Yes, it will damage both cards in the long run. Find a smaller 50x50mm heatsink, also swap the cards.

PS. Increase the RAM to at least 64MiB.

And/or look for a different motherboard. The BabyAT form factor always has challenges with some long cards, but a lot of boards have the CPU lower down, impacting a couple of ISA slots and leaving one or two PCI slots free for longer cards.

There are also shorter S3 Virge cards - in particular cards by Diamond and ELSA are frequently not much longer than the slot itself. I see the Diamond Stealth3D 3000 pop up quite a lot. It also has very good analog image quality (commonly poor on S3-based cards)

dominusprog wrote on 2025-08-19, 07:55:

[...]

PS. Increase the RAM to at least 64MiB.

To max 64MiB. This board has an i430VX chipset and can only cache 64MB. If it's just about playing games, no game that would run well on this setup would need more than 64MB.

dionb wrote on 2025-08-19, 09:01:

And/or look for a different motherboard. The BabyAT form factor always has challenges with some long cards, but a lot of boards […]
Show full quote

And/or look for a different motherboard. The BabyAT form factor always has challenges with some long cards, but a lot of boards have the CPU lower down, impacting a couple of ISA slots and leaving one or two PCI slots free for longer cards.

There are also shorter S3 Virge cards - in particular cards by Diamond and ELSA are frequently not much longer than the slot itself. I see the Diamond Stealth3D 3000 pop up quite a lot. It also has very good analog image quality (commonly poor on S3-based cards)

dominusprog wrote on 2025-08-19, 07:55:

[...]

PS. Increase the RAM to at least 64MiB.

To max 64MiB. This board has an i430VX chipset and can only cache 64MB. If it's just about playing games, no game that would run well on this setup would need more than 64MB.

Yes, I completely forgot. I'm just thinking about the K6-2.

What's wrong with swapping the 2 cards?
The vga is shorter

myne wrote on 2025-08-19, 14:13:

What's wrong with swapping the 2 cards?
The vga is shorter

I did try that, but the RAM sockets on the S3 are taller and cause more flex on the end of the card than what the V2 is experiencing.

I’ll be on the hunt for a smaller heatsink, my focus was on keeping the K6-2 nice and cool, though from what I’m reading about 3Dfx, these cards took on a lot of the processing power and relaxed/offloaded the CPU.

I did have a Radeon 7000 PCI in here, but having the Voodoo2 is a 27-year dream-come-true.
And I wanted to run Glide games as natively as possible.

The HOT-591P has this same issue with the Voodoo2 and Shuttle's suggestion is a low profile heatsink

Which leads to the question: why did high profile ones exist then? Quieter fan, overkill because they're Socket 370/A era ones, or cheaper because the smaller ones need more expensive/more thermally conductive metal?

I'm not sure there's any real risk.
The bent looks very light.

Bizz wrote on 2025-08-19, 18:17:

I did try that, but the RAM sockets on the S3 are taller and cause more flex on the end of the card than what the V2 is experien […]
Show full quote

myne wrote on 2025-08-19, 14:13:

What's wrong with swapping the 2 cards?
The vga is shorter

I did try that, but the RAM sockets on the S3 are taller and cause more flex on the end of the card than what the V2 is experiencing.

I’ll be on the hunt for a smaller heatsink, my focus was on keeping the K6-2 nice and cool, though from what I’m reading about 3Dfx, these cards took on a lot of the processing power and relaxed/offloaded the CPU.

I did have a Radeon 7000 PCI in here, but having the Voodoo2 is a 27-year dream-come-true.
And I wanted to run Glide games as natively as possible.

I'd rather bend an S3 than a voodoo

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-08-19, 18:34:

The HOT-591P has this same issue with the Voodoo2 and Shuttle's suggestion is a low profile heatsink

Which leads to the question: why did high profile ones exist then? Quieter fan, overkill because they're Socket 370/A era ones, or cheaper because the smaller ones need more expensive/more thermally conductive metal?

Because more cooling is better - and you can hardly blame CPU cooler designers for the consequences of poor motherboard layout.

The challenge is that you simply can't keep making boards smaller (this is a relatively short babyAT board, if you compare it to say Asus' own P55T2P4), add more features (big VRMs as well as the CPU socket itself - and DIMM slots on many boards) and yet still keep space free for big cards. Take a look at other contemporary designs - every single one is a compromise in some way. Asus chose to dedicate what space there was exclusively to ISA slots, which - in 1997 - is a bad choice for a mainstream board. Compare it with say an Abit AB-IT5V, which has two uninterrupted PCI slots as well as one ISA slot. Not great for legacy-heavy builds but better suited for a 1997 mainstream board.

dionb wrote on 2025-08-20, 07:33:

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-08-19, 18:34:

The HOT-591P has this same issue with the Voodoo2 and Shuttle's suggestion is a low profile heatsink

Which leads to the question: why did high profile ones exist then? Quieter fan, overkill because they're Socket 370/A era ones, or cheaper because the smaller ones need more expensive/more thermally conductive metal?

Because more cooling is better - and you can hardly blame CPU cooler designers for the consequences of poor motherboard layout.

The challenge is that you simply can't keep making boards smaller (this is a relatively short babyAT board, if you compare it to say Asus' own P55T2P4), add more features (big VRMs as well as the CPU socket itself - and DIMM slots on many boards) and yet still keep space free for big cards. Take a look at other contemporary designs - every single one is a compromise in some way. Asus chose to dedicate what space there was exclusively to ISA slots, which - in 1997 - is a bad choice for a mainstream board. Compare it with say an Abit AB-IT5V, which has two uninterrupted PCI slots as well as one ISA slot. Not great for legacy-heavy builds but better suited for a 1997 mainstream board.

Right, good cooling is necessary for a K6-2, but if he installs a 80x80mm fan in the front of the case it'll help with air-flow.

dionb wrote on 2025-08-19, 09:01:

There are also shorter S3 Virge cards - in particular cards by Diamond and ELSA are frequently not much longer than the slot itself. I see the Diamond Stealth3D 3000 pop up quite a lot. It also has very good analog image quality (commonly poor on S3-based cards)

The primary issue is that the OP is using a 4MB Virge cards. They are typically built using 8 SOJ-40 RAM chips, and those chips require space. Using a 4MB card is a very good choice if you want to use the 3D engine, as 2MB leaves not that much space for textures if you have a 640*480/16bpp double buffered framebuffer. On the other hand, if you use a Virge plainly as 2D card, 2MB are fine, and 2MB cards fit that board perfectly.

There are creatively designed short Virge DX cards that can use4MB of local memory, but at least the one I have at hand is an entry-level budget card, which I would not recommend to anyone except for novelty value. For example, the BIOS in that card initializes the Virge chip/memory clock at 45MHz, while the Hercules 3D/DX initializes the card at 72MHz. The latter clock makes Terminal Velocity with S3D acceleration actually playable.

mkarcher wrote on 2025-08-20, 10:21:

dionb wrote on 2025-08-19, 09:01:

There are also shorter S3 Virge cards - in particular cards by Diamond and ELSA are frequently not much longer than the slot itself. I see the Diamond Stealth3D 3000 pop up quite a lot. It also has very good analog image quality (commonly poor on S3-based cards)

The primary issue is that the OP is using a 4MB Virge cards. They are typically built using 8 SOJ-40 RAM chips, and those chips require space. Using a 4MB card is a very good choice if you want to use the 3D engine, as 2MB leaves not that much space for textures if you have a 640*480/16bpp double buffered framebuffer. On the other hand, if you use a Virge plainly as 2D card, 2MB are fine, and 2MB cards fit that board perfectly.

There are creatively designed short Virge DX cards that can use4MB of local memory, but at least the one I have at hand is an entry-level budget card, which I would not recommend to anyone except for novelty value. For example, the BIOS in that card initializes the Virge chip/memory clock at 45MHz, while the Hercules 3D/DX initializes the card at 72MHz. The latter clock makes Terminal Velocity with S3D acceleration actually playable.

The Diamond Stealth3D 3000 I referred to is a 4MB card, with the third and fourth MB piggy-backed on a separate PCB:

That's a Virge/VX. but there are shorter Virge/DX cards with 4MB too: