My pci cards are just hanging in there because i took the faceplates off, bad?

[nukesgoboom]

i have an audigy 2 zs soundcard, and i have my xbox audio going into a converter that takes the dual RCA male audio left and right cables and outputs them into a single 1/8" male for the line-in on the soundcard.

however, i noticed that the faceplate on the soundcard was a little far above the actual jack for the line-in, so sometimes the 1/8" male would pop out or only go in half way which resulted in weird sounding or non-working audio.

so i took the faceplates off and solved the problem. the 1/8" jack goes in perfectly with no probelms and the audio is great.

however, it means that the soundcard is sticking into the pci slot on the motherboard and just hangin' in there. the faceplate is off and i have a screwless intel server case (so the only way to lock in the card is to use a push locking system, which requires the faceplate to be attached)

now, the soundcard works great and ive had it hanging in there for about a month now and have had no problems. but i was curious, would having a card inserted into the motherboard and hanging on simply by the connector cause any damage or cause any loss of quality for that part? i can push the card up a little and see it would be perfectly horizontal going into the slot, but when i just let it hang it droops a little downward (my case stands upward).

now i know of all the other, subtle disadvantages such as not being able to move the computer easily and such, but my main concern is physical damage to the card or a loss of quality (i cant detect any sound difference)

i also took the faceplate off my video card (geforce 4 ti 4800) just for fun and it seems to be working just fine as well, and i cant detect any video loss.

is this healthy to have the cards like this? they seem to work well but i needed a more professional opinion so i came here. thanks again for your time.

[CWR03]

I would think that if the cards aren't heavy enough to damage the slots that you're probably ok. If you're handy, you might consider fashioning a plastic brace of some sort to relieve that strain, maybe something as simple as a stick that can stand on the floor of the case with slots cut into it with a hacksaw to fit over the edges of the cards.

[nukesgoboom]

haha cool suggestion. i wish i had a hacksaw to try that out. i do in fact leave the sides of the cases open, because i have a p4 prescott which is very hot and i need to have the case open to help with the cooling, since im only using stock fans.

ive had great luck so far, only had 1 over heating issue but that was my fault for not cleaning the dust off the chasis which took like over a year to accumulate. i make sure to clean it every month now with a photography air rubber squeeze thing. you can buy them cheap like $5 at a photography store, i save so much money compared to buying compressed air which creates more physical waste anyway.

the cards are definitly not heavy. i bought these all 4 years ago back in 2003 when they first came out, back before huge ass cards were being used to pump out that now needed power, at least for video cards i mean. in fact they are nearly comparable size, the audigy 2 zs and the geforce 4 ti 4800. funny how that works out.

i did have to loosen the fan on the GPU a little, because it was making such a noise, and i found so much dust. however its been great since even under great strain.

[FishTank]

haha cool suggestion. i wish i had a hacksaw to try that out. i do in fact leave the sides of the cases open, because i have a p4 prescott which is very hot and i need to have the case open to help with the cooling, since im only using stock fans.

ive had great luck so far, only had 1 over heating issue but that was my fault for not cleaning the dust off the chasis which took like over a year to accumulate. i make sure to clean it every month now with a photography air rubber squeeze thing. you can buy them cheap like $5 at a photography store, i save so much money compared to buying compressed air which creates more physical waste anyway.

the cards are definitly not heavy. i bought these all 4 years ago back in 2003 when they first came out, back before huge ass cards were being used to pump out that now needed power, at least for video cards i mean. in fact they are nearly comparable size, the audigy 2 zs and the geforce 4 ti 4800. funny how that works out.

i did have to loosen the fan on the GPU a little, because it was making such a noise, and i found so much dust. however its been great since even under great strain.


this is sorta OT, but by having your case open, you kill the airflow.
i have a p4E 3.2gig myself and only stock fans and have never
had any kind of heat problem. i do use a thermaltake tsunami
case that has decent airflow (2x120mm fans front/back).
i actually neglegted to clean my case and its been 2 years now
and i am a heavy smoker, still no heat issue (not 1 degree more then when it was brand new).

as for the card having no frontplate. i wouldnt worry to much
as long as you never pull on the cables lol. i have an old soundblaster
soundcard that is TO BIG to fit in a thermaltake v2000a case.
its also a screwless case and i cant lock the pci slot, b/c the
card is to big LOL
works for almost 5 years that way ;)

[nukesgoboom]

whoa, so the case open can actually restrict airflow! i would have never guessed. thats pretty funny in an ironic way. you know i had to open my case because 2 of my fans i had broken by idiocy, i was trying to clean the dust off of them and i broke them by trying to pull them out of the case too hard. my stupid, stupid mistake. so i just thought opening the case would help a little, but GOD FORBID if i spill anything in there, that would kill everything, thats why i keep the computer to the side and back of my desk so that kind of mistake will hopefully never happen.

i was using a cpu/motherboard monitoring program and i found that because so much dust was on my heat sink, that the computer would instantly shut down as soon as it reached some sort of high level intensity, like doing video encoding with virtual dub or playing quake 3 with a ton of bots and gibs flying everywhere, there was so much dust in there, that the CPU was nearly 15 degrees Celsius warmer than after i cleaned all the dust off of it. it was much more quiet now and didnt restart randomly because of the overheating.

i have a thermaltake purepower power supply and i also have a screwless case! i had to get this larger case because my asus motherboard was too large LOL. its made of metal painted black or steel and its pretty heavy.

hell i even have the cover of the case off the front, i can see my harddrive (WD raptor) just sitting in there. lol its like a skeleton. alot of my friends that visit my house think my computer is just broken because it looks so ripped up.

[foxyshadis]

On that topic, this was last night's effort, hunting for certain spare parts (mainly the antenna wires):
http://foxyshadis.slightlydark.com/random/disassembly_output.jpg
If I plugged a couple of leads back in it would probably run just fine, and if the screen wasn't broken I would try it. =D

If the rear grill is large enough for a 92mm or 120mm fan (or you can drill it large enough), that could take care of most of the cooling issues quickly. As for stuff just sort of hanging out, the only time I've seen a card snap was an 7900 with passive cooling (monster copper heatsink) that wasn't securely bolted to the case, made the rounds on the net. It was pretty hilarious. =D

[CWR03]

As for stuff just sort of hanging out, the only time I've seen a card snap was an 7900 with passive cooling (monster copper heatsink) that wasn't securely bolted to the case, made the rounds on the net.
Not as funny to me as the kid who brought home a new $400 AGP video card and sawed off part of the connector to make it fit into a PCI slot (which of course didn't work).

[Blue_MiSfit]

sawed off part of the connector to make it fit into a PCI slot


ROFL!! I was actually reminiscing about that with my co-workers the other day :)

Foxy! Your poor laptop! I hope she still works!

~MiSfit

[nukesgoboom]

LOL. now i have heard of people using tin snippers to cut off parts of the end of the card to make it fit into the pci slot, but cutting off part of the connector? thats pretty damn awesome! LOL.

so a 7900 snapped? those things get pretty massive though. copper heatsink must have been the culprit. hahaahaha. indeed man =D thanks for telling me about it, first time i have heard that story so it was new to me.

yeah. i use tin snippers. in fact i cut out the whole back part of the case where the cards are supposed to be seperated. i just got tired of dealing with them when i was putting in new cards. see i have a capture card i put in to record gameplay from my xbox, but i noticed that when the card is in the motherboard it noticably darkens my monitor for some reason. not a loss of detail just a littler darker. so i just put it in to record and take it out when down. and it was with all of this putting in and taking out that i noticed how much a pain in the ass it was to get the card in there right every time, and it shouldn't have to be. so i snipped! i even plied out the metal edges they look so frayed and butchered now but im happy with it lmao.

[FishTank]

rofl..

theres an awesome master card ad on youtube, i just cant find it
anymore :(
it goes like..
buying a geforce 7950 .. 500$
buying a zalman cooler.. 80$
ripping the ram off the card while removing the stock cooler... PRICELESS

you hear the guy scream n cuss in the background lol

[squid_80]

On that topic, this was last night's effort, hunting for certain spare parts (mainly the antenna wires):Where's the hard drive?

[foxyshadis]

The great electonics heap in the sky. ;_;

[zaphod_beeblebrox]

this is sorta OT, but by having your case open, you kill the airflow.
i have a p4E 3.2gig myself and only stock fans and have never
had any kind of heat problem. i do use a thermaltake tsunami
case that has decent airflow (2x120mm fans front/back).
i actually neglegted to clean my case and its been 2 years now
and i am a heavy smoker, still no heat issue (not 1 degree more then when it was brand new).

as for the card having no frontplate. i wouldnt worry to much
as long as you never pull on the cables lol. i have an old soundblaster
soundcard that is TO BIG to fit in a thermaltake v2000a case.
its also a screwless case and i cant lock the pci slot, b/c the
card is to big LOL
works for almost 5 years that way ;)
A case with the sides of will not as such be a worse scenario than a case closed, yes the fans become less effective at moving the air through the case as the air flow will flow out and away from the unit... however overall heat dissipation will be far greater with the sides of, heat always flows to cool, and as such the the heat will flow away from the case, this causes air flow by default, the air around the heat producing components will in most cases be dissipated much faster than relying on case fans (of course this depends on the amount of air flow being created by fans) economy through lessening the need for fans and the drain they cause on PSU's is lessened by this, many new cases have a cowling that leads straight to to CPU heat sink and is attached to the side of the case so that all air moving over the heat sink is sourced from outside the case .. a similar effect is gained my removing the sides so long as air is able to flow to the unit .. I am a Refrigeration mechanic so my qualifications are in a field that deals with heat.

[zaphod_beeblebrox]

On that topic, this was last night's effort, hunting for certain spare parts (mainly the antenna wires):
http://foxyshadis.slightlydark.com/random/disassembly_output.jpg
If I plugged a couple of leads back in it would probably run just fine, and if the screen wasn't broken I would try it. =D

If the rear grill is large enough for a 92mm or 120mm fan (or you can drill it large enough), that could take care of most of the cooling issues quickly. As for stuff just sort of hanging out, the only time I've seen a card snap was an 7900 with passive cooling (monster copper heatsink) that wasn't securely bolted to the case, made the rounds on the net. It was pretty hilarious. =D

Yeah .. I've been wrecking and repairing portable computers since 1998 .. so that's not a new sight to me .. and I've often had units working while apart just like that