I’m hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction. I want to build a server with 8x RTX 6k Pro Max-Q cards in it. They’re the blower type cards. I’m trying to find a case that will fit all 8 of them comfortably with room enough for airflow between the cards.
I contacted nvidia directly to ask if I can stack the cards next to one another and they responded by saying that they are not designed to be sandwiched up against one another. They recommended that I should leave a gap between the cards sufficient for them to cool properly.
This is what creates the impasse for me. Many off the shelf servers use the server edition card that is passively cooled and just blast them with fans to cool. Which wont work with my cards.
Stack them as deep as you can in two cases, all in an open frame setup, or whatever has 16 slots in some configuration, the photos from Nvidia and others show it’s a close stack blower design, extremely similar to AMD R9700 GPUs. Just ensure you have relatively even gaps between cards, semi cable managed, and with a bunch of fans feeding a bunch of air to them. You can go with very high RPM fans, or get more normal speed fans that are 30mm+ thick and move a good bit of air, or small high RPM thick server fans that have crazy power draw. Ideally if it’s an open or semi open case you can get some ducting to direct the air right at the cards so there is a bit of positive pressure around the cards.
Directly from Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000 MaxQ page “…in a density-optimized design. Seamlessly scale from one to four GPUs…“
My 4x R9700 rig is in a relatively pedestrian 8 PCIe slot Antec 900 2026 desktop case, they would probably cool a little better if there was a 0.5-1 slot gap between them, but 4 blower cards stacked on top of each other works as intended.
The biggest issue you will have is a case with 16 slots, and motherboard or riser board or whatever with 8 double spaced x16 high bandwidth slots. That’s the big reason why watercooling with 1 slot width per card is so much better (you can use a pretty standard or available case & motherboard with more than 4 GPUs, external radiator is the answer). Do you have motherboards with some kind of high speed interconnect, or any parts yet to work around?
Stacking 4 Max Qs definitely will lead to a bad time as documented several times on these boards and i’ve personally tried. There is no amount of direct and indirect cooling i could manage to keep them from pushing the thermal limits.
The only reasonable answer IMO is an open frame. Obviously if space was a constraint you could manage liquid cooling into a single giant tower but the risks involved are too high considering the 8x$14000 costs involved.
Avoid the Antec 900. At that price point they should have provided a GPU support system and they did exactly nothing which is frustrating. I have one gathering dust if anyone in the UK wants to pick it up for free. Total waste of money.
your only option prettymuch is extension cables and a double-decker open frame.
Silverstone has a not-out-yet case (but I did a video on it from computex) where the case has a 12+ slots and two layers (one half-height set and one full-height set) and this could maybe MAYBE be a one-box answer for 8x RTX Pro 6000s.
Two of your GPUs are going to be 8x though. womp womp.
