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Gpu: Référence blower or aftermarket cooler in HTPC case

IceWolf

IceWolf

IceWolf

Associate
Joined
7 Dec 2002
Posts
1,866
Location
Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Hello,

Been looking at all the tasty 980Ti cards (it is that time 12 months after my last GPU upgrade when I get itchy...) and I have a question:

Will a cooler like the Asus strix / MSI Gaming / EVGA ACX etc... be a problem in such a small case?

I run only one card (no SLI or Crossfire) and have a reasonable airflow with 2x silent 80mm exhaust fans in the back and 2x silent 92mm intake fans in the front, with a low profile 80mm intake fan by the cpu. I took out unnecessary hard drive frames for better airflow and have routed my cables around the edges and under the motherboard. That said, there is only 1-2cm clearance between the edge of the GPU and the case so it is quite a confined space. My room gets quite hot even without the PC running (the plasma doesn't exactly help in this weather) but with the 780Ti reference blower my CPU and GPU overclock are stable.

I hear people say that the uprated coolers like those listed above enable better overclocks on the GPU with lower temperatures, but they also seem to generate more hot air inside the case as they leak the hot air in all directions, not just out the back.

Does anyone else have experience with an Htpc case and going from reference to aftermarket style cooler? (AMD or Nvidia, although I think the heat from the 290 and 390 would make this more if an issue). Did this cause you any problems with CPU or Motherboard temps going up?

Here are some pictures of the current setup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vqqlf6d6a3ngp8/CagedBeast1.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddlw5kl6h9fddko/CagedBeast2.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7qo4m9zh8jgxvhz/CagedBeast4.jpg?dl=0
 
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Thanks buddy. Interesting video, although my case is too thin to support the Fury X fan, and it is a shame he didn't compare a 980Ti reference with a non-reference blower. Also, the fact he water cooled the CPU with the 980Ti and not with the Fury X made his interpretations a little less well controlled.
 
Thanks for recommending a card that will fit Bru, but I am still trying to figure out the answer to my original question: I.e. Will aftermarket coolers heat up my case too much in comparison to a reference blower?

I found another video from the same guy comparing the 780Ti reference and Windforce coolers in a case a bit bigger than mine:


He found the cpu and motherboard temps rose by around 5c and ambient case air by 3c going from reference to aftermarket.

Also, when I first built this pc case I had 2x 580GTX non-blowers in SLI and whilst it didn't overheat and crash, the fan noise necessary to keep it under control was intolerable. I realise with a single card things are much better but am still hesitant to pump a lot more heat into my case, particularly with the weather as it is this summer.
 
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Is that a Silverstone LS17 case!?

If so, I have a very similar set up, same case and cpu cooler but with a evga 970 with the same cooler as the 980ti you were looking at. It does dump a lot of heat in the case, gpu gets to 75 degrees under load and doesn't want to overclock past the factory overclock of 1405MHz boost. If I had a choice, I'd ALWAYS get a reference blower if I had the choice with my case. Only reason I didn't was the 970 with 980 ref blower was way too expensive!
 
ugly ferret said:
Is that a Silverstone LS17 case!?

If so, I have a very similar set up, same case and cpu cooler but with a evga 970 with the same cooler as the 980ti you were looking at. It does dump a lot of heat in the case, gpu gets to 75 degrees under load and doesn't want to overclock past the factory overclock of 1405MHz boost. If I had a choice, I'd ALWAYS get a reference blower if I had the choice with my case. Only reason I didn't was the 970 with 980 ref blower was way too expensive!
Click to expand...

I think so, definitely Silverstone, if not the LS17 it is
a very similar case, I had it in my sig that the mods deleted for being too long.

Thank you for your feedback. For me going from the 580GTX non-reference (I took out the second card and sold it) to the 680GTX reference blower made a big difference in terms of system fan noise, but I was never sure if it was just a more efficient gpu.
 
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Off topic but I like what you've done removing the hard drive trays, looks way better than my cramped mess! I'd like to do the same with mine but my intake fans attach to the front of the trays. Did you mod the case to attach the fans to the case or are there mounting screws on the case too?
 
I don't have my sig saved on my pc so now you have just overwritten it with this text, making it very hard for me to edit it back within your requiremeets :( Could the mods please send me a message with the old text (which used to be in line with requirements a year ago)?
Click to expand...

This is how your sig appeared:

"THE CAGED BEAST": Nvidia ASUS GTX 780 Ti @ 1200/7000mhz, Intel
Core i7-3770K @ 4.5GHz on 1.15v, Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 v2,
ASUS P8Z77-V, Samsung 840 EVO SSD 500Gb, Corsair Vengeance 8Gb
1600Mhz DDR3 RAM, Silverstone LC17b HTPC Case, Windows 7 64 bit,
Creative X-Fi, Logitech 5.1 ZX 5500, Pioneer Kuro 1080p 50" Plasma,
Steam Tag ocuk_icewolf :D
Click to expand...

Count the lines of text.
 
ugly ferret said:
Off topic but I like what you've done removing the hard drive trays, looks way better than my cramped mess! I'd like to do the same with mine but my intake fans attach to the front of the trays. Did you mod the case to attach the fans to the case or are there mounting screws on the case too?
Click to expand...

No modding as such, you should find the holes there for 92mm fans (may be 100mm, certainly not big enough for 120mm if I remember correctly) if you unscrew the hard drive frames. The case instructions suggest mounting the fans between the front of the metal chassis and the front surface of the case inside the front bezel, but my setup with the fans inside the main chassis allows for much better airflow drawn in from the underside of the bezel in front of the fans. You can see this nicely in one of the pictures above. My 3.5" 1TB drive is in a 5.25" silencer under the Blu-ray drive and the SSD is Blu-tacked to the base to avoid rattling around.
 
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IceWolf said:
No modding as such, you should find the holes there for 92mm fans (may be 100mm, certainly not big enough for 120mm if I remember correctly) if you unscrew the hard drive frames. The case instructions suggest mounting the fans between the front of the metal chassis and the front surface of the case inside the front bezel, but my setup with the fans inside the main chassis allows for much better airflow drawn in from the underside of the bezel in front of the fans. You can see this nicely in one of the pictures above. My 3.5" 1TB drive is in a 5.25" silencer under the Blu-ray drive and the SSD is Blu-tacked to the base to avoid rattling around.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I got the name wrong.... we do have the same case! Will definitely take at least one hard drive tray out, maybe both!!
 
IceWolf said:
Thank you for taking the time to help me sort this.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately you still had more than 4 lines of text.

THE CAGED BEAST GTX780Ti 1200/7000mhz, Core i7-3770K
4.5GHz (1.15v), ASUS P8Z77-V, Samsung 840 EVO SSD
500GB, Corsair Vengeance 8Gb1600Mhz DDR3, Silverstone
LC17b, Creative X-Fi, Cooler Master 1000W PSU, 50"
Pioneer Kuro 1080p :D OCUK_icewolf
Click to expand...
 
I honestly don't understand: every screen I view this on the signature is 4 lines? Even in the box where I write it. Would changing the font size help?
 
ugly ferret said:
Thanks, I got the name wrong.... we do have the same case! Will definitely take at least one hard drive tray out, maybe both!!
Click to expand...

The fans in the front are definitely 92mm Arctic F9 fans (standard not Pro: the latter have a round cage covering them). With 2 of them on full you can feel the cool air blowing over both sides of the graphics card, but I set them to 75% by BIOS as I use the PC for films and games so I want it to be quiet
 
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