• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

2 480s SLI Next to Each Other?

Its on par with the surface of the sun.

Well its not quite that but they do get really hot. You need good case cooling and adjust the fan profiles. Or better water cooled
 
Water is the safest option here otherwise they do get extremely hot.

But TBH no PC game right now or in the near future (apart from Crysis 2 but even that is multiplatform) will be worth buying SLI GTX480's for & even then unless your gaming on a 30" Monitor @ 2560x1600 you will see little benefit FPS wise but the costs are obviously much higher as you will need a very good PSU & Core i7-980x overclocked to max the FPS gains out!
 
They do get pretty hot, I was getting into the late 90's easy when I was on air cooling, that's why I went to water, now they never go over 55 even when overclocked!!!
 
I have 2 480 in sli next to each other. There in a HAF X case, with a 120mm fan inside the GPU Duct, and a 200mm Side fan blowing onto them. Gaming is fine, the only time they got MEGA hot was bench marking with an open case.
See image below.

hafx-003-fin.jpg
 
Not played BC2 for a few months, But had MOH Beta on last night with GFX on MAX at 1920 x 1200, and temps was fine...

PSU is 1050 Watt Enermax Rev 85+
 
I always pick the worst time to buy a second card, you watch, I will buy one in the morning and ATI will anounce the 6870 is faster than the 480 and sell them at £299!!
 
ur asking for trouble mate,im haveing a lot problems with heat at the moment with mine/get a couple of waterblocks
 
^^ TBH the corsair case you have is very poor for air flow, the 480's need cool air blowing over them and preferably fans blowing directly in to the intake.
 
Raven - your spreading misinformation. The Corsair does NOT have poor ariflow if you reverse the rear fan, and put something slightly more powerful into the bottom intake. Plenty of people run GTX 480's no problem in this chassis.
 
I have the side panel of my case on but here is a shot of mine next together.

dasktoop.jpg



85-90c nv surround on a modern title here. Noise levels are only verging on invasive when benching really. There's a noticeable whoosh of air but its nothing too bad.

Furmark on the other hand, drives the fans near 100%

That. Is loud.

If you're wearing headphones, you won't hear them. If you use speakers as long as the pc case isn't right next to your ear you won't be bothered by them.
 
I'd get the HAF myself if they made one with no window :)

I think running 2 beside each other will be ok. I know Nvidia recommend leaving 1 slot free but I ran 3 of them for a short while and temps on the hottest one never hit 90. It was the noise in the end which drove me mad but that's probably because I was benching them instead of playing games.
 
On mine, the top card tends to be around 5 or 6C hotter than the bottom. But this isn't really the important issue; the cards are designed to operate within a fairly wide thermal envelope (up to 95C), so what you really care about is fan speed. On mine, the top card can use up to 10% higher fan speed. Typically I will find the top card using around 70-75% fan speed when under full load in games, with the bottom card on 60-65%. In furmark the top card can get up to 90% fan speed, but I never see anywhere near this in games.

The "obstructed" top card does not suffer quite as badly as you might think, since the primary source of cool air is from the back end of the card (which is not obstructed). The fan still creates a pressure drop roughly equivalent to an unobstructed card, so airflow is not significantly affected. What you lose out on is airflow over the exposed metal on the top of the card, but as a cooling mechanism this is secondary to the air intake and heatpipes.

I should point out, that I'm also using a HAF-x with a very slow 120mm fan in the intake duct (similar to redgooner's picture), so I feed cool air directly into the cards. In a less well ventilated case, expect to see an extra few percent of fan-speed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom