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Aftermarket 6950 Cooling

deanpm

deanpm

deanpm

Associate
Joined
30 Jul 2008
Posts
37
Location
Cambridge, UK
Having recently purchased two MSI 6950's (flashed to 6970) for use in a P8P67M-PRO motherboard I'm struggling with temperatures and fan noise levels. With the cards mounted next to each other in the PCIE x16 slots, the temps on the primary card are uncomfortably high (~75 idle / up to 94 loaded) which is causing the cooling fans to run at 50%+ which in turn is generating significantly more noise than I would like.

I've moved one of the GPU's into the x4 PCI slot to give the primary card a bit more breathing room but this has not reduced the loaded temperatures by much. When benchmarking or running something like Crysis 2, I'm still hitting 91-92 degrees on the primary.

My question therefore is can anyone recommend a better cooling solution bearing in mind that this is a Crossfire setup so physical space looks like being a potential problem. My primary focus is on noise reduction but having invested in a pretty powerful system, I don't want to compromise on performance too much so would like to avoid under clocking if at all possible.

Note that with the original 6950 BIOS, running at factory clock speeds, the temperatures still push 90 degrees under load.

I'm willing to consider water as well as air solutions and am willing to throw some cash at the problem. If I cannot improve the noise levels significantly, I may end up selling one or both of the 6950's and going for a 6990 instead.

System specs

Intel SB Core i5-2500K CPU (@4.5GHz) (Hyper 212 cooler)
Asus P8P67-M PRO Motherboard
2 x MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (Cat 11.4 drivers)
Corsair HX 850W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply
Fractal Design Define R3 Midi Tower Case
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz

Any and all suggestions gratefully received.

Regards,
 
skotish| said:
Stick two artic twin turbo after market coolers on them if you can?
Click to expand...

deanpm said:
If I cannot improve the noise levels significantly, I may end up selling one or both of the 6950's
Click to expand...

Don't think the AC Twin Turbo's would be up to the task imo, the AC Extreme is what you need.
Even if you only fitted 1 cooler onto the top gpu, then you would also see a huge difference in temps and noise, this is what I was doing until I got hold of another Extreme.

Just posted this last night about fitting AC extremes onto a 6950>70 xfire setup:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19041495&posted=1#post19041495
 
Last edited:
Scythe setsugen is a 2 slot cooler. You want to avoid using that 4x pci-e if possible. Either this or it's new motherboard with a 3 slot pitch on full speed pci-e slots.
 
accod said:
It sounds like you need to improve the air flow in your case. What are your cpu and motherboard temperatures?
Click to expand...
Good question. At idle, the CPU runs at ~33C (Real Temp 3.67) and the Motherboard at ~36C (according to Asus AI Suite). Under prime95 load, the CPU tops out at 72C with the motherboard climbing to just 37C.

The primary GPU idles at ~72C and the secondary at ~47C. Under load (3D Mark 2011) the primary tops out at 88C and the secondary at 84C. Note that the load temps are about 4C higher when running something like Arma II or Crysis 2.

My case has a single 120mm intake fan and a single 120mm exhaust. The only additional airflow I have is the intake fan on the PSU fan and GPU exhausts. The case will take many more 120/140mm fans if needed.

Regards,
 
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tommybhoy said:
Don't think the AC Twin Turbo's would be up to the task imo, the AC Extreme is what you need.
Even if you only fitted 1 cooler onto the top gpu, then you would also see a huge difference in temps and noise, this is what I was doing until I got hold of another Extreme.

Just posted this last night about fitting AC extremes onto a 6950>70 xfire setup:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19041495&posted=1#post19041495
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion Tommy. I did actually read your post yesterday but to be honest, was worried about the complexity of the installation and the fact that it appears that the new cooler seems to add some depth to the card which would absolutely prevent me from installing the cards in the PCIE x16 slots on my motherboard. As it is, the cards have about 2mm clearance when installed in slots 1 and 2.

Excellent point regarding modding only the primary card - I hadn't thought of that at all but makes perfect sense .

Regards,
 
Thats very hot mate! Must be air flow i have the same cards but XFX @900/1345 idle 31 load 60s

Take the side off and try it then, Also just as a test (if you can) blow some cold air in just to make sure it is air flow and not some bug/glitch thats giving the cards 1.3Volts :)
 
Sgt Tackleberry said:
The other thing you could do is replace stock themal paste with mx-4, when i done this I got my temps down to 35'c idle and 70'c at load!.
Click to expand...

Those temps are ridiculously low compared to my set up. I think I'll give this a go before anything else :)

Regards,
 
Phase said:
Thats very hot mate! Must be air flow i have the same cards but XFX @900/1345 idle 31 load 60s

Take the side off and try it then, Also just as a test (if you can) blow some cold air in just to make sure it is air flow and not some bug/glitch thats giving the cards 1.3Volts :)
Click to expand...

Yea I'm starting to realise that now :( I'll do some testing tomorrow evening as suggested. I can run under load with the side off and also have some spare 120mm fans knocking around somewhere that I can install pretty easily to test.

Thank you.

P.S. Do you know if I can rely on GPU-Z's VDDC value to give me an accurate view of the GPU voltage or do I need to look elsewhere?

Regards,
 
Nope! mine says .9V and 1.1V. I have just added a bios and a CCC tool to the 6950 6970 flash thread. might be worth just doing that just to be sure. plus will save you running your 50 ram @70 speeds.


Might seem a daft thing to do but this is what i do :) get the wifes hair drayer and blast it with that! (only if it has a cold setting) This will save you loads of cocking about and only take 2 mins to plug it in
 
You could also get a small piece of plastic and wedge it between the two cards near the pci-e power leads to push them apart ever so slightly(small bit of plastic off of a cd case), there is a pic here somewhere in the forum iirc.

Or/and you could get some ninja wire to pull the top card up ever so slightly higher.

The design of the cooler is flawed imo, it's too square and no airflow gets to the top card unless it's in a three slot spaced pcie setup as the bottom card blocks the top fan.
I don't know why they changed it from the 5 series which sucked air through the vents on the end and out the back of the case.
 
Thanks Tommy. I had tried that approach already by inserting a conveniently sized rubber grommet which gave me a few extra millimeters clearance. Whilst it did have a small effect, it only reduced the idle/load temps by a degree or two.

I agree with your view regarding the design. I really cannot understand how "they" came up with this design knowing that in xfire setups the intakes on the top card would be all but completely blocked.

Regards,
 
Not yet :( Unfortunately, I don't get time to play before the kids go to bed and the office is next to one of their bedrooms so waking them by running a hair dryer post bed time would result in my losing vital parts of my anatomy! Will need to wait until the weekend to do some proper testing. I do promise to post the results as soon as I have them :)
 
My cards are right next to each other and i get about 44 idle (25% fan)and around 65c load (40% fan) Lower card is about 10c cooler

I put a small wedge between end of cards to improve airflow for top card.

Should be running that hot if you have move card to lower slot.

As said try testing with side of case off and see if that helps.

Also get a desktop fan blowing on it to see if the extra cold air helps. If it doesnt then there is something not right with the cards to be running at those temps.
 
Postman,

Thanks for that. I did run with the side off the case last night. It brought idle down by a couple of degrees but I'm mindful that because of where the case is positioned, there's not a lot of natural air flow around the case so understandable why that specifically would have such a small impact. Given that I'm seeing excessively high temps on both cards, I'm now pretty convinced that either;

a) I've been extremely unlucky

or

b) I'm not pushing enough air through the case

My plan for the weekend is to try the hair dryer trick (I've just realised that I've got one of those pump things for blowing up inflatable beds so that might be better given that it pumps out lots of cold air) on Saturday and take things from there. I've also ordered some mx-4 to replace the stock thermal paste - another job for the weekend.

I'm really relieved by yours and others posts confirming that these cards should be running a hell of a lot cooler than they are in my system. It confirms that there's a problem and problems can be fixed :)
 
No problem :)

My cards are the msi ones too. Plus my case isnt the best for air cooling (corsair 800d) though i have added an intake fan at the front.

Have you tried different drivers?
I am running xp and using the 11.2 drivers as the others caused crashes in game.

In msi afterburner do the cards clock down when idle and are they idling properly or is there excessive usage for no reason?

Hope you get it sorted.
 
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