it will be a complicated design with fins built into your heater tank and high chances of leak and very difficult for maintenance. if algae happens you are in trouble. it can be done but remember thermal equilibrium, i dont like the idea of water cool cards running at 55C and above. we design water to be 120C so whenever you switch on the tap can always enjoy 38C good warm temperature for bath tub or pure enjoyment. sometimes higher temp for the water vapor effect.
you need one pipe design for in and out for connection to your water heater tank, preferably use thicker copper than usual. secondly from your wall to your gpu racks can use quick release. depending on volume and height difference you might need a booster pump that can handle coolant and not leak. and hopefully your heat sink in the tank will not corrode or covered with any other dirt that comes with incoming water.
last but not least the temperature once reach 50C in your water heater tank your gpu will be running at 60C or more, i havent put into equations to calculate but roughly there. dont forget your walls will be warm all the time also.
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R12 mobo is not greatly exceptional as any x570 can do same or better especially mid to high end boards.
Cross fire doesnt need any adapter for all boards, nvlink is require if only you wanted to run 3090+3090 in a very stable manner for example AI, rendering etc. dual sli can be done w/o nvlink but performance isnt great.
and the amount of gpu is limited by your cpu on windows os, linux is the way to go if you want to build more than 8 gpu. intel processors can handle less bus lanes compared to ryzen, even your mobo has a lot of lanes, there is only so little you can use them in a stable manner.
3090 is space efficient compared to price and performance ratio. depends on your current size and priority. my 3090 running at 40 to 45% efficiency compared to 3080 50%, 3070 50 to 56%, 3060ti 49 to 55%.
if you do not plant to run rtx 30 series on pcie 1x is doable, else your system will be unstable on windows os.
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if you have space, fill up the gap and make your pcb and backplate contact while adding small fins usually for robotics on your back plate, it works. of course make better ventilation of the case or just run the pc wil all panels open, bare case would be another option.
Will it affect the hashrate if the PCIE slot is running gen 3 or 4? I mean if i were to google hashrate for certain GPU, i will find various number some high and some low, even when they're sharing the same settings. of coz they didnt mention their rig specs. One thing for sure if i were to use eGPU via thunderbolt, the hashrate definitely lower than direct PCIE connection on a PC even with the similar recommended OC, PL, MC, CC, with those who got it high hashrate.