5970 Crossfire cooling options?

I'm currently having a bit of a problem figuring out what is the best way to lower the temps on the top card of my 5970 Crossfire set up.

The top card idles at around 55 and often reaches 90+ under load, has also reached 100+ under benchmarking so I wouldn't expect it to take too much gaming to reach this temp as well. After a bit of reading about it seems these temps are technically just about within acceptable range, but still I would prefer to find a way to lower them, even if only slightly.

I've considered and pretty much ruled out water cooling for 3 reasons. First of all I have absolutely no knowledge on the subject, secondly the cost is currently prohibitive, and in any case I'm not really looking for the massive temp drops water cooling would give as I don't plan on doing any overclocking.

So what options do I have left? I'm thinking improving airflow with another fan would be the easiest way to lower the temps by a few degrees, again I'm not looking for massive drops, just enough so that I'm not right on the line of acceptable temps. Would be grateful to hear any suggestions, because I'm not exactly sure myself specifically what I would need or how it's going to actually work. As of yet I've not even tried removing the door that covers the gpu's, perhaps that would be a good place to start? Can't see how that does anything other than create an oven .

Few pics just to give an idea of what space is available within the case:







So there you go, do I just bite the bullet and carry on using only active fan controls until it eventually dies due to often being run at such high temps, or is there something I can do about it?

Is that a m-atx sized motherboard?

You have 2 options as far as i can see.

1. Watercool the cards

2.Try to find another motherboard with better card spacing.

What are the front fan(s) like? A exhaust fan on the rear would probably help as would a fan at the front of the card to get a bit of air in there.

What motherboard is that? How many PCI-E slots do you have?

If you do have 2 more below the lower card then move it down, this will help airflow to the gpu fan. If their are cables in the way near the bottom pci-e slots, see what they do and justify whether you need them or not. Sacrificing front usb ports is a small price to pay for saving your graphics cards.

If push comes to shove and you cant do anything else you could put something between the cards to open a little bit of space, you have have to way up the pros/cons

If looks don't concern you stand 2x120mm fans on the bracket infront of the cards to blow directly onto them. Your main objective should be to lower intake temps so fit as many as you can to suck cool air into the case as well as exhausting the hot air out of the case above the cards (looks like you have space there.

There are 3 PCI-E slots, there is currently a sound card in the bottom slot. Would switching the sound card and bottom gpu help? Longer Crossfire bridges don't seem so easy to get hold of, but if possible it might help, although possibly fry the sound card at some point too?

You could give it a go. Im sure it would. If you cant find a longer cable then buy a 3-way one, these are big enough to cover 6 slots. Can I ask, is this how alienware shipped it to you or have you put the second card in yourself?

It's how it was shipped, the whole thing has already been replaced due to problems with random restarts (which I suspect was due to overheating). Those pics are the original, the replacement is identical and after a few days light use seems ok so far, obviously I'd like to keep it this way.

It doesn't seem like they put too much thought into how all the components actually work together have they.

Not sure of your motherboard but the bottom slot may not have as many PCIe lanes as the top two. Then again it may have more? It wouldn't fry the sound card lol.

It would deffo be worth it if there are enough lanes on the motherboard (16lanes per card).

Makes you wonder where all that money goes lol. I would send the whole thing back, get a full refund and build 2 of the same pcs for the same price. Then you could sell one and youve got a pc for free!

Failing that, move the sound card between the two cards. This will be fine. The sound card is too small to be in the way of air flow on the upper gpu. Im pretty sure that mobo has onboard sound anyway so maybe just get rid of the sound card?

wedgie said:

There are 3 PCI-E slots, there is currently a sound card in the bottom slot. Would switching the sound card and bottom gpu help? Longer Crossfire bridges don't seem so easy to get hold of, but if possible it might help, although possibly fry the sound card at some point too?

Click to expand...

To answer the longer crossfire bridge question...

... look on a popular auction site. Just had a look myself a few minutes ago (type in " 100mm crossfire bridge " in the search window) and 1 was available in UK and lots more with wolrdwide postage from the US

I guess trying to get hold of a longer Crossfire bridge might be the way to go, the temps on the lower card are fine so ultimately the problem is being caused by having almost no space between the two cards.

Will put the borked system I still currently possess to good use tomorrow when I open it up and try to figure out exactly what can go where.

you should have a look at the new all in 1 gpu watercooler from coolit,google coolit omni

So here's what I have to work with -



I have a 100mm Crossfire cable ordered, am I going to be able to put it to use? Not especially fussed if the sound card has to go tbh.

Is the slot that you are moving the card too 16x or 8x?

If it's an 8x i wouldn't have thought that your 5970 wouldn't perform all that well in it.

How can I find out?

Finding exact specs of the propietary components Alienware use isn't as easy as it probably should be.

Can you get a model from everest?

In all honesty do you really need 2x 5970's?
Crossfire scaling is pretty dismal in most applications beyond 2x gpu's (which you already have in one card).
I'd be more tempted to return 1 card for a refund or sell it on.

Legion said:

In all honesty do you really need 2x 5970's?
Crossfire scaling is pretty dismal in most applications beyond 2x gpu's (which you already have in one card).
I'd be more tempted to return 1 card for a refund or sell it on.

Click to expand...

Its a prebuild system from alienware as far as i can tell. He would have to return the whole thing.