This is exactly how all of them should have come from the beginning instead of silly 3-4 slot air coolers. 😎

I actually wouldn't mind a much thicker air cooler with beefier fans for the mainstream cards I've always bought. I don't, hopefully, need any other PCIe cards, so it's free space under the graphics card. A more massive air cooler would be more efficient and thus silent. Of course my current graphics card is unnecessarily noisy during gaming because it's far too old and thus has to work really hard to run even older games. I can't even buy and play modern AAA games.

That title is eehh. Makes me think that we're lucky that it comes with both a radiator AND water cooling. Then again, this is Gigabyte. So we are lucky if it comes with both.

Kaarme:

I actually wouldn't mind a much thicker air cooler with beefier fans for the mainstream cards I've always bought. I don't, hopefully, need any other PCIe cards, so it's free space under the graphics card. A more massive air cooler would be more efficient and thus silent. Of course my current graphics card is unnecessarily noisy during gaming because it's far too old and thus has to work really hard to run even older games. I can't even buy and play modern AAA games.

As someone with basically the same GPU as you, I disagree with your first statement. There are large dual-slot cards (like ours) that are heavy enough to cause damage to PCIe slots. 3 slots I think is fine for rare specialized cards, but once you get to 4, it's just plain stupid and impractical. While I can't say I've attempted to play modern AAA games (most don't interest me), you might consider switching to Linux to breathe some extra life into your GPU. The open source amdgpu (openGL) and radv (vulkan) drivers are still being maintained for GCN 1.1, and perform better than the Windows drivers. If your 390 has 8GB, turn down texture detail just a smidge and you should be able to play a lot of modern titles (check protondb.com for compatibility first). I unfortunately am stuck with 4GB, so I'm stuck having to lower more details.

schmidtbag:

As someone with basically the same GPU as you, I disagree with your first statement. There are large dual-slot cards (like ours) that are heavy enough to cause damage to PCIe slots. 3 slots I think is fine for rare specialized cards, but once you get to 4, it's just plain stupid and impractical. While I can't say I've attempted to play modern AAA games (most don't interest me), you might consider switching to Linux to breathe some extra life into your GPU. The open source amdgpu (openGL) and radv (vulkan) drivers are still being maintained for GCN 1.1, and perform better than the Windows drivers. If your 390 has 8GB, turn down texture detail just a smidge and you should be able to play a lot of modern titles (check protondb.com for compatibility first). I unfortunately am stuck with 4GB, so I'm stuck having to lower more details.

I'd just make a support beam of some sort for the heavy card. Not really a big deal, I believe. Maybe I'll make one for the next card anyway. It could be an interesting small project. Although you could still be right about it being unnecessary. I'm too used to Windows to switch to Linux. Much of the software I use would need to be rethought. Besides, I've so many unplayed old games (or lighter new games) that not being able to play Cyberpunk now isn't such a big deal. The important thing is to have a new card by the time the next Elder Scrolls is out. It seems like there's no hurry, haha.

this is great for all of the monster tower pc's but sucks for most. a 240mm would've worked fine but @45mm instead of 30mm