Have I just never realized that the sockets of video cards are “upside down” when inserted? 😅 Or is this an illusion created by how expansion card are displayed when advertised?

SCD9nFsanJ3DcUQ.jpg

I can’t believe I have been building PCs for five years and never reacted to this before.

1onSttbcJRRdtCA.jpg

  • notabot@piefed.socialEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    Wait 'til you put a PCIe USB card in. You’ll have to turn the plugs over a lot more than the traditional three times!

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    The original IBM XT and PC used ISA, EISA, and VESA cards and slots which faced the other direction. PCI and AGP cards flipped orientation partly to ensure they couldn’t be accidentally inserted into the wrong slot, and became the norm as the older slots disappeared from systems.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      It was also so they could have slots that were either/or, so you could put either type of card there. Really wish they flipped them again for PCIe.

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    They’re upside down so you could fit an ISA and PCI sockets could fit in the same slot back in the 90s.

    I can’t find any of them installed in a case, but I could find this card with a combo slot. The pci would be facing down, but the ISA card would be facing up

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    I’ve noticed. It’s mildly annoying, not something I think about every day.

    It’s always been this way, and like others said, it’s an artifact from when PC cases were horizontal, and there was no up or down for a connector, just left or right.

    Of course, they could make the connectors attach to the board the other way 'round, but they won’t. Especially now that we’re not the main consumer of their products, and the people who are don’t give one fuck about this.

  • raman_klogius@ani.socialEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    Computer cases used to be laid horizontally, so that the motherboard is flat at the bottom. The IBM PC had its PCI expansion slots connect to the motherboard perpendicularly, so the slots are vertical.

    Then the PC evolved to have the tower stand upright. That turned the orientation of all the boards, including the PCI cards which are now oriented upside down.

  • eurodyne@piefed.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    I remember this being common with PCIE cards, the ports would be upside down

    Then again, I haven’t built my own rig in a very long time

  • kboos1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    You mean that in the picture of the card the pci connector is on the right but installed the pci connector would be on the left? So the the picture of the card it would be flipped. So the dvi connect appears to be upside down when looking at it from the outside.

    Is this the issue?

    • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      31·
      3 days ago

      There is no issue at all. Chassi upright, box upright, DVI connector are in two separate orientations from the viewer’s perspective. Nothing is in fact upside down.

      • kboos1@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        The pci cards are offset so that in the case there’s room for the connector, this means that the chips are only on one side of the card. So the in pictures of the cards they are shown flipped over from their installed orientation, otherwise you would be looking at the back of the board in the picture.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    3·
    3 days ago

    I always got the impression that at least for GPUs and other things with heatsinks it was better to have those parts on the bottom, so dust won’t settle on them. Dust won’t do as much on the back side of the card. Maybe that’s just a convenient plus of whatever other reason from the horizontal days of motherboards.

    • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Thanks for the heads up! :D There is actually yet another card incoming - a captured card with FireWire (1394 a and b) inputs that I was thinking about putting at the bottom. No reason or thought behind though. The only card among these three that has a heatsink and a mini fan is the NVIDIA GeForce GT 220. Maybe I’ll put that at the bottom, then.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        2·
        3 days ago

        Always consider the heat flow in the box. Adding something new and taking up space changes how much air gets to places, and how it flows. Might consider another fan (although whether you want more pushing or pulling is a debated topic), and maybe using the GPU fan to control that is a good idea… In my mind, cooling is like memory… you can’t have enough.

        • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          I have two spare Noctua fans that I could install at the bottom of the case. The top already has three, CPU cooling tower has two (horizontal) and the one visible in the picture above. The 3080 that I swapped for these archaic video cards had three powerful fans on its own, but then again, it generated massive amounts of heat. I’m looking forward to learn how much heat these cards will generate. 😁

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
            2·
            3 days ago

            Sounds okay, but don’t forget, pumping it out of the case isn’t enough. If you’re in a small room, it could get toasty. Won’t really affect the computer much, but there’s a reason why server rooms are kept cold.

    • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      31·
      3 days ago

      As for the outputs from the computer, I purposefully chose a graphics card (the bottom card in the images) with no DP, because my monitor only has VGA and HDMI in. 😊 And as for inputs to the computer, I’m only going to be recording analog signals from sources such as VHS📼, Mini DV📹 and audio cassette tapes📟 and that one DVI-I input (top card in the images) has adapters for both component video (YPbPr), composit video (RCA, S-video and SCART), VGA and HDMI. 📺