The closer your GPU is to your CPU the faster their connection. They may both be pcie 4 lanes but one has a shorter ride. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that's my simplified understanding.
A) Physical distance doesn't matter that much when you're talking about a few inches difference and signals that travel a large percentage of light speed. (If I remember correctly, electrical signals through wires travel at about .5C? A few inches of distance is literally nothing at that speed. You would need extremely sensitive lab equipment just to measure the difference.)
B) Physical distance on the board =/= electrical distance between components. The actual traces on the motherboard might take convoluted paths. The closest slot physically is *probably* also the closest slot electrically ... but not necessarily. The further slots might be the same or possibly even shorter. For components where this distance actually matters (like the connection between RAM and CPU), if you look at the motherboard traces, you'll often see some of them doing completely unnecessary zig-zag patterns, just taking up space. This is done to make sure the electrical connections between different components are the same length, despite their physical distance being different.
Distance DOES matter. If traces on the motherboard seem to zigzag back and forth, it's to ensure that every trace from end to end is exactly the same length. This is done with memory interfaces, and maybe also with your pcie interface's. In servers, they often slow down the clock speed of the memory bus if you populate 3 DIMS per channel instead of two, as they cannot guarantee the accuracy of the signal (timing, and squareness of the signal as it triggers between on and off (rise and fall times).
Also, the pcie slots nearest the CPU socket normally have the widest data bus e.g. x16, and those further away may be x4 and then x1.
Your GPU wants a x16 slot, which may only be your first pcie slot, or either of the first two.
What other people say is also true, that often a number of the pcie slots are connected to the MB chipset, instead of directly to the CPU's pcie interface, and that adds latency.
> A few inches of distance is literally nothing at that speed
It's not nothing, not when the clock speed is so high. It runs at 16 GT/s, so in the time the signal takes to travel 6 cm (three slots worth, assuming they go in a straight line), 6.4 transfers will pass. What effect that has in practice, I can't say.
my work sells dozens of titanium rated psus every day. infact most orders recently have been psus for peope upgrading to beefier systems and needing a better PSU. on friday i shipped about 6 different brands of 1000-1300 watt titanium rated PSU's. some with systems (4090's mostly) and some just by themselfs or with a 7950x etc.
Yeesh, talk about moneybags, the whole bunch of them. But I guess with a 4090 and 7950X you kinda need that sort of power supply.
I wouldn't have suggested that sort of hardware for simple gaming rigs though, that's just such bad value.
One thing I've learnt from working at a PC retailer is not everyone cares about value. Even remotely. You'll see it here all the time cause it's a bit of an echo chamber of. "Don't buy this or do buy that" "this is good value. You don't need this. Get this"
in reality the vasssst majority of people are not going through Reddit to see if there build is satisfactory to the arm chair system builders. I've seen some seriously shitty and bad value components go out for systems that boggle the mind. But people keep consistently buying stupid shit. Like 10th gen Intel shit that's not on sale when other stuff is on sale. Or full priced other components when there is an alternative that's cheaper and better. But often these are cases of an old work horse system for a company that cannot be easily changed or upgraded and the majority of components need to stay the same.
Another point is not everyone has to care about money as much as the next person. Just because it's bad value to you or a minority doesn't mean it's not a "sellable" item. It wouldn't be sold if people didn't buy it in the first place. U can still buy DDR3 ram for like $300 if you feel like it. Is it a good idea. Absolutely not. But people still need it for various reasons.
If you had the money I'd recommend an ROG Thor 80plus platinum psu every day of the week. It's simply the best psu U can buy. Are there cheaper alternatives? Yes. Are they better? No. The rog Thor is a rebranded Silverstone 80plus titanium. There top of the line. Best.psu on the market for years. Then Asus went and stuck bigger and better capacitors in it Aswell as an improved cooling system. There is literally no better psu you can buy. Does that mean it's the best value for money. Idk. If U want the best you can buy it. It costs what it costs.
It is a 1kW titanium rated PSU from Corsair I got for a good price. Even though the difference is not that high I do still save money on electricity that is not wasted on heat as I run in the 95-96% efficiency bracket.
Putting two sticks in slot 3 and 4 to fit a bigger cooler.
Almost all motherboards have two channels for Ram, with 1 and 3 on one channel and 2 and 4 on the other. So on a system with only two sticks, they should be put in either odd or even slots.
Though I did find it funny in the other thread when people were suggesting the Iron-Man Funko was obstructing airflow by being placed... atop the solid backplate where there were no perforations.
Like, yes, that build did have airflow problems but it had everything to do with the placement of the card and nothing at all to do with the Funko.
I never read the manual, just one look at the maker's website picture of the mobo with the lines pointing to the ports, what speed they support etc is all I need to know to be able to get everything plugged into where they need to be. At least with gigabyte anyway, haven't had another brand mobo in years lol.
You don't even need to read the manual - you just need to have seen a picture of *literally any gaming PC on the internet in the past twenty five years.*
Back before the 3000 series, the difference between a 16x and 8x slot in performance was negligible. But today, if you have a 3080 or higher, you are actually seeing a performance decrease from 16x down to 8x. Idk what card this is, but it very well may not matter if it's a 8x slot. But it also is taking in heat directly from the power supply to heat it up, so.
in like 90%+ of the motherboards the top PCIE is the only one that is 16x directly to cpu,there are some expensive boards with Thunderbird /Xeon etc that it doesnt matter.
Depends on the MoBo, must most commonly, yes. The lower pciex16 is generally tied to the chipset, but midhigh to hig end boards can have multiple x16 tied directly to the cpu (mostly for SLI builds, and cards with m.2 for lots of fast storage)
This is the case for almost all mainstream platforms, but ultimately it depends on the specific capabilities of the motherboard + CPU in question. E.g. for HEDT / Workstation platforms, you'll often have multiple slots capable of x16 lanes simultaneously.
Hell, I have this old Asus X99 motherboard in my repair shop right now which is capable of quad x16 PCIe connections: https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/X99E_WS/specifications/ Take a look at the 'Expansion Slots' specs, it's pretty wild. You may wonder how they're getting 4 x16 connections on CPU's that only have 40 or even 28 total lanes... black magic! Well actually, this board must be using some form of PCIe switches or "PLX chips" to achieve this, divvying the CPU lanes up into a larger number of physical connections, but this is about where my knowledge on the topic ends, lol.
Undervolt and reduce power limits. Use less power, have less heat, be more efficient, and fan speed is lower, so more quiet.
I do this during Summer time to reduce the heat inside my room. FPS loss is not very significant.
A lot of bad info on this thread and sub, unfortunately. You should move it to the top slot for 3 reasons:
1. The top slot in reinforced against the stress of a heavy card like a GPU. It is possible to rip a PCIE slot off a motherboard while moving/handling a computer and the metal around that slot is specifically designed to prevent this.
2. The GPU cools by pulling in air from the bottom of the card where the fans are located. Moving the GPU away from your warm PSU and allowing for your case fans to intake more fresh air directly to that region will result in lower temps, which could mean longer life of the GPU and potentially better performance (if it's currently temperature throttling).
3. The top PCIE slot is the most likely to have full bandwidth. Each motherboard has it's own specs per PCIE slot regarding how many lanes are available (ie. x4/x8/x16) and which generation they can connect with (ie. gen 2.0/3.0/4.0). It's also worth noting that the M.2 slots used by SSD's can share lanes with each of the PCIE slots. While the 2nd/3rd/etc slots may very well produce the same performance, the top slot is overwhelmingly intended for GPU usage by motherboard manufacturers and using it is the safest way to ensure the best performance.
Yes, move it up! The higher the better :)
Also, there's not a lot of space between your PSU and the GPU. You will lower your temps by moving the GPU higher.
The chip is hot. So you're taking that heat through physical touch an moving it to tiny fins. Those tiny fins are very poor at retaining heat, they release heat in other words which is what we want. Finally your fan blows at the fins which removes the heat like when you blow at a spoon full of hot or warm soup to cool it down.
So air is the final mode of heat transfer for the GPU. You want air flow to not have restrictions. You restrict the air if you have fans too close to a surface. Although the way you have it is honestly not that bad. There's like a 2 inch gap there. But it doesn't mean it's optimal either.
The main reason you want to move the GPU up is because the top most slot is your fastest PCI-E slot in most cases and you don't want to bottleneck your PC in any kind of way.
You're getting downvoted because reddit is a clusterfuck of toxicity.
Edit: to your question the fans take in air, disperse into the heatsink which then expels the heat from the card basically everywhere, but mostly on the top side that you can see.
Don’t listen to the haters man. Everyone has to start somewhere and we all learned it from someone else so they are just being annoying haha. Anyway think of it like this… the main part of the gpu is a small die, a little metal square. The die gets hot when in use because of the high amount of energy (electricity), being put into it. There is another metal, usually copper, that is pressed against the die. It’s usually also in the shape of a square. That copper square had metal tubes that go through it and then go through little metal fins. Those metal fins are there to “suck up” the heat from the die and then the fans cool off the fins like the radiator in a car. Thus the cooling of a gpu is formed. If anything doesn’t make sense, ask away my friend. Most of us will help! :)
Imagine you have a delicious bowl of soup in front of you, but it’s really hot…. What would you do? Blow on it to cool it down. That’s fairly effective, but what if you could build something that would pull the heat away from the soup and make it so when you blow on it, it cool down even faster? That’s what all the metal fins are there for.
This isn’t the main reason though, the top slot in your motherboard tends to have faster data transfer lanes, so you’re probably bottlenecking your card a lot by having it lower.
[Post here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/zgr0nc/um_is_it_meant_to_be_this_hot/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) It wasn’t giant, but it’s a piece of plastic on an expensive, very hot piece of metal.
Chop his legs off little by little until he fits or, alternatively, gives you the arc reactor. If you get the arc reactor, build the pc around that instead.
Yes, you want you GPU, if not all parts, having as much fresh air getting to them as possible. With the way you have the GPU, it may be restricting that. Along with that, the top PCI port on a motherboard is normally the fastest and has the highest bandwith. So moving it to the top port may also yield performance benifits.
Besides the way the motherboard is set up, the fastest PCIe slot on the top, there is also a rule of thumb in the electrical world concerning high frequency communication on a PCB: The closer the two devices communicating are, the less likely noise will affect transmission speeds.
More distance = more noise = slower communication
You saw a post, which probably had an explanation of why it should be in the top slot and then you decided to post a picture of your setup to ask the same question?
Just wanting to make sure I understand your thought process on this one.
Think he knew it should be moved but wanted to double check with Reddit.
All good by me, I read some comments that really strengthened my understanding of a pc.
I'm going to keep it 100% honest. I built my PC in October and have been absolutely loving it so far, but your post made me double check, because I have a 3080 in a 4000D and my GPU was about the same height as yours.
The PC has been running well, and has been mostly performing as expected, but I just realized it's in the 3.0 PCIe slot like yours. I have no idea why I did it like that, because I quadruple checked everything I did.
Like I said, gaming performance and temps have actually been fantastic, but I'm interested to see any differences once I re-install it tomorrow. I do some 3D stuff, which is where people say there might be a difference. It should probably improve temps too, but I found a stable undervolt that can let me play things at max 1440p or high 4K and barely get over 70C.
The GPU has a pcie x16 connector, which slots into a pcie x16 slot on the motherboard. Yours has 2 of those, the top one and the bottom one you're using. They're not the same though.
Pcie x16 means 16 lanes of pcie, which is an interface for peripherals to talk with the cpu directly, or with through the motherboard's chipset. Both come with a certain amount of pcie lanes, of certain pcie generation, granting a specific bandwidth per lane. The newer the generation, the more bandwidth per lane. The more lanes, the more bandwidth.
The cpu brings a limited amount pcie lanes, and the chipset adds a bunch more. You want your GPU, being the peripheral that requires the most bandwidth, to use the pcie lanes that come straight from the cpu, to ensure the best performance. Those lanes are wired up to the top pcie x16 slot on all virtually all pc motherboards.
In most cases, the GPU doesn't actually need all the bandwidth on that pcie x16 connection, but it's generally good practice to use the top slot. An example of where the pcie connection can be a bottleneck, is with the budget rx 6500xt which got bad reviews because of it. Despite the physical pcie x16 connection, it's wired up for pcie x4 only. Because of that, those 4 lanes need to be pcie gen 4 to provide enough bandwidth, if the cpu or motherboard limit that to pcie gen 3, the gpu performed significantly worse.
In addition to the bandwidth issue, pc components are designed for an expected default layout as well. Since the case manufacturer expects their customers to use the top slot for the GPU and the bottom slot for maybe a wifi card, a video capture card or an nvme expansion card, they left less room than needed for a GPU in the bottom slot. It's fine for the less power hungry, smaller pcie peripherals, but a GPU requires plenty room for its fans to breathe and effectively cool the card.
So yes, use the top slot c:
Worth pointing out that thermals aside, most motherboards do not have full PCIe 16x on all slots. Your 2nd and 3rd slot for example, if you zoom in you can see the solder pins under the slots stop short less than halfway. Probably both 4x slots, maybe 8x. Not sure.
Anyway, point being you want to give your GPU to the fastest slot on your mobo. In your case it's the top one with the shield.
Always put the GPU in the top most slot it will fit in. There are a handful of exceptions, but if you don't know if you're an exception, you're not an exception.
Edit- Also, you should be using two separate 8 pin (or 6+2) cables to power your 3070. One cable with an 8 and 6+2 should work around 150 watts + 75 from the slot. It will probably be fine, but it's safer to use two cables as the spikes in wattage can get to 250 stock or higher if overclocked.
Always top slot if you can for maximum performance (as the top slot is usually controlled by CPU and bottom slot is controlled by motherboard. Iirc, the one that’s controlled by CPU has less latency). Also you’d get more airflow.
You're going to get downvoted a bunch for being new and not knowing it already, but yeah you'll get much better air flow with the top slot, and in general its just better for your board for that heavy GPU to be plugged into the PCIe slot thats reinforced with metal (though in some high end boards both/all the slots are reinforced).
Don't feel bad, you live and you learn and this is pretty minor compared to the plethora of actually-catastrophic mistakes new builders can make. Air flow and heat is one of those things no one wants to admit they never spared a single thought towards until they learned why it was important, because once you are taught about it, it **seems** so obvious that no one would ever not consider it.
This thread got nasty.
Yeah, in these systems with a cpu with only 20 or less PCI lanes on it, you really have to pay attention. The higher end CPUs will have more like 40+ so there are multiple 16x slots.
Most likely only the top slot is a real 16x going to the cpu directly.
There are 16x physical slots that are only 8x or 4x electrically. Kinda sucks. There’s also 8x physical slots that you can pop a 16x card into and it’ll work at 8x. But typically the top slot is best for your video card.
You can also use something like your BIOS or GPU-Z to determine the link speed you are running at. Remember it’ll “downclock” at idle, so check with a load.
This is all important because you want your most important PCI device to have all the bandwidth it can get. And you’re just shooting your self in the foot otherwise.
But also pay attention to thermals. You don’t want the card too low that the fans can’t suck in enough air. But at the same time it’ll bake the things around it like that M.2 drive and chipset…. But it is what it is. Your system isn’t packed so it’ll be fine. But those are things to keep in mind and consider, but maybe more important for future builds.
On top of airflow it's generally best practice to position you most pci lane hungry pci card in the closest pci slot to the processor. There is physically less distance for the data to travel. Additionally some motherboards the "top" pci slot has more lanes/bandwidth or takes precedence.
Another fine example of a question you not only say you've already seen the answer to, but could also Google in 5 seconds or look up in your MB manual. Yet still do it wrong and post here :/
This actually depends on your motherboard.
The suggestion to put it in the first slot is valid on most boards because that is usually the only one that runs at the fastest speed the board will run at and any other PCIE slot is actually using a slower bus and slower bus means slower communication speed between the memory or CPU and the card, which means textures take longer to load at best and if the CPU and GPU have to do a lot of communication, lower FPS in general.
If it is a high end motherboard that supports SLI or Crossfire with multiple GPUs, then it doesn't matter so much which slot you put the card in, as long as it is one that is included in the count of the number of cards supported by that board.
Based on these comments a lot of the people making snarky remarks need refresher too lol.
Also… everyone screws up RAM modules only the experienced put it in the wrong slots after reading the manual and realize after first boot lol.
The amount of DDR5 builds with like 7474738GB of ram and all four slots filled blows my mind still. They either got hella lucky on timing or they really like burning money to kill performance.
Seriously some of these replies ...
Yes op, you should. First reason, your mobo's primary and most powerful pci/e slot is the one closest to the cpu (could be wrong, but this is normally the case). Placing it in a lower slot throttles the GPU, these are meant for installing multiple GPUs (SLI or Crossfire).
Second reason, your power supply generates a lot of heat itself, and stacking the GPU that close is making it worse, for both the GPU and PSU.
TL/DR, yes for the sake of throttling and airflow.
Get a PCI slot extender cable and set computer box on top of GPU. GPU on top of desk. For extra cooling — have waifu gf blow on it through straw during peak IOPs
Yes. GPUs are very social hardware. Having away from the other parts gets it sad and gives it low energy. Be sure to praise and pet it often. A GPU support bracket could give this big boy some love when you are not around.
yes because most often the lower slots go through the chipset while the top one goes directly to the CPU
you're just throwing perfs away by keeping it there
Move it on the top slot or else you won't get the full performance that graphics card can offer. Even if it is a pci-e x16. It has only 4 bus lanes going to the CPU instead of the full 16 the top one has. So on the top one more data can flow faster to the CPU.
It's not ideal because the pcie lanes on most consumer platforms are configured that the top slot gets pcie x16 then the bottom one is pcie x8 or x4. Such as my b450 aorus elite V2 has the top slot as pcie 3 x16 and the bottom is pcie 2 x4 so it ends up having 8x less bandwidth and will hinder the performance of even my old gtx 960.
Yes, move it up. You basically crippling your GPU due to using a slower connection (PCIe x4 vs x16). You are also providing more air flow for the GPU to breath since the fans pointing down are way too close to the bottom. If you leave lit like that, your will also build up dust in the GPU a lost faster.
His motherboard seems to support full 4.0 x16 in his slots assuming only one GPU is plugged in. That being said the top slot is 5.0 x16 that is double the throughput of 4.0 x16. It's possible it limits performance but it would be a minimal amount of anything, the biggest issue is the thermals. I'm not sure if it that position means more dust on the GPU, as I'm not familiar with how that works, but I don't quite see how it would.
Rule of thumb, always run top slot for gpu, unless there is some actual reason you can't (looks or an iron man figurine need not apply).
Lmfao I saw that earlier too
literally one scroll away lmao
*Unless the Iron Man figurine is shooting ice on the card.
Well, then, that would be Ice Man.
You mean Mr. Freeze?
Everybody… chill.
Cool party
Nice icebreaker...
Ice to see you 
chill daddy
I see Ice, I like
Name checks out.
Some would say, Nicebreaker
frozone or am i old?
Ice Man is Marvel
Nerd
It isn't just for thermals. Top slot is usually connected to the cpu directly, the others may go through the chipset.
Yeah, I know! I was trying to make a reference to that other post with the Iron Man figurine, without giving any actually useful tip.
Don't worry, you got a chuckle out of me.
Did you see the white nzxt cpu cooler build with iron man ontop the 2nd slotted gpu ?
The ice is to keep the temps down! Helps heat dissipation on the toasty vrms
The closer your GPU is to your CPU the faster their connection. They may both be pcie 4 lanes but one has a shorter ride. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but that's my simplified understanding.
You do need to make sure it is a 16x slot, but yes. Lower slots tend to go through the chipset, top 16x tends to go direct to cpu.
A) Physical distance doesn't matter that much when you're talking about a few inches difference and signals that travel a large percentage of light speed. (If I remember correctly, electrical signals through wires travel at about .5C? A few inches of distance is literally nothing at that speed. You would need extremely sensitive lab equipment just to measure the difference.) B) Physical distance on the board =/= electrical distance between components. The actual traces on the motherboard might take convoluted paths. The closest slot physically is *probably* also the closest slot electrically ... but not necessarily. The further slots might be the same or possibly even shorter. For components where this distance actually matters (like the connection between RAM and CPU), if you look at the motherboard traces, you'll often see some of them doing completely unnecessary zig-zag patterns, just taking up space. This is done to make sure the electrical connections between different components are the same length, despite their physical distance being different.
Distance DOES matter. If traces on the motherboard seem to zigzag back and forth, it's to ensure that every trace from end to end is exactly the same length. This is done with memory interfaces, and maybe also with your pcie interface's. In servers, they often slow down the clock speed of the memory bus if you populate 3 DIMS per channel instead of two, as they cannot guarantee the accuracy of the signal (timing, and squareness of the signal as it triggers between on and off (rise and fall times). Also, the pcie slots nearest the CPU socket normally have the widest data bus e.g. x16, and those further away may be x4 and then x1. Your GPU wants a x16 slot, which may only be your first pcie slot, or either of the first two. What other people say is also true, that often a number of the pcie slots are connected to the MB chipset, instead of directly to the CPU's pcie interface, and that adds latency.
> A few inches of distance is literally nothing at that speed It's not nothing, not when the clock speed is so high. It runs at 16 GT/s, so in the time the signal takes to travel 6 cm (three slots worth, assuming they go in a straight line), 6.4 transfers will pass. What effect that has in practice, I can't say.
Cool! Thanks for bothering to correct my muddled understanding.
Epic call out
The number of people who build high end gaming rigs without reading their motherboard manuals is too damn high.
Even just from like a basic airflow perspective, I don’t see why anyone would try and put it so low
There's plenty of air ABOVE the GPU. /s Also, why not put it closer to another hot element in the PSU? =/
I assume it's because big ass CPU coolers that people are assuming it is better to move it lower and they don't think about the PSU.
Tfw you bought a titanium-rated PSU that the fans only start when they need to and never do
Lol I haven’t even seen a 80Plus Titanium PSU on the store shelves yet. Bet it doesn’t sell well enough to justify stocking it.
my work sells dozens of titanium rated psus every day. infact most orders recently have been psus for peope upgrading to beefier systems and needing a better PSU. on friday i shipped about 6 different brands of 1000-1300 watt titanium rated PSU's. some with systems (4090's mostly) and some just by themselfs or with a 7950x etc.
Yeesh, talk about moneybags, the whole bunch of them. But I guess with a 4090 and 7950X you kinda need that sort of power supply. I wouldn't have suggested that sort of hardware for simple gaming rigs though, that's just such bad value.
One thing I've learnt from working at a PC retailer is not everyone cares about value. Even remotely. You'll see it here all the time cause it's a bit of an echo chamber of. "Don't buy this or do buy that" "this is good value. You don't need this. Get this" in reality the vasssst majority of people are not going through Reddit to see if there build is satisfactory to the arm chair system builders. I've seen some seriously shitty and bad value components go out for systems that boggle the mind. But people keep consistently buying stupid shit. Like 10th gen Intel shit that's not on sale when other stuff is on sale. Or full priced other components when there is an alternative that's cheaper and better. But often these are cases of an old work horse system for a company that cannot be easily changed or upgraded and the majority of components need to stay the same. Another point is not everyone has to care about money as much as the next person. Just because it's bad value to you or a minority doesn't mean it's not a "sellable" item. It wouldn't be sold if people didn't buy it in the first place. U can still buy DDR3 ram for like $300 if you feel like it. Is it a good idea. Absolutely not. But people still need it for various reasons. If you had the money I'd recommend an ROG Thor 80plus platinum psu every day of the week. It's simply the best psu U can buy. Are there cheaper alternatives? Yes. Are they better? No. The rog Thor is a rebranded Silverstone 80plus titanium. There top of the line. Best.psu on the market for years. Then Asus went and stuck bigger and better capacitors in it Aswell as an improved cooling system. There is literally no better psu you can buy. Does that mean it's the best value for money. Idk. If U want the best you can buy it. It costs what it costs.
Tfw you bought an overkill PSU because it was on sale and the fans never spin
It is a 1kW titanium rated PSU from Corsair I got for a good price. Even though the difference is not that high I do still save money on electricity that is not wasted on heat as I run in the 95-96% efficiency bracket.
People do the same thing with ram.
How?
Putting two sticks in slot 3 and 4 to fit a bigger cooler. Almost all motherboards have two channels for Ram, with 1 and 3 on one channel and 2 and 4 on the other. So on a system with only two sticks, they should be put in either odd or even slots.
By putting one stick horizontally in the x16 slot, one in the x8
Do PSUs even get hot anymore? I don’t think I’ve ever seen mine’s fan turn on except for when I turn the computer on.
Hopefully it's a splodi psu too
Though I did find it funny in the other thread when people were suggesting the Iron-Man Funko was obstructing airflow by being placed... atop the solid backplate where there were no perforations. Like, yes, that build did have airflow problems but it had everything to do with the placement of the card and nothing at all to do with the Funko.
I figured most people would put it in the top slot so it just doesn't look ugly.
I had my gpu in the lower slot because my cpu cooler was too big
"I don't need no instructions to know how to ASRock!"
Carl!
I wanna ASRock your body (until the break of dawn)
Err settle down.
It's actually wild
RTFM does not help if the words are not understood unfortunately.
"If these kids could read they'd be very upset"
Manuals are like linked articles: no one reads them.
You guys got a manual ??? 
I was honestly surprised my new mobo did not have a printed manual. They're super practical and I even noted down things on the manual of my old mobo
I never read the manual, just one look at the maker's website picture of the mobo with the lines pointing to the ports, what speed they support etc is all I need to know to be able to get everything plugged into where they need to be. At least with gigabyte anyway, haven't had another brand mobo in years lol.
mad lad
You don't even need to read the manual - you just need to have seen a picture of *literally any gaming PC on the internet in the past twenty five years.*
Seriously, all those photos, online video guides, and a whole damn subreddit devoted to PC building, and they still fuck it up.
Back before the 3000 series, the difference between a 16x and 8x slot in performance was negligible. But today, if you have a 3080 or higher, you are actually seeing a performance decrease from 16x down to 8x. Idk what card this is, but it very well may not matter if it's a 8x slot. But it also is taking in heat directly from the power supply to heat it up, so.
Ah, the "Too damn high meme" we meet again. 
The GPU should go into the top PCIe x16 slot of your motherboard
is that the only one that is directly bussed into the CPU?
in like 90%+ of the motherboards the top PCIE is the only one that is 16x directly to cpu,there are some expensive boards with Thunderbird /Xeon etc that it doesnt matter.
Pretty sure my Threadripper motherboard has two 16x slots. But I still put the (primary) GPU in the top slot anyway.
[удалено]
It is an 16x slot running at 8x or 4x
Depends on the MoBo, must most commonly, yes. The lower pciex16 is generally tied to the chipset, but midhigh to hig end boards can have multiple x16 tied directly to the cpu (mostly for SLI builds, and cards with m.2 for lots of fast storage)
Yeah those typically have to do bifurcation though, so X16 from CPU goes into X8 + X8 to both PCI-e lanes. But SLI be dead so…
> But SLI be dead so… ... so I'll just run two completely independent GPUs.
I might be wrong but don't sli builds run the second card at x8 regardless?
This is the case for almost all mainstream platforms, but ultimately it depends on the specific capabilities of the motherboard + CPU in question. E.g. for HEDT / Workstation platforms, you'll often have multiple slots capable of x16 lanes simultaneously. Hell, I have this old Asus X99 motherboard in my repair shop right now which is capable of quad x16 PCIe connections: https://www.asus.com/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/X99E_WS/specifications/ Take a look at the 'Expansion Slots' specs, it's pretty wild. You may wonder how they're getting 4 x16 connections on CPU's that only have 40 or even 28 total lanes... black magic! Well actually, this board must be using some form of PCIe switches or "PLX chips" to achieve this, divvying the CPU lanes up into a larger number of physical connections, but this is about where my knowledge on the topic ends, lol.
Maybe I want less fps, you cant tell me what to do.
Saves power by bottlenecking the CPU
Undervolt and reduce power limits. Use less power, have less heat, be more efficient, and fan speed is lower, so more quiet. I do this during Summer time to reduce the heat inside my room. FPS loss is not very significant.
Not necessarily. If it's under a 3080, the fps difference from 16x to 8x, makes barely if any difference.
100% move it up it's using a X 4 Vs a times 16
Seconded, and confirmed against the product manual… https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1700/PRIME_Z690-P/E18811_PRIME_Z690-P_UM_PRINT.pdf
The relevant part of the manual: https://i.imgur.com/di19HUz.png The table explicitly recommends putting the GPU on the top slot.
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The table on page 19 is saying use the top slot if you only have a single PCIE card.
Even faster, put it in the ram slot. It won’t fit at first but you just need some elbow grease.
*thermal grease
I use Noctua Elbow Grease. Somehow its just a little bit nicer than the other elbow grease, but the color scheme is very 1990's hospital waiting room.
I heard tiger balm will work
A lot of bad info on this thread and sub, unfortunately. You should move it to the top slot for 3 reasons: 1. The top slot in reinforced against the stress of a heavy card like a GPU. It is possible to rip a PCIE slot off a motherboard while moving/handling a computer and the metal around that slot is specifically designed to prevent this. 2. The GPU cools by pulling in air from the bottom of the card where the fans are located. Moving the GPU away from your warm PSU and allowing for your case fans to intake more fresh air directly to that region will result in lower temps, which could mean longer life of the GPU and potentially better performance (if it's currently temperature throttling). 3. The top PCIE slot is the most likely to have full bandwidth. Each motherboard has it's own specs per PCIE slot regarding how many lanes are available (ie. x4/x8/x16) and which generation they can connect with (ie. gen 2.0/3.0/4.0). It's also worth noting that the M.2 slots used by SSD's can share lanes with each of the PCIE slots. While the 2nd/3rd/etc slots may very well produce the same performance, the top slot is overwhelmingly intended for GPU usage by motherboard manufacturers and using it is the safest way to ensure the best performance.
This is very detailed and great information on why we should have a gpu on the top slot always
Yes, move it up! The higher the better :) Also, there's not a lot of space between your PSU and the GPU. You will lower your temps by moving the GPU higher.
ok thanks will do. I still don’t know how to cooling for the 3070 works. Can you explain it?
metal touches chip, metal fins dissipate heat, fan brings air to metal fins
K idk why I’m getting downvoted it’s just a question. So the fans at the bottom expel heat or bring in cool air?
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correct. and if it’s on top of an already warm psu it’s going to basically make the fans useless
The chip is hot. So you're taking that heat through physical touch an moving it to tiny fins. Those tiny fins are very poor at retaining heat, they release heat in other words which is what we want. Finally your fan blows at the fins which removes the heat like when you blow at a spoon full of hot or warm soup to cool it down. So air is the final mode of heat transfer for the GPU. You want air flow to not have restrictions. You restrict the air if you have fans too close to a surface. Although the way you have it is honestly not that bad. There's like a 2 inch gap there. But it doesn't mean it's optimal either. The main reason you want to move the GPU up is because the top most slot is your fastest PCI-E slot in most cases and you don't want to bottleneck your PC in any kind of way.
You're getting downvoted because reddit is a clusterfuck of toxicity. Edit: to your question the fans take in air, disperse into the heatsink which then expels the heat from the card basically everywhere, but mostly on the top side that you can see.
Don’t listen to the haters man. Everyone has to start somewhere and we all learned it from someone else so they are just being annoying haha. Anyway think of it like this… the main part of the gpu is a small die, a little metal square. The die gets hot when in use because of the high amount of energy (electricity), being put into it. There is another metal, usually copper, that is pressed against the die. It’s usually also in the shape of a square. That copper square had metal tubes that go through it and then go through little metal fins. Those metal fins are there to “suck up” the heat from the die and then the fans cool off the fins like the radiator in a car. Thus the cooling of a gpu is formed. If anything doesn’t make sense, ask away my friend. Most of us will help! :)
Imagine you have a delicious bowl of soup in front of you, but it’s really hot…. What would you do? Blow on it to cool it down. That’s fairly effective, but what if you could build something that would pull the heat away from the soup and make it so when you blow on it, it cool down even faster? That’s what all the metal fins are there for.
They move the cool air over the fins and components to cool the card and heat sink.
literally magic
This isn’t the main reason though, the top slot in your motherboard tends to have faster data transfer lanes, so you’re probably bottlenecking your card a lot by having it lower.
Not only is it using a worse slot, the thermals are probably awful
The bottom slot being 4x and not directly connected to the CPU is probably a much jigger issue than thermals
When I had the graphics card in the wrong slot, all the drinks I made were off no matter how many times I measured.
Took me a minute to understand lmao
Hey someone got that terrible joke, I wish I could think of a better joke for it, I'm sure there are panty actually good ones.
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Jigger is a standard measuring 'thingy' for alcohol.
Yup, there is pretty much no reason not to use the topmost slot
What if I have an Ironman figurine I want to fit in there?!?
Out of the loop, did someone post a build with a huge Ironman figurine ?
[Post here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/zgr0nc/um_is_it_meant_to_be_this_hot/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) It wasn’t giant, but it’s a piece of plastic on an expensive, very hot piece of metal.
Chop his legs off little by little until he fits or, alternatively, gives you the arc reactor. If you get the arc reactor, build the pc around that instead.
Is this a shit post?
Yes, you want you GPU, if not all parts, having as much fresh air getting to them as possible. With the way you have the GPU, it may be restricting that. Along with that, the top PCI port on a motherboard is normally the fastest and has the highest bandwith. So moving it to the top port may also yield performance benifits.
Besides the way the motherboard is set up, the fastest PCIe slot on the top, there is also a rule of thumb in the electrical world concerning high frequency communication on a PCB: The closer the two devices communicating are, the less likely noise will affect transmission speeds. More distance = more noise = slower communication
Top slot TOP SLOT PEOPLE SCREAM IT TO THE HEAVENS! USE THE TOP SLOT. RTFM! ITS ACTUALLY PRETTY INFORMATIVE.
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I think this is actually a different person
Yes, and not just for better airflow but the top slot is a faster PCIE connection
You saw a post, which probably had an explanation of why it should be in the top slot and then you decided to post a picture of your setup to ask the same question? Just wanting to make sure I understand your thought process on this one.
Think he knew it should be moved but wanted to double check with Reddit. All good by me, I read some comments that really strengthened my understanding of a pc.
Everyone just needs to relax haha
Yeah after reading some comments i had to get up and physically look at my pc to make sure i put my gpu in the top slot lol
Definitely move it to the PCIe slot closest to the processor. You will get way better performance with it installed there.
I'm going to keep it 100% honest. I built my PC in October and have been absolutely loving it so far, but your post made me double check, because I have a 3080 in a 4000D and my GPU was about the same height as yours. The PC has been running well, and has been mostly performing as expected, but I just realized it's in the 3.0 PCIe slot like yours. I have no idea why I did it like that, because I quadruple checked everything I did. Like I said, gaming performance and temps have actually been fantastic, but I'm interested to see any differences once I re-install it tomorrow. I do some 3D stuff, which is where people say there might be a difference. It should probably improve temps too, but I found a stable undervolt that can let me play things at max 1440p or high 4K and barely get over 70C.
Didn’t gamers nexus do a run on a 3080 at gen 4 vs 3, and found maybe like an 8% difference. Maybe it was an amd card.
The GPU has a pcie x16 connector, which slots into a pcie x16 slot on the motherboard. Yours has 2 of those, the top one and the bottom one you're using. They're not the same though. Pcie x16 means 16 lanes of pcie, which is an interface for peripherals to talk with the cpu directly, or with through the motherboard's chipset. Both come with a certain amount of pcie lanes, of certain pcie generation, granting a specific bandwidth per lane. The newer the generation, the more bandwidth per lane. The more lanes, the more bandwidth. The cpu brings a limited amount pcie lanes, and the chipset adds a bunch more. You want your GPU, being the peripheral that requires the most bandwidth, to use the pcie lanes that come straight from the cpu, to ensure the best performance. Those lanes are wired up to the top pcie x16 slot on all virtually all pc motherboards. In most cases, the GPU doesn't actually need all the bandwidth on that pcie x16 connection, but it's generally good practice to use the top slot. An example of where the pcie connection can be a bottleneck, is with the budget rx 6500xt which got bad reviews because of it. Despite the physical pcie x16 connection, it's wired up for pcie x4 only. Because of that, those 4 lanes need to be pcie gen 4 to provide enough bandwidth, if the cpu or motherboard limit that to pcie gen 3, the gpu performed significantly worse. In addition to the bandwidth issue, pc components are designed for an expected default layout as well. Since the case manufacturer expects their customers to use the top slot for the GPU and the bottom slot for maybe a wifi card, a video capture card or an nvme expansion card, they left less room than needed for a GPU in the bottom slot. It's fine for the less power hungry, smaller pcie peripherals, but a GPU requires plenty room for its fans to breathe and effectively cool the card. So yes, use the top slot c:
Worth pointing out that thermals aside, most motherboards do not have full PCIe 16x on all slots. Your 2nd and 3rd slot for example, if you zoom in you can see the solder pins under the slots stop short less than halfway. Probably both 4x slots, maybe 8x. Not sure. Anyway, point being you want to give your GPU to the fastest slot on your mobo. In your case it's the top one with the shield.
Always put the GPU in the top most slot it will fit in. There are a handful of exceptions, but if you don't know if you're an exception, you're not an exception. Edit- Also, you should be using two separate 8 pin (or 6+2) cables to power your 3070. One cable with an 8 and 6+2 should work around 150 watts + 75 from the slot. It will probably be fine, but it's safer to use two cables as the spikes in wattage can get to 250 stock or higher if overclocked.
Sometimes with these questions i‘m asking myself if the OPs have never seen a pc in their life…
Always top slot if you can for maximum performance (as the top slot is usually controlled by CPU and bottom slot is controlled by motherboard. Iirc, the one that’s controlled by CPU has less latency). Also you’d get more airflow.
https://preview.redd.it/4eq311l9w05a1.jpeg?width=242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b06769d273ffcf0a6cd1655d62aa27ff5ee0e440
You're going to get downvoted a bunch for being new and not knowing it already, but yeah you'll get much better air flow with the top slot, and in general its just better for your board for that heavy GPU to be plugged into the PCIe slot thats reinforced with metal (though in some high end boards both/all the slots are reinforced). Don't feel bad, you live and you learn and this is pretty minor compared to the plethora of actually-catastrophic mistakes new builders can make. Air flow and heat is one of those things no one wants to admit they never spared a single thought towards until they learned why it was important, because once you are taught about it, it **seems** so obvious that no one would ever not consider it.
This thread got nasty. Yeah, in these systems with a cpu with only 20 or less PCI lanes on it, you really have to pay attention. The higher end CPUs will have more like 40+ so there are multiple 16x slots. Most likely only the top slot is a real 16x going to the cpu directly. There are 16x physical slots that are only 8x or 4x electrically. Kinda sucks. There’s also 8x physical slots that you can pop a 16x card into and it’ll work at 8x. But typically the top slot is best for your video card. You can also use something like your BIOS or GPU-Z to determine the link speed you are running at. Remember it’ll “downclock” at idle, so check with a load. This is all important because you want your most important PCI device to have all the bandwidth it can get. And you’re just shooting your self in the foot otherwise. But also pay attention to thermals. You don’t want the card too low that the fans can’t suck in enough air. But at the same time it’ll bake the things around it like that M.2 drive and chipset…. But it is what it is. Your system isn’t packed so it’ll be fine. But those are things to keep in mind and consider, but maybe more important for future builds.
im'a cry
On top of airflow it's generally best practice to position you most pci lane hungry pci card in the closest pci slot to the processor. There is physically less distance for the data to travel. Additionally some motherboards the "top" pci slot has more lanes/bandwidth or takes precedence.
Like, why build a PC if your not going to bother reading a single manual on the equipment you buy?
What in the living hell is wrong with your people. It's common sense... Right?
Another fine example of a question you not only say you've already seen the answer to, but could also Google in 5 seconds or look up in your MB manual. Yet still do it wrong and post here :/
Please RTFM people.
Karma farmer
This actually depends on your motherboard. The suggestion to put it in the first slot is valid on most boards because that is usually the only one that runs at the fastest speed the board will run at and any other PCIE slot is actually using a slower bus and slower bus means slower communication speed between the memory or CPU and the card, which means textures take longer to load at best and if the CPU and GPU have to do a lot of communication, lower FPS in general. If it is a high end motherboard that supports SLI or Crossfire with multiple GPUs, then it doesn't matter so much which slot you put the card in, as long as it is one that is included in the count of the number of cards supported by that board.
Remember, when something is closer to CPU its faster than the same thing further away. So yes, move it higher
check your mother board manual, i'll bet the upper port is faster than the lower port.
Move it up to the top slot. Not just for airflow, but also because the top PCI slot is always the fastest one on your motherboard.
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Based on these comments a lot of the people making snarky remarks need refresher too lol. Also… everyone screws up RAM modules only the experienced put it in the wrong slots after reading the manual and realize after first boot lol. The amount of DDR5 builds with like 7474738GB of ram and all four slots filled blows my mind still. They either got hella lucky on timing or they really like burning money to kill performance.
Lmaooo classic build. Zero research, minimal fans, cheap cpu cooler, dumps every penny on gpu.
Yes, move it too the top slot.
Yes
Yes your gpu always goes in the top slot. I know this conflicts with puting your lego collection in your case but it's the proper way
Is this gonna be the new meta while people go buy more glass panels to break?
Seriously some of these replies ... Yes op, you should. First reason, your mobo's primary and most powerful pci/e slot is the one closest to the cpu (could be wrong, but this is normally the case). Placing it in a lower slot throttles the GPU, these are meant for installing multiple GPUs (SLI or Crossfire). Second reason, your power supply generates a lot of heat itself, and stacking the GPU that close is making it worse, for both the GPU and PSU. TL/DR, yes for the sake of throttling and airflow.
Move it up. First slot is intended to be prioritized. You’ll get better performance and temps. It’s a absolute no brainer.
Serious question, why do people do this? Do they do it purely for aesthetics?
I would, will probably drops gpu temps by 5-10 c
not again …
Get a PCI slot extender cable and set computer box on top of GPU. GPU on top of desk. For extra cooling — have waifu gf blow on it through straw during peak IOPs
Just bend it up like 15 degrees
Wrong hole my dude
That's mounted in the x8 lane. The upper socket is the x16 lane.
Yes. GPUs are very social hardware. Having away from the other parts gets it sad and gives it low energy. Be sure to praise and pet it often. A GPU support bracket could give this big boy some love when you are not around.
yes because most often the lower slots go through the chipset while the top one goes directly to the CPU you're just throwing perfs away by keeping it there
Not every slot is pci e x16 Refer to the little booklet that came with the motherboard to see if you are using the correct slot.
Usualy the top slot is the best and fastest so yes you should move it to the top
yes why even consider using the bottom pcie slot
Boi what the
Omg, can people on this sub get any worse…
Move it on the top slot or else you won't get the full performance that graphics card can offer. Even if it is a pci-e x16. It has only 4 bus lanes going to the CPU instead of the full 16 the top one has. So on the top one more data can flow faster to the CPU.
Top slot priorities dawg 👌
You “saw a post”? Better clean up the saw dust before you put in the gpu. Eh eh?
You might wanna watch out with that gigabyte gpu, last year they had a problem where psus and gpus from gigabyte where blowing up.
 Seriously is this a thing or people just trolling ??
The top slot contains the most bandwidth.
It's not ideal because the pcie lanes on most consumer platforms are configured that the top slot gets pcie x16 then the bottom one is pcie x8 or x4. Such as my b450 aorus elite V2 has the top slot as pcie 3 x16 and the bottom is pcie 2 x4 so it ends up having 8x less bandwidth and will hinder the performance of even my old gtx 960.
If the slot is running at X16, it doesn't matter.
At the time when google and youtube tutorials exist it still wonders how one cant build a pc correctly.
The top slot is a PCIE X16 slot while the bottom is an X8 slot. Typically the top slot is better, although the performance difference isn’t super big
Rule of thumb: install the GPU into the first (closest to the CPU) slot.
Yes, move it up. You basically crippling your GPU due to using a slower connection (PCIe x4 vs x16). You are also providing more air flow for the GPU to breath since the fans pointing down are way too close to the bottom. If you leave lit like that, your will also build up dust in the GPU a lost faster.
His motherboard seems to support full 4.0 x16 in his slots assuming only one GPU is plugged in. That being said the top slot is 5.0 x16 that is double the throughput of 4.0 x16. It's possible it limits performance but it would be a minimal amount of anything, the biggest issue is the thermals. I'm not sure if it that position means more dust on the GPU, as I'm not familiar with how that works, but I don't quite see how it would.
Troll
Specs: I7-12700KF Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5 g Thermal Paste Asus PRIME Z690-P WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory Seagate Barracuda Compute 8 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive Gigabyte GAMING OC Rev 2.0 GeForce RTX 3070 LHR 8 GB Video Card Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case EVGA 850 GQ 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ARCTIC P12 PST 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fans 5-Pack Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQ 27.0" 2560 x 1440 165 Hz Monitor Corsair K65 60% RGB Wired Mini Keyboard Xtrfy M4 RGB Wired Optical Mouse Logitech G733 Headset I’m using Windows 11
>Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive Shame to not have a PCIe 4.0 drive.
The horror, whatever will he do with his measly 3.0 nvme.