Gigabyte Aorus Master - chipset cooler stops me using graphics card in the 16x. What are my choices?

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 10:25

***IMPORTANT UPDATE*** The opening post of this thread might lead you to believe that Gigabyte 3090 Eagle and Aorus master are not playing nice together - this is not true - they are fine. The problem came from the fact that the motherboard was an "Open Box" product that someone at the retailer had been using and clearly experimenting with. The heatsink had been removed at some point and then not correctly seated on the motherboard - hence the 3090 in the 16x slot clashing with the heat sink. It's now fixed and working great - there is NO PROBLEM with Gigabytes Aorus X570 Master and Gigabyte 3090 Eagle GPU

Hi all, I wonder if you could help.

I recently upgraded from a 1920x Threadripper to a 5800x R7 so I got an Aorus Master motherboard but sadly the chipset cooler on this board is not flat - it has a raised top on it...and now I can't install my Gigabyte 3090 in the 16x slot (top slot looking at the board). So at the moment, I have the card in the next slot down, which is only a 8x slot - I've not seen a performance penalty, but I'm wonderingf if there is an alternative chipset heatsinks or cooler for this motherboard?

I wrote to esupport at Gigabyte and they said they don't provide an alternative...which is annoying because the Mobo is Gigabyte and the Eagle 3090 is Gigabyte too - but nowhere on either product does it say that you can't install the massive GPU in the 16x slot on this motherboard.

Very frustrating.

Any advice or assitance would be very welcome.

Someone advised that I tag @GIGA-Man in this post

mickyflinn · 9 Nov 2020 at 10:49

Hi

I can't see any refrence to this problem on the web which is unusall as surely others would have the same problem .

Have you found any ?

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 11:57

No. I've not found anything either. I bought the Mobo as an "open box" from ****** and although a couple of NVME stand offs are missing (another pain in the butt) the heatsink itself seems to be seated correctly. Such a pain that it's been manufactured in a way that their own GPU's doesn't fit with one of their premium mobos

mickyflinn · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:08

Z-U said:
No. I've not found anything either. I bought the Mobo as an "open box" from ****** and although a couple of NVME stand offs are missing (another pain in the butt) the heatsink itself seems to be seated correctly. Such a pain that it's been manufactured in a way that their own GPU's doesn't fit with one of their premium mobos

Email Gigabyte again and ask them would they Check this situation, I can't believe they would allow such an oversight especially with there own cards.

Join the Gigabyte forums you may get more joy there.

https://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:27

Good thinking - thanks

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:39

Do you think a riser cable might help? Something like this? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCI-E-PC...371962?hash=item5b736a537a:g:YzkAAOSwItFeppWl

Or perhaps a vertical mounting kit?

mickyflinn · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:58

Z-U said:
Do you think a riser cable might help? Something like this? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCI-E-PC...371962?hash=item5b736a537a:g:YzkAAOSwItFeppWl

Or perhaps a vertical mounting kit?

Pcie riser cable or mounting could be a soloution but you need to make sure it's pcie 4 otherwise there's no point you mite as well run it in the lower slot.

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 13:38

I've just been reading about that....jeez. nightmare

Z-U · 9 Nov 2020 at 20:42

Some progress. Found a PCIe 4.0 riser...hopefully can go back to 16x and probably a vertical mount instead. Wrote to gigabyte about missing NVMe stand-offs and they are gonna send me two. Result. My only concern now is my case not being able to take a vertically mounted card because it's 3 slots wider and there only appears to be a double slot for vertical mounting. Hahaha. Nightmare continues maybe.

Cenuij · 10 Nov 2020 at 00:59

Ooft, there really isn't a lot of room in there: here's an EVGA 2080 super

Z-U · 10 Nov 2020 at 01:23

The 3090 simply doesn't fit - won't clip inot the 16x slot. Even in the 8x slot, the tolerance is about what you have there ~1mm - one end of the heatsink is about 11mm from the board surface to the top of the metal and the other end (right side of the heatsink in your picture) is about 15mm....at the 11mm end - I only have ~1mm tolerance...wish there was an alternative sink to put on top of it.

Can't believe that no one inside gigabyte actually tried out their premium boards with their own premium cards. Thanks for the picture BTW.

Excuse the vertical format...but here you can hopefully see the issue...the card in the 8x slot is already tight...as the heatsink height rises on the right hand side, at it's maximum height it is anothre 4mm higher at least...and that is right in line with the 16x slot.

Cenuij · 10 Nov 2020 at 03:49

@GIGA-Man houston, we have a problem

Hotwired · 10 Nov 2020 at 06:06

Makes you wonder who failed to keep their product within acceptable dimensions the gpu or mobo team.

Pretty bad form if your companys own products don't play with each other.

Z-U · 14 Nov 2020 at 11:56

OK so I tracked down the problem with the fitting. Because this motherboard was an open box product from an online retailer...it had been used and clearly dismantled at some point. Having stripped the computer down again last night, I noticed a missing screw in the backplate heat shield thingy...and two of the screw holding it in place were very loose....so I took the back plate off and then had a look at how the heat sink was mounted. It hadn't been put back on correctly....once I removed the heat sync I could see that the cable for the fan was in the wrong place...it straighten that out, re-seated the heatsink correctly...screwed it back in correctly and then replaced the backplate. Before even fitting it - I tested out the 3090 seating in the 16x slot and hey presto...it DOES fit! This is NOT a problem with the board and card...it a problem with not quite knowing what you're getting on an Open Box deal

So I will update the opening post with an update so know has to be put off by suspitions of this combination. In all fairness to Gigabyte - it's not their fault...it's some IT guy at a retailers fault

Glad it's sorted now though - ran a bunch of benchmarks on it last night and it's performing extremely well. In the 98th percentile of most benchmarks....and this is not overclocked to high heaven nor cooled by LN2...it running on with a BeQuiet PureloopAIO water cooler - virtually silent - and I'm very happy with this build again

Subject closed - happy for admin to remove this thread.

Cenuij · 14 Nov 2020 at 12:18

Good news! Enjoy yer new rig

Wondeag · 7 Dec 2020 at 18:13

Something interesting just happened to me.

Today my x570 Aorus Master and EVGA FTW3 arrived from Amazon. I thought it was very strange that the x570 box wasn't sealed, even though it wasn't listed as open box on Amazon. I'd actually seen this thread when researching the Aorus Master so the 1st thing I did was check that the 3090 fit. NOPE!

What the hell is going on? Is it the design of the boards or is there many of these boards with modified heatsinks in circulation?

Purgatory · 7 Dec 2020 at 18:53

The motherboard standoffs are too long on the case maybe, I had a problem like this in the past when I purchased a fractal case, they sent me the right sized motherboard standoffs in the end to cure the problem (mine were too short and the pcie devices would not sit in the slots all the way. If you have shorter standoffs try that. Basically your motherboard is sat maybe a little too high. The problem is your case not the motherboard I think in this case, but only way to make sure 100% is to take the motherboard out and try the GPU while the motherboard is out of the case and see if it sits right, it it doesnt then its your graphics card and motherboard are not a good combination.

Wondeag · 7 Dec 2020 at 20:18

I didn't even put the motherboard in the case. Motherboard and GPU fresh out of the box and the GPU wont click in to the PCIE slot because the heatsink is sitting too high. It's also a terrible design to have the heatsink and chipset fan going straight in to the side of the GPU heatsink...

I just did a bit of research and all Gigabyte and ASUS x570 chipset fans are blocked by the GPU in the top slot. It's really an awful design. The only manufacturer that doesn't do this is MSI who have the chipset fan lower. But on further research all MSI boards are having loads of problems with RAM clocked more than 3200mhz on Zen 3. I've just splashed out on some G.Skill 4000mhz CL16 memory so MSI isn't really an option for me.

Really struggling to find a motherboard that works for Zen 3 / 3090 / 4000mhz RAM. Honestly might just scrap this AMD build and go back to Intel. AMD seems more hassle than it's worth.

Z-U · 8 Dec 2020 at 08:25

Before you do that...do you hear any rattling of the backplate on the motherboard? This was the clue that perhaps it had been off and this in turn led me to discover that someone else had had the chooser cooler off and not reseated it correctly. Double check the cooler is on correctly and then give the card a firm push too once confirmed. Hopefully that can help. It should fit, but yeah the cooler height is an issue if not fitted correctly.

Wondeag · 8 Dec 2020 at 18:03

I had prepped it for return but I was looking through youtube videos and noticed that the heatsink was sitting higher on theirs also, so I went back and was a bit more rough and put a bit of weight in to it and it clicked in to place. It's still touching the heatsink but I think it will be fine. Perhaps I was just being a bit sheepish with my GPU because I'd just spent £1800 on it. Bios lashed and just waiting for 5900x now. Thanks for the reply anyway.