I am reconfiguring my home lab and I am looking to consolidate and adjust some hardware. In doing so the HL15 I have is going to become the centerpiece of my setup. With that being said, I am going to need to add some GPU Compute into the HL15. I am very aware the 4070 can fit without any modifications. The biggest goal is this GPU is only 2 PCI slots wide as I need the real estate.
I have done some solid measurements in the past, but I was wondering if anyone has done any major testing with the RTX 40 series in recent years. I am also wondering if anyone has obtained any of the Chinese modified 4090s with 48GB of VRAM and shoved one of these GPUs in their HL15.
I have also seen some passive cooled GPUs, such as the Quadro RTX 8000, or the A16’s that have a much smaller physical footprint. I am worried that even with keeping all the fans in the case with these smaller GPUs, there would not be enough airflow in the case directed in these GPUs to properly cool them.
At the end of the day, I am looking to see what options I may have for shoving some high-density VRAM GPUs into the HL15. Have there been any big GPU breakthroughs in the HL15 space over the last few years? I don’t care about cost - I am just looking at what my options are.
Did you use a 4070 Super Founder Edition or from a different OE than Nvidia? Did you need to remove ANYTHING from the chassis in order to get this GPU to fit? How much clearance from the fan to the back of the GPU would you say you had left over?
I ended up getting the PNY GeForce RTX™ 4070 Super. I didn’t have to do anything special to make it fit. I’m not sure how much space in the back is left but if I remember right, it’s tight. When I was first installing it I didn’t think it would fit. It’s been awhile but I remember having to be careful with the sizing. Some of the 4070 supers wouldn’t have fit. 4080s wouldn’t had fit without any modifications, which I didn’t want to do.
I know you didn’t ask, but be careful with your cpu cooler height. I wasn’t thinking and got a Noctua NH-D15S, Premium Dual-Tower CPU Cooler. I got it to fit but there is a slight indent in the top of my case with it bulging out. Haha
Basically, no. TARDIS technology has not been incorporated into the HL15, so the laws of space still apply. You’re going to need to prioritize slot(s), depth, amount of VRAM, cooling scheme, GPU generation for your use case and see what gives first. Or, if none of them can give, you need a different case.
Some options:
AMD Radeon Pro W6800: 32GB GDDR6, but prior gen architecture
AMD Instinct MI210: 64 GB HBM2e, but passively cooled. You’re going to need some industrial RPM fans and some baffling for airflow
Remove the metal cage and limit yourself to the right half of the backplane for storage: This will allow you to install longer GPUs. You may need to design and 3D print a replacement cage for the HDDs or SSDs.
Get an HL15 Beast specifically designed for large actively cooled GPUs
FWIW, if you are considering a 4070. you might want to consider a 2-fan 5070 since they both have 12GB and the 5070 would be newer gen and faster? If you are able to go 2.5 slot there are 2-fan 16GB 4070 Ti Supers that fit. I have an MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G Ventus 2X OC that fits easily at 242mm, but I don’t think that is available new any more. Here is a similar one from Asus; ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super OC but it is 267mm. Two others you could look for are the Inno3D RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Twin X2 (250 mm) and the Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Windforce OC 16GB which has three fans but is only 261mm.
I went with a RTX 4000 SFF Ada which has 20 GiB VRAM is low power (70 W). It idles at 11 W and serves my purposes for local LLM’s and graphics generation.
That might feel a bit sluggish compared to other options given it’s limited bandwidth. But it seems to meet a lot of your stated criteria focusing on slot width and heat output.
I have elected to go with a modified Nvidia 4090 with 48GB of vRAM. However, I found a shop not too far from me within the US that makes them. It’s called GPvLab and he has a Youtube Channel where he shows his shop and the process of making the cards.
I have just gotten the card in and I cannot wait to get it slotted in my new HL15 build. I will be back to report how this goes.
Progress is being made. I will make a dedicated post to the new build when it’s ready, but I got it parted out, cleaned up, backplane cables replaced, and tomorrow should be the big day. A high density VRAM/GPU, high compute, HL15 is on the horizon!
Wow, just barely fits eh! Do you think you’ll put that third fan back in or no?
EDIT: I see the power connector is at the back, so I’ll assume it’s a no
I will not be re-using the OEM Cooler Guys fan, No. However, Noctua does make a very thin 120mm fan that I’m going to look at. In addition to that, there is a very large gap between the drive cage and the fan bracket. I’m going to be looking in adding an 80mm fan there.
