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x-fire cards strangle one another !

IanBoyle

IanBoyle

IanBoyle

Associate
Joined
1 Apr 2006
Posts
117
Location
Central Scotland
hello,

I'm sure i'm not the first to come across this problem but i'm new to cross fire and have a huge problem
the two 4890 cards i have now got after having had one for ages i've crossfired up with another
i had no idea how close they would be to one another so much so that one cards now strangling the air intake of the other sending the fan speed on one of them through the roof above 40% which is deafening
is there any way of combating this design fault by ati
i'm no design expert but slapping a fan for one card right up against the back of another seems absolutly mental

best regards
Ian
 
IanBoyle said:
hello,

I'm sure i'm not the first to come across this problem but i'm new to cross fire and have a huge problem
the two 4890 cards i have now got after having had one for ages i've crossfired up with another
i had no idea how close they would be to one another so much so that one cards now strangling the air intake of the other sending the fan speed on one of them through the roof above 40% which is deafening
is there any way of combating this design fault by ati
i'm no design expert but slapping a fan for one card right up against the back of another seems absolutly mental

best regards
Ian
Click to expand...

couple of ways to do it

1 if you have a third pci-e slot use that and buy an extra long asus xfire bridge

2.Buy a spot fan or 92mm fan and mount it so it's hitting the back of the card which can shave a few degrees of the temps

3. A bit dicey but it can work thats to put a couple of shims between the ends of the cards which opens up the gap a little more but don't go crazy. you'll probably find the weight of the top card is making it sag a little if it was straight their should be a decent gap about 5 mm

4. last but not least is to buy a flexi or offset pci-e extender i can't link to where you get them cause they sell a few thing ocuk sell but just google for them

Thats all i can help with unless anyone else has any other ideas

could you tell me what case and motherboard you have
 
Hi,
planted 2 four inch fans directly at the cards which dropped the temps enough for the fan to just be mildly annoying and not the turnado it was
the board i have is the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Intel X58 with all the heatpiping added
with a i7 920 with a megellen cooler using twin 4 inch noisless fans in push pull
the case is a kind of older cooler master but is plenty big enough even for all this stuff lol

thanks for the help so far guys
best regards
Ian
 
I honestly cant see how I can xfire cards on my UD5 without crazy temps. The slots are just too close together. I cant use the bottom PCI-E slot either because the wires that come off the MBoard stick out too far. Seems like a slight design flaw.
 
theres a few things i'm not overly impressed withon this expensive board either such as the fan headers there in stupid places and the 1 IDE slot is in the most absurd spot ever as its as far away from the cd writer or dvd writer whatever you have as is possible
the sata sockets are all in the stupidest places once the boards in with all the stuff you just about have to take the machine apart to add a sata cable to the board
think the techies at gigabyte were thinking shortest path lengths on the board for optimum usage electronically instead of whats actually physically usable in the real world

Ian
 
Also make sure your heat sink fins are clear of any dust in gpu cards. Using the bottom pci slot is a nono as it isnt pci-ex16
And i doubt your case will have a 8th pci slot for the exhaust to leave the case.
I to have the same board and i'm running crossfired 4870x2 and a single 4870.
 
Meh 8x or 16x PCIE makes barely any difference. Rather xfire a cool card at 8x than a hot one at 16x. More annoyed I have to give up my wireless card to have xfire.
 
My 4870x2 card has the three slot extream cooler on it so that has to live in the 2nd pci-x16 slot and the single 4870 lives in the 1st pcix16slot with its standard reference cooler.
When i first run it idle temps on the single 4870 on auto fan was 80 degrees.
Stripped the card down and found 3mm of dust and a moth blocking the heat sink.
Now it runs 42 degrees on idle and 56 degrees with 50% fan in gaming.
Bought the card second hand for a bargain on the bay. I use the haf932 case with four 12cm fans replaceing the single 250mm and these blow direct onto my graphics cards. Turned up full they shift over 310cfm of cool air .
 
sammo62 said:
I honestly cant see how I can xfire cards on my UD5 without crazy temps. The slots are just too close together. I cant use the bottom PCI-E slot either because the wires that come off the MBoard stick out too far. Seems like a slight design flaw.
Click to expand...

there not crazy believe me !
max temp im getting after a sesh on bf2 or trackmania are around 70 - 73 :D
now to say that the cards are on top of each other, them temps are very very good, also my antec 1200 helps no end too
 
userunknown said:
there not crazy believe me !
max temp im getting after a sesh on bf2 or trackmania are around 70 - 73 :D
now to say that the cards are on top of each other, them temps are very very good, also my antec 1200 helps no end too
Click to expand...

dont forget those us running 5xxx cards are lucky as they run very cool. The 4xxx cards run very hot and on ud5 can see them going sky high
 
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