XPS 8950, PCIe x1 Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus

You may want to install the sound card in slot #17 so it would not block hot air rising from video card in slot #16.  If you video card is blower style, the sound card would not affect its air flow.  If the video card is open air style, there will be some small reduction of air flow near the bottom of case.  Exactly how much gpu temperature difference it makes?  You can experiment it.  I suspect not much in practice as 8950 has a big chassis space, and sound card in slot #17 is very close to the floor not blocking much air.

If you plan to leave 8950 on floor without a riser then practically speaking the lowest PCIe slot should not be used due to physical inconvenience to plug in its ports.  Agree that practical temperature difference may be negligible whether or not you install a second card and where you install it.  The concerns may be more theoretical.

I am not sure that the card will fit in the lower slot. I have a SoundBlaster "ZX" series installed and it works fine. I have mine installed in the slot above the video card (RTX3060Ti) and I don't have any thermal problems. It did take a minute to get the PC to recognize it but that was back in December. (2021). There have been lots of updates to Windows 11 since then and the install may go much smoother now.

I really wish I could have installed my sound card in the bottom slot but it would not physically fit. The video card does not leave enough room. Installing it in the top slot made for a tight fit of my NVMe drive with a heatsink.

Hi:

My graphics card has two fans (one on left and one on right of the card) facing downwards (towards the power supply at the bottom) , there is no opening on the top left-side of the card case but there is opening on the top-right ( I can see the fins of the heat sink) . I hope they are sucking air from the bottom and pass out to the top (as I have not seen the fans turned on yet since my applications are light , temperature isn't high).

I place my system on desk to avoid dust and also closer to me and speakers to avoid long cables.

I was choosing betweem the ZX and Soundblaster X AE-5 plus . I am not a gamer but need the soundcard for movies and some light audio recording, so how is the sound quality from ZX ?  I have 2 sets of surround sound speakers which I use as quadraphonic speakers with two subwoofers.

The sound quality is good but I have heard of people complain about interference noise. I am using the optical out to hook it to my A/V receiver so interference is not an issue for me.

Hey moxxy I just got the XPS 8950, PCIe x1 Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus, Did you ever install yours>>??

Sorry for late reply . I got Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus and installed it at 18 instead of the PCIe at 17 because the soundcard (with its plastic case) at slot 17 (see reply by redxps630 on page 1) will block the air flow into the graphics card. There are two fans sucking in air on the graphics card but the soundcard at slot 18 will not block the outgoing air because one of the graphics card fans near the back of the system case actually drives air out towards the back of the system case instead of upwards and there is only one opening for the other fan on the graphics card that allows  air to go upwards (towards the CPU intake air fan, I have a vertical heatsink/fan cooling arrangement for the processor) but that opening is not blocked by the soundcard , so it works out , but now ....

 I have another problem. I want to install a TV tuner card at slot 17 . The TV card does not have any boxy plastic casing but it is still very close to the graphics card at where the graphics card fans are sucking in air (only a few mm space between the cards), I wonder if I should install the TV card or just waste an empty PCIe slot letting the graphics card enjoy taking in the air !?