Best 1080 for server chassis?

[ebirck]

Hello,

 

I am planning my next build to be in a server chassis and I want to pack it with dual gtx1080s. That being said, I have the money for the build but I would still not like to be wasting money where I don't have to. I understand a rear exhaust card would probably have significant benefits in a server chassis, but I'd rather not drop almost $100 extra per card for the founders edition (which has been proven could use some extra power connectors anyway...) There are other blower/rear exhaust cards such as EVGA's base model which looks great and is the cheapest thing out there I have found {http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-5180-KR}, but it still suffers from the single 8-pin power issue which I'd like to avoid since I do enjoy my overclocks .

 

So the resolution I'm leaning towards at this point is the ZOTAC AMP (non-extreme, dual fan) {https://www.zotac.com/us/product/graphics_card/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-amp-edition}. The fan shroud seems to wrap mostly around which I'm betting will reduce most of its internal exhaust and it's still reasonably cheap at $640 a card. Main benefit of course of going this route is the dual 8-pin power fingers which should hopefully give me some more wiggle room when it comes to overclocking. My main questions at this point are, first off, would anyone suggest something else / does anyone have any comments (or angry corrections ) for me? And second, is it redundant to go for the dual fan ZOTAC over the EVGA blower-style for the extra power (I'm assuming with good airflow in my chassis the cooling should be more than enough but perhaps I'm wrong and in either situation my overclocks would be limited by thermals regardless)?

 

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

 

-Eric

[Humble_newbie]

FE edition.

[Skiiwee29]

5 minutes ago, ebirck said:

Hello,

 

I am planning my next build to be in a server chassis and I want to pack it with dual gtx1080s. That being said, I have the money for the build but I would still not like to be wasting money where I don't have to. I understand a rear exhaust card would probably have significant benefits in a server chassis, but I'd rather not drop almost $100 extra per card for the founders edition (which has been proven could use some extra power connectors anyway...) There are other blower/rear exhaust cards such as EVGA's base model which looks great and is the cheapest thing out there I have found {http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-5180-KR}, but it still suffers from the single 8-pin power issue which I'd like to avoid since I do enjoy my overclocks .

 

So the resolution I'm leaning towards at this point is the ZOTAC AMP (non-extreme, dual fan) {https://www.zotac.com/us/product/graphics_card/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-amp-edition}. The fan shroud seems to wrap mostly around which I'm betting will reduce most of its internal exhaust and it's still reasonably cheap at $640 a card. Main benefit of course of going this route is the dual 8-pin power fingers which should hopefully give me some more wiggle room when it comes to overclocking. My main questions at this point are, first off, would anyone suggest something else / does anyone have any comments (or angry corrections ) for me? And second, is it redundant to go for the dual fan ZOTAC over the EVGA blower-style for the extra power (I'm assuming with good airflow in my chassis the cooling should be more than enough but perhaps I'm wrong and in either situation my overclocks would be limited by thermals regardless)?

 

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

 

-Eric

If you dont want the FE, you could look at the ASUS Turbo or MSI Aero reference styles. These cards should come in very close to the MSRP for the 1080's from Nvidia. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Imakuni]

5 minutes ago, ebirck said:

but it still suffers from the single 8-pin power issue which I'd like to avoid since I do enjoy my overclocks

There's no "8-pin power issue" with Pascal. The only problem seems to be cooling and the silicon, power is not a limiting factor.

 

But anyway. Galax has a reference card. And so does MSI, if you can find either.

[ebirck]

4 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

There's no "8-pin power issue" with Pascal.

Luke describes in the end that the most common limit was power, go to ~4:35.

[Imakuni]

3 minutes ago, ebirck said:

Luke describes in the end that the most common limit was power, go to ~4:35.

Just look at reviews for EVGA or MSI cards. They all OC to around the same as a properly cooled FE card.

 

In fact, Luke seems to be the only one that hit a power limit. I didn't hear this being mentioned anywhere else.

[ebirck]

Quote

Just look at reviews for EVGA or MSI cards. They all OC to around the same as a properly cooled FE card.

 

In fact, Luke seems to be the only one that hit a power limit. I didn't hear this being mentioned anywhere else

 

Ah okay, I'll look into that, I wan't too informed on the subject which is exactly why I came here so thank you for the correction.

 

I'll definitely keep an eye on the traditional blower style cards than for availability and probably end up grabbing a couple of them for their very tempting price point  

 

Thanks!

[App4that]

What are you using it for? If not gaming get 980ti's, with more Cuda cores over the 1080 a 980ti beats a 1080 in tasks outside gaming.

 

 

[ebirck]

18 minutes ago, App4that said:

What are you using it for?

Mostly gaming, but I also enjoy messing around with some editing and 3D rendering applications - that's entirely for fun though and has no real weight in my decision. I'm mostly feeling out the waters for now. I'm actually toying with the idea of waiting for the 1080ti for the extra VRAM as well, as I'm in no rush to put in the work of finding a buyer for my current rig... I'm currently thinking surround 2k monitors (as an upgrade from my current surround 1080p) and I know surround setups are particularly VRAM hungry (especially if I go for surround 4k...but even I'll admit it's a bit unnecessary at that point). Thanks for the reply!