from outside there's very little interdependence on the cases ambient air thermals so the temp is
practically the same as for the vented panel thermals with the dual exhaust
negative pressure setup is good in fact it's a bit better on the gpu temps and that's what
i would recommend to go with here with the bottom exhaust and top intake configuration
we're seeing that same phenomenon with higher gpu temps and here the xc3 ultra 3080 hit temps
that are a bit on the warm side for a gpu with pretty similar cpu temps as with the fe setup
so the big observation here is that while the top intake and bottom exhaust configuration works well
for the partially exhausting cards it wasn't great for this one and i think part of that has to do
with the actual position of the gpu in addition to the fact that it's side exhausting so if you take
a look at the max case and where that open space is relative to the gpu it's between the radiator
and the card and that space is that attractive spot for air to go in this setup the gpu exhaust
coming out closer to the bottom isn't as much of an issue the case fans basically take care of it
right away and exhaust out of the case however the way the heat comes out indiscriminately out
the other end of the aib card is a problem the exhaust on that end is spilling into the
open space and the airflow of the rad fans is then directing that exhaust pretty much back
into the path of the gpu's own fans if you were to leave the case in the stock orientation
plus those intaking bottom fans that effect is less pronounced since the case fans will direct
air towards the back plate side of the card and there's very little space between the bottom case
fans and the cards so the exhaust doesn't get forced into the path of the gpu fans as
much and the radfans create an exit path on the other side of course this is at the expense of
cpu temps and you saw here that the temps were a few degrees higher than the fe card because
of that exhaust being present in the case and with a cpu drawing higher power at full load
your coolant is going to be even hotter than what i'm seeing here with the moderate 3700x with this
card i felt very little hot air leaving the case out the i o end of the card which is the norm
with this type of cooler design and if your desired setup is with this type of cooler along
with a hot chip like the 3080 and you're pairing a cpu that's drawing about 100 plus watts while that
glass looks pretty nice personally i'd run the max with the mesh panel and that negative pressure
setup if it's a gaming setup with something like a 5600x or an 11400 then yeah i think the
280 has more than enough leeway here that it's totally fine to just run it with a glass panel
in the stock out of the box configuration and just add those bottom intakes so as odd as the
fe card's airflow is it's actually quite good in the right scenarios and with the max it gives you
more options more headroom and that was also at a slightly lower noise level and i really like
the fe cooler design in general for this generation i hope you found that helpful
this gpu will be making a few extra stops i'll be doing a meshlicious build guide with it and we'll
be revisiting the c14s setup along with the og and our 200 soon so make sure you're subscribed
please give a like build components are down below thanks for watching see you again soon
you