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issue with cooling SLI
I am getting some very hot conditions with my cards. They are Dual VGA e-GeForce 9800 GTX+ Superclocked 778MHz cards. they came with the pre-attached fans straight from the manufacture. They are getting hot enough on a few games I run to actually shut down the monitor till they cool. currently I have a house fan blowing in a grate on the side on to the cards and I get no shut down which makes me really believe it is heat.
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas for cooling them. I have a Gigbyte watercooled case. Would it be better to take the manufacture fans off and water cool them, if that is possible without damaging them, or would it be better to try and rig up some fan that blows directly on them. I would like everything to stay in the case for looks. If anyone has any ideas I would be most thankful.
Comments
You can take the fan off most GPU's without much problems, however, that will probably void the warranty.
I'll be the guy.
You say you are using a water cooled case. Is your watercooler simply a line to your cpu or are additional waterblocks attached to your video cards.
Please keep in mind that if only your CPU is water cooled, and you have no other cooling, your video cards are sitting in the sahara heat.
Another thing to check is that it may not be the video cards at all that are failing but some bad delivery of coolant to your CPU. How do you check to see if coolant is circulating to your CPU?
I recommend that you should remove the thing that cover the inside parts of your computer but be careful it may cause risk of fire or something.
If you don't have the experience with water cooling your video card, it is probably best to not try unless other safer options doesn't work.
The other option though are those, god I forgot their name. It is a cooling gel which can be used on video cards and there are other versions to use on fans. They help things run slightly cooler, but I am not certain if they will work in your case. I don't know the exact situation in you computer case.
There are also addtional fans I guess, there are ones that can induce localized cooling and some will fit on to a normal slot if you have the space.
Do you already use the tool EVGA Precision, or Rivatuner? Those might help.
Also the ghetto way of open case and fan, LOL. I don't really recommend this as a best solution, but it works for some.
EVGA is pretty good about you adding aftermarket coolers on their equipement. However, the 9800's coolers are good enough that they don't really need aftermarket equipment.
If you are going to water-cooling your case, one thing to keep in mind is that ambient temps in your case really matter. The higher the ambient temps, the harder it is for your water coolers to do it's job. Also, if you are only using one water-system in your case and it's being shared with your CPU and your GPUs then you are going to no doubt have a lot of issues. If it's just going to your CPU and your GPUs are over heating, I would bet your ambient temps inside your case are too hot and you need to create more airflow inside your case.
Everything inside your case depends on good airflow, neutral airflow is best (not too much going in and not too much venting going out); you just want enough to spread cooler air over all components in your case. I'm simplifying this point because there seems to be a science to how to properly setup airflow in cases and it really depends on what kind of case you are using too. In my case I have 4 intake fans and 4 exhaust fans with a lot of space inside (I have a COSMOS S). It seems the bigger the case the better the airflow; thus giving you a lower ambient temp.
Anyways, I digress haha, sorry for going off on a tangent there....
Have you messed with the PGU coolers at all? The stock fans sometimes, very rarey, get too much thermal pastes put on them. If you know what you're doing you could take them apart and put some Artic Zero on them, or whatever is all the rave these days. That might help. Another more obvious thing you should be asking is what are the settings on the fans? While gaming are the fans ramping up to 100% or are they staying at the stock 40%? EVGA has a program, Precision, I think it works on the 9800's that lest you set custom settings for the fans on PGUs.
Check them out at evga.com Go into the forums and look up the section for the EVGA Precision tool.
Hope this helps.
I Reject your Reality and Substitute it with My Own!
Not sure which company manufactured your cards, but if it's EVGA, they provide their customers with an application called EVGA Precision that you can download from their website.
It monitors the temp of your GPUs, as well as core clock, shader clock and memory clock. You can also use it to adjust the speed of the fans attached to your vid cards. A pretty handy tool. Only helps if you've got evga cards though.
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
EVGA precision is a nice easy to use way to overclock your videocard too, but your issue is cooling so proabaly just use the fan speed control
If that does not work, I think there is a software called rivatuner that does the same thing, but with more than just evga cards. Use at your own risk though.