{"id":262,"date":"2022-04-14T10:58:59","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T18:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/?p=262"},"modified":"2025-08-18T17:37:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T01:37:31","slug":"getting-nvidia-a100-80gb-pcie-to-work-on-a-consumer-motherboard-with-custom-water-cooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/262-getting-nvidia-a100-80gb-pcie-to-work-on-a-consumer-motherboard-with-custom-water-cooling\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting NVIDIA A100-80GB PCIe to work on a consumer motherboard with custom water cooling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For the last few months I have been trying to get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nvidia.com\/en-us\/data-center\/a100\/\">A100 80GB PCIe<\/a> to work on my desktop computer.<br \/><br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-276\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-a100-pcie-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-a100-pcie-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-a100-pcie.jpg 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The first stage was to get the card recognized by BIOS and then the OS which took quite some figuring out.<\/p>\n<p>The second stage was to get a custom water cooling solution, since A100 runs really hot and it&#8217;s very difficult to cool with just fans and typically requires a server-level cooling hardware and a server room with air conditioning.<\/p>\n<p>But after a few months of trials and tribulations I have a working solution, which I&#8217;ll share with you in this post.<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Getting A100 recognized by BIOS<\/h2>\n<p>A100 PCIe is a headless card designed for server use &#8211; it has no sockets to plug a monitor in.<\/p>\n<p>I first made <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.developer.nvidia.com\/t\/a100-pcie-isnt-recognized-by-bios\/198546\">a post at NVIDIA forums<\/a> asking for help and another user found that the only way to make A100 work is to have another NVIDIA GPU to run the monitor from and that it&#8217;s currently impossible to use iGPU (built-in gpu available with most Intel CPUs consumer level motherboards).<\/p>\n<p>To benefit from PCIe-4 I purchased <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3uGQOpK\">ROG Maximus XIII Hero (z590)<\/a> as my original MB was z390 \/ PCIe-3.<\/p>\n<p>I first tried using iGPU (CPU Graphics) and A100 lead to the system not POSTING (d4 &#8211; PCI resource allocation error. Out of Resources).<\/p>\n<p>As kindly shared by one of the forum users that <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.developer.nvidia.com\/t\/a100-pcie-isnt-recognized-by-bios\/198546\/12\">the current solution is to use a 2nd card<\/a>, I added a old NVIDIA PCIe card and plugged the monitor into it. Now it POSTed and booted just fine, but still not seeing A100 wasn&#8217;t visible in nvidia-smi.<\/p>\n<p>I also tried changing the order of the cards (A100 2nd) &#8211; but there was no change in the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>I then experimented with various BIOS configurations until I found one that worked. Here it is:<\/p>\n<pre><code class=\"hljs yaml\"><span class=\"hljs-attr\">Advanced:<\/span>\n\n  <span class=\"hljs-string\">Advanced<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">System<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Agent<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">(SA)<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">configuration<\/span>\n\n    <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Graphics Configuration:<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Primary Display:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Auto<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">(probably<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">could<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">be<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">set<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">to<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">PEG)<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">IGPU Multi-Monitor:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Disabled<\/span>\n\n    <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Memory Configuration:<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Memory Remap:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Enabled<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">(above<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">4GB)<\/span>\n\n    <span class=\"hljs-string\">PCI<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Subsystem<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Settings<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Above 4G Decoding:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Enabled<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">Resize Bar:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Enabled<\/span>\n      <span class=\"hljs-attr\">SR-IOV Support:<\/span> <span class=\"hljs-string\">Enabled<\/span>\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>and the reason it wasn\u2019t working originally is because by default it had <code>SR-IOV Support: Disabled<\/code><\/p>\n<p>As it&#8217;s possible that other motherboards may or may not work please read this <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.developer.nvidia.com\/t\/a100-pcie-isnt-recognized-by-bios\/198546\">thread<\/a> where Scott Ellis explains which BIOS settings the server motherboards normally need to detect A100, and which may or may not be present in the consumer motherboard. Another user shared that they got it to work on <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3rtAhnb\">ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-G GAMING WIFI<\/a>, so chances are that the recent motherboards support it. If you find others that work please don&#8217;t hesitate to share the name in the comments.<\/p>\n<h2>Water Cooling A100<\/h2>\n<p>Fans proved to be very inadequate for A100 cooling, the huge radiator it came with did well for the first few minutes and then it&#8217;d remain really hot &#8211; definitely not something usable for the weak PC fans. Perhaps it&#8217;d work if I were to blast them at 100% speed but it&#8217;d be very loud and won&#8217;t work in summer.<\/p>\n<p>I started researching water cooling.<\/p>\n<p>I first ordered the water block from EKWB &#8211; they unfortunately didn&#8217;t label their product correctly &#8211; only in a small print it said that it was for A100 40GB <strong>which doesn&#8217;t fit A100 80GB PCB<\/strong>. So I wasted a lot of time and lost money on dealing with the wrong product. I asked them to fix the label to state that it&#8217;s a 40GB block, but they refuse to do it. And as of this writing they have no plans to make a 80GB version.<br \/><br \/>Here is the 40GB water block from EKWB:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-265 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-1024x422.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-1024x422.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-300x124.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-768x316.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-1536x633.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/ekwb-a100-40gb-2048x844.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><br \/><br \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But A100 80Gb added a metal frame around the main chip as can be seen below. It wasn&#8217;t there in the 40GB version of PCB.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-275 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-chip-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><br \/><br \/>Then I ordered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bykski.com\/page133?product_id=5393\">Bykski&#8217;s A100 80GB water block<\/a> via aliexpress. The ordering experience wasn&#8217;t great as I paid top dollar for quick shipping (DHL) and the vendor abused that, by submitting a shipment label but didn&#8217;t ship the product for weeks! As soon as I was able to start a dispute and request a full refused I did that, and immediately the product was shipped. So be careful spending extra money on shipment since Aliexpress allows its vendors to do what they please and they don&#8217;t enforce anything.<br \/><br \/>Here is the water block (left) and the PCB (right):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-266 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-919x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"602\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-919x1024.jpg 919w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-269x300.jpg 269w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-768x856.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-1379x1536.jpg 1379w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Bykski-water-block-a100-pcb-1838x2048.jpg 1838w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Taking apart A100 was mainly a matter of removing all the screws. The key to be able to remove the panel is to remove 2 screws around the power plug.<\/p>\n<p>The first step is to clean the main chip from the thermal paste using alcohol and a coffee filter so that the old residue is removed.<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-273 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-150x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-150x300.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-513x1024.jpg 513w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-768x1534.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-769x1536.jpg 769w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-1025x2048.jpg 1025w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-80gb-pcb-scaled.jpg 1281w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><br \/>Then thermal pads need to be applied. The instructions provided by Bykski product page are negligently incomplete. Luckily I still had the original radiator to be the model to where I need to apply the thermal pads:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-272 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-1024x638.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-768x479.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-1536x957.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-full-2048x1277.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You can see I matched them (actually I now see I missed one of them on the left! ouch)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-270 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-300x176.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-1024x602.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-768x451.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-1536x902.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-added-thermal-pads-scaled-e1649960182405-2048x1203.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s time to put the water block on and tighten the 4 screws around the main chip:<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-269 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-300x156.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"156\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-300x156.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-1024x531.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-768x398.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-1536x797.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-pcb-mounted-on-water-block-2048x1062.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bykski slacked again and didn&#8217;t provide a proper mounting bracket that would fit their product. Their instructions allude to using the bracket from the original A100 radiator. As you can see it had 4 screws mounting the main radiator body and 2 more on the side you can&#8217;t see on the picture:<br \/><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-271 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-300x149.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-300x149.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-1024x509.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-768x382.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-1536x763.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-orig-radiator-mounting-bracket-2048x1018.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>so when you try to mount it on Bykski block you end up with it mostly hanging in the air and attached to the backplate with 2 super tiny screws. This is very poor engineering.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-264 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-300x185.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-1024x633.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-768x475.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-1536x949.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/reusing-a100-bracket-2048x1266.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The acrylic block is super-heavy, I&#8217;m very concerned that this can break the PCIe socket or the A100 PCB.<br \/><br \/>(If Bykski engineers read this, please provide your own custom mounting bracket that gets screwed onto the acrylic block and perhaps the backplate. Otherwise your product can easily break the motherboard socket, since the original mounting bracket that comes with A100 was not designed for your watering block.)<br \/><br \/>Finally I put it all together with a radiator and a reservoir-pump combo from EKWB and had it run for 24h to test for leaks.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-268 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-216x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-216x300.jpg 216w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-738x1024.jpg 738w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-768x1065.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-1107x1536.jpg 1107w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-1477x2048.jpg 1477w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/a100-water-cooling-ensemble-IMG_20220412_161955090-scaled.jpg 1846w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 216px) 100vw, 216px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This was my first time doing a custom water cooling solution so it wasn&#8217;t easy. As I couldn&#8217;t afford to have my desktop not working for 24h, I did the whole water cooling ensemble outside and simply plugged it into an old computer while testing for leaks. And the next day I mounted the ensemble in the target PC while keeping the 3 parts interconnected, which was a bit of a challenge but I made it work.<\/p>\n<p>I purchased the huge <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3M0bdMm\">7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX PC Case from Corsair<\/a> and even then I had a hard time putting this huge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ekwb.com\/shop\/ek-coolstream-ce-420-triple\">EK-CoolStream CE 420<\/a> radiator together with the smaller AIO radiator I was using for CPU already. I have multiple HDs and the <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3KLOxPU\">Corsair HX1200<\/a> power-supply that is extra long, so I barely had any space to place all those parts around.<br \/><br \/>Finally, I had to turn <a href=\"https:\/\/askubuntu.com\/a\/1099963\/803807\">my headless solution for igpu and nvidia cards off<\/a>, so that it could switch to the NVIDIA driver, while having the monitor plugged into an old GTX-1080 which was perfect as it is low power and doesn&#8217;t overheat as easily as the Ampere GPUs. And booted my Kubuntu.<br \/><br \/>And voila putting some serious load on the card it keeps a nice ~30C &#8211; Amazing!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-smi-a100-gtx-1080.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-274 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-smi-a100-gtx-1080.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"760\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-smi-a100-gtx-1080.png 760w, https:\/\/stasosphere.com\/entrepreneur-being\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/nvidia-smi-a100-gtx-1080-300x194.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 760px) 100vw, 760px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So despite not thinking it fully through the Bykski&#8217;s water block works well at the moment.<br \/>And yes, A100 80Gb is 10x larger than GTX-1080.<\/p>\n<h2>Things to figure out<\/h2>\n<ol>\n<li>setting up software to trigger PWM and water pump adjustments based on temperature reported by <code>nvidia-smi<\/code> &#8211; at the moment I have just set a normal pump speed in BIOS and using the CPU&#8217;s AIO to drive the speed of the fans &#8211; typically when GPU is churning CPU is almost always busy as well.<\/li>\n<li>Of course, figuring out how to get rid of the 2nd NVIDIA card and use iGPU instead. Save electric bills and generate less heat. If you discover a solution please share in the comments. Thank you!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Notes<\/h2>\n<p>This post is focused on the specifics of getting A100 80GB PCIe working in a PC, and I&#8217;m not an expert in water cooling, so besides sharing how I installed the water block itself, I trust you can find the details on the best way to do the water cooling elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Huge thanks to the person on the NVIDIA forums who <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.developer.nvidia.com\/t\/a100-pcie-isnt-recognized-by-bios\/198546\/12\">discovered the workaround by using a 2nd card to recognize A100<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Other related gpu-center-at-home tinkering projects<\/h2>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/leikoe.github.io\/posts\/automotive-gpu-maxxxing\">A 4x A100-SXM setup at home<\/a> by Leo Paille<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the last few months I have been trying to get A100 80GB PCIe to work on my desktop computer. The first stage was to get the card recognized by BIOS and then the OS which took quite some figuring out. The second stage was to get a custom water cooling solution, since A100 runs [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[44,45,43,47],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-machine-learning","tag-a100","tag-gpu","tag-nvidia","tag-water-cooling-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Getting NVIDIA A100-80GB PCIe to work on a consumer motherboard with custom water cooling - 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