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Best option for SLI cooling 980TIs

atomic7431

atomic7431

atomic7431

Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2004
Posts
3,095
Location
Lincolnshire
Hello,

I have currently got an enthoo primo full tower case with the system in my sig. While playing games especially Ashes of singularity/BF4 i have temps on the cards of upto and including 80-83 degrees which causes Throttling.

Now i have created custom fan curve 50/50 until temp reaches 80 where the curve jumps up to 90%. This helps but i have had to add 2 fans pointing at the gpus to help disperse some of that heat poring into and around the case.

I have a h100i in the roof which does a great job of cooling the cpu, no higher than 76 deg c. I have two fans in the front of the case and one at the back and one extra in the roof. While the case and cpu are ok the gpus are not. Also i must mention the bottom card has a sound card right up against it which obviously doesnt help at all.

What options do i have to cool these cards differently? Is there anything else i can do other than full water cool as the price i presume will not be cheap?

I once tried to put a Kraken G10 and heatsinks on a 290x a long time ago and the heatsinks just kept falling off despite leaving them to cure for 24hrs, so dont like the idea of vrm heatsinks lol.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,146.48
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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Can you not space the cards a bit further apart on your motherboard? Non reference cards in sli aren't ideal when placed close together. Id also try putting a couple of fans on the hdd cage mounts of the case.
 
https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/X99PROUSB_31/

on the board i can only use pcie slots 1 and 3 with the 5820k for two card sli.

I have a fan mounted in the position behind the cards, infront of the hdd cage pointing at the two cards and also i have hung one pointing from the window side of the case at the two gpus.

pcie_2 is a x1/x4 slot only and so only a 3 way sli board. (thought i had miss read the manual for a minute lol)
 
Last edited:
atomic7431 said:
I once tried to put a Kraken G10 and heatsinks on a 290x a long time ago and the heatsinks just kept falling off despite leaving them to cure for 24hrs, so dont like the idea of vrm heatsinks lol.
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a5zvqfi.jpg


Use Akasa tape properly and they won't fall off, summers coming and it's going to get a whole lot hotter.:p
 
I found the only way I could keep two G1 980TI's cool enough not to throttle was to have a side fan blowing in on the cards. This helped a lot although I appreciate this is not an option with your case.

I decided to watercool the cards as it meant a fair bit of fan noise to maintain a decent temp limit.
 
I'm going through this saga at the moment. I have one 980ti cooled with an h55 and a kraken g10 bracket with custom made heatsinks etc, and the other cooled by another h55 and a corsair n980 bracket.

My case is a lian li pc08, which although very beautiful is not really the best for what I'm trying to do as it's quite cramped in the front chamber and has poor airflow compared to many cases.

I think with the case you have, with all the extra room and fan cooling options you would do very very well going the AIO h55 or similar route like I have. And use Akasa thermal tape for any heatsinks, it's fantastic stuff as long as you do it right
 
I wonder why i had so much trouble with the VRM heat sinks in the past, i used the alcohol stuff to clean them up and used akasa tape and they just used to fall off. I cut the tape to exact size of the VRM heat sinks as well.

Fitting the G10 wasn't the issue just those VRMs, i see some leave the manufacturers VRM cooling plate on the GPus and buy a copper shim to fit the G10, anyone else done that? so then no Heatsinks are needed.
 
atomic7431 said:
I wonder why i had so much trouble with the VRM heat sinks in the past, i used the alcohol stuff to clean them up and used akasa tape and they just used to fall off. I cut the tape to exact size of the VRM heat sinks as well.
Click to expand...

That's why the tape doesn't take.

You clean the vrms/vrams thouroughly with a rubber eraser if your using the tape, then it sticks.
 
Had a look at pics of your cards without the coolers, Evga one if it's the same as the one I saw with the metal plate covering under the heatsink, then you could tape heatsinks directly onto the plate where the vrms are.

The GB one would need heatsinks placed directly on the vrms, you might be able to wedge them in place with something between the Kraken plate and heatsink until the tape beds in for peace of mind.

You need to keep an eye on vrm temps when going ghetto modding obviously.
 
If you have MSI gaming 6's all you have to do is use the G10 with the stock vrm heatsink, works a treat in SLI. I also use an external sound card (X7) so there's room between the cards.
 
Arcane said:
If you have MSI gaming 6's all you have to do is use the G10 with the stock vrm heatsink, works a treat in SLI. I also use an external sound card (X7) so there's room between the cards.
Click to expand...

external card is something i have looked at, my cards are not msi unfortunately but the ones listed in my signature.
 
pandem0nium said:
With that case, you can use swap the windowed side for the other side which you can mount fans on.
Click to expand...
Not possible due to the way the case panel screws onto the chassis frame. Only option is to cut a hole in the window. An idea i toyed with when running sli gigabyte wf 780's.
 
setter said:
Not possible due to the way the case panel screws onto the chassis frame. Only option is to cut a hole in the window. An idea i toyed with when running sli gigabyte wf 780's.
Click to expand...

Ah ok, I've just tried it on mine. Yo can swap the sides and it will screw in properly. It doesn't actually help though, because the two fan mount locations end up against the side of the HDD / ODD cage.
 
I have 2 980s that hit 85 degrees. I got 2 g10 brackets 2 cosair 90 cpu coolers and attatched them to the gpus.they never get to 55 with a heavy over clock . You would have to check they fit your cards though.
 
blasterbolt said:
The kraken g10 have a 92mm fan that spins on top of the vram. I have been really happy with them since i added the aio on the gpus about 6 months ago now.
Click to expand...

Yeah but ive always seen that people who use the G10 fit aluminium heat sinks to the vrms to cool them down as well as the provided fan which ships with the G10.
 
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