Thermals are not the issue, most if not all of the triple slot 3080s stay around 60c in any benchmark I've seen.
 
Why are AIBs collectively deciding that gamers must buy new cases to upgrade their GPUs?
 
I would gladly rather take a dual slot blower card over a triple slot garbage that looks loke a 5 year olds art project.
 
FE 3080 is also never going to happen, there's never going to be stock on them while there are no AIB cards.
 
*Even if pictures of AIB dual slot blower style 3080s exist on google, they are not listed by any retailer.

bhavv
Thermals are not the issue, ...

Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right answer.

Thermals are the issue. Blower heatsinks are much less efficient than axial-cooled heatsinks. The amount of airflow needed is ridiculous.

The problem with blower heatsinks is that the cooling path is very long. Air can only absorb heat based on temperature differential. As the air heats up, the temperature difference decreases, and it is unable to absorb as much additional heat. This means that at sane fan speeds, by halfway down the blower headsink's air path, the air has heated up and has lost ability to absorb additional heat. The effective heatsink size is therefore half as big as it appears. You have to really crank the airlow up to have effective cooling for the entire length of the heatsink. And no one likes that noise.

The FE card's blower design works because it is actually a hybrid half axial and half blower design. Since the blower portion is half the size, less airlow is necessary to effectively cool it.

The reason AIBs don't make the FE heatsink is because of cost. The FE's heatsink is more expensive to make versus a taller axial heatsink, so the AIB makes the taller axial heatsink. The AIB has greater cost than NVIDIA, because the AIB needs to pay NVIDIA a markup, so the AIB can't afford to spend as much money as NVIDIA on the cooler.

I suppose such a design would be possible but right now just making enough stock to keep up with current designed stock demand is impossible. I don't think there will be many more different designs until supply can catch up with demand. That will be a very long time coming. 

You said blower, that's why I talked about blower.

Regarding a 2-slot axial cooler, I agree with you for the most part. There is only one problem... I think that they may purposely make it take up more than 2 slots so that you can't sandwich another card directly next to the card and block the axial fan's flow. With a 2-slot cooler, the heatsink would be slightly less effective, and additionally partially blocking the axial fans' airflow may be a problem.

I am sure that they do it for a reason.

I  think the custom made ALienware 3080 is a 2-slot.?
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/jnj9l0/alienware_custom_rtx3080/
 
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/8/21508481/alienware-rtx-3080-3090-aurora-r11-r10-area-51-monitor-360hz
 
I wish I could get my hands on that for a retail price....

nater88
Who needs a new case to fit a triple slot card?  Maybe in the sff build scene, of which I am a part--and those guys-a fringe of the market-know they are taking those risk/limitations when they choose such a tiny case.  There's no conspiracy to make you buy a new case.  Manufacturers need to balance fin density, cooler height, fan speed (noise levels), and other variables on these new cards that use a ridiculous amount of power.  The fact that all of them are gravitating towards larger coolers shows they are all coming to the same conclusions about the optimal solutions.  When reviewers are testing cards, they are generally doing so on an open test bench, which gives the cards the best cooling possible.  In the real world, those cards are going to mostly go into cases with cooling beyond the card manufacturer's control, and some if not most of them are going to undoubtedly be worse than a test environment.  Modern GPU's use complex tables of temperature and power to determine clock speed as they try to push the absolute maximum performance out of the silicone.  Because of the way clock speeds are so easily affected by thermals on modern graphics cards, I guess there's not a large market of people willing to sacrifice performance for a card that is physically smaller. 

ITX is a standardised form factor that many people buy because they dont need anymore than a single graphics card in their expansion slot and to save desk space. This isnt a SFF case by any means but can still only fit a dual slot card. If the reference edition is dual slot then there is no valid reason why AIBs cannot also make dual slot cards, the 3080 does not need a triple slot cooler at all given that Nvidia themselves didn't make it with one. The ITX market is absolutely huge, all your excuses are just that, excuses. Also any dual slot card can simply utilize faster fans and let customers choose if they would rather have that or a triple slot with quieter fans.
 

 
Also of you actually have an ordinary modern larger case, then you will have enough airflow to see the same temperatures as in every review. I don't believe that thermal reviews are done only in open bench, most hardware reviews are done in a normal case and specified as such in the list of hardware used for that review. The Hexus results I posted were from inside a normal Fractal case. 
 
Also what a completely pathetic forum not even letting me link to the hexus review showing the test setup used, and most users being nothing but EVGA shills defending anything their precious EVGA / other AIBs do.
 
 

bhavv

nater88
Who needs a new case to fit a triple slot card?  Maybe in the sff build scene, of which I am a part--and those guys-a fringe of the market-know they are taking those risk/limitations when they choose such a tiny case.  There's no conspiracy to make you buy a new case.  Manufacturers need to balance fin density, cooler height, fan speed (noise levels), and other variables on these new cards that use a ridiculous amount of power.  The fact that all of them are gravitating towards larger coolers shows they are all coming to the same conclusions about the optimal solutions.  When reviewers are testing cards, they are generally doing so on an open test bench, which gives the cards the best cooling possible.  In the real world, those cards are going to mostly go into cases with cooling beyond the card manufacturer's control, and some if not most of them are going to undoubtedly be worse than a test environment.  Modern GPU's use complex tables of temperature and power to determine clock speed as they try to push the absolute maximum performance out of the silicone.  Because of the way clock speeds are so easily affected by thermals on modern graphics cards, I guess there's not a large market of people willing to sacrifice performance for a card that is physically smaller. 

ITX is a standardised form factor that many people buy because they dont need anymore than a single graphics card in their expansion slot and to save desk space. This isnt a SFF case by any means but can still only fit a dual slot card. If the reference edition is dual slot then there is no valid reason why AIBs cannot also make dual slot cards, the 3080 does not need a triple slot cooler at all given that Nvidia themselves didn't make it with one. The ITX market is absolutely huge, all your excuses are just that, excuses. Also any dual slot card can simply utilize faster fans and let customers choose if they would rather have that or a triple slot with quieter fans.
 

 
Also of you actually have an ordinary modern larger case, then you will have enough airflow to see the same temperatures as in every review. I don't believe that thermal reviews are done only in open bench, most hardware reviews are done in a normal case and specified as such in the list of hardware used for that review. The Hexus results I posted were from inside a normal Fractal case. 
 
Also what a completely pathetic forum not even letting me link to the hexus review showing the test setup used, and most users being nothing but EVGA shills defending anything their precious EVGA / other AIBs do.
 
 

I think you're almost getting to the reason here. Consider all the different benchmark sites' metrics: performance, power consumption, temperature, and noise. The first two are mainly down to the chips provided by NVIDIA, with the AIB partners having some leeway for factory overclocking that are generally all neck and neck with each other. Temperature and noise, however are directly proportional and can be greatly affected by cooler design. So yeah, the big triple-slot coolers don't get into the danger zone of >90°C, but they also don't scream as loud as the old 80mm fan dual slot coolers of the past. That's a major point of differentiation when people are picking their products based on benchmarking, and a quieter card that can keep up is going to have a positive reputation. Adding onto that, temperature DOES become a limiting factor again when cards are overclocked, as these AIB designs are marketed to be. Not only does a triple slot cooler offer more effect heat transfer area, but it also offers a higher thermal mass before it reaches a critical temperature and clocks down. That's important when you're using real-world benchmarks that don't stress the GPU 100% the whole time; gaming benchmarks typically have workload gradients where a card will get hit harder than other areas, and having a higher thermal mass can give it some more headroom during those temporary peaks in demand.
 
Also on the note of your last sentence, EVGA's forums are blocking your links because you haven't made enough posts. It's a safeguard against bots and scammers spamming links which has been used by numerous forums for literal decades. No need for the salt.

FloodControl
One more thought on the lack of two slot cards from AIBs:
NVIDIA's partner companies are ultimately driven by demand. If their sales are leaning heavily toward larger cards with no consideration for standardized slot spacing, that's what they're going to target in the future. With SLI dying, new cases accommodating bigger cards on average, and the emphasis on cool and quiet computing there's not a lot of incentive to stick to a two slot design.

FloodControl
One more thought on the lack of two slot cards from AIBs:
NVIDIA's partner companies are ultimately driven by demand. If their sales are leaning heavily toward larger cards with no consideration for standardized slot spacing, that's what they're going to target in the future. With SLI dying, new cases accommodating bigger cards on average, and the emphasis on cool and quiet computing there's not a lot of incentive to stick to a two slot design.

Another reason, like I said, is that the AIB might purposely prevent you from installing something too close to the card in order to maximize airflow to the card.  Why else would EVGA make the card 2.1 slots instead of 2 slots?  If EVGA made it a 2-slot card, it would be harder for EVGA to ensure that the user doesn't block too much airflow to the card.  One the other hand, if EVGA purposely prevents it from being possible to block the airflow to the card, by making a 2-slot card occupy 2.1 slots, EVGA doesn't have to worry so much about people installing something too close to the axial fans' intakes.