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Crossfire overheating :(

I have the same issue have bought another 5770 vapor x so a cool card to start with but my gigabyte boards has the PCI slots close together. So when I play BF3 the temps hit 98c

I don't think anything you can do on software will make a difference, at the end of the day the cards fan is being blocked my the other card its a bad motherboard design.

I have decided to cut my loses and sell the 2nd card.
 
I have wedged both my 5870's apart slightly which has reduced the temps. Unscrew all screws then Move the top card upwards - your only talking a few mm - and move the botom card down slightly and wedge something in between. I used cable ties. I cut the ends of four of them and wedged them all in piled upon each other. Then tighten the top screw on top card and bottom screw on bottom card, then tighten the other 2 screws.

You should see a decent drop in temp. The top card will still be hotter than the bottom unfortunately, but it will be an improvement. prior to me doing this my temps were approx.

Idle:

Top card - 65°-75°
Bottom card - 35°-40°

Load:

Top card - 80°-88°
Bottom card - 70°-80°

My temps are currently:

Idle:

Top card - 59°
Bottom card - 37°

As you can see, at idle the top card is still quite a bit hotter. However, under load the approx temps are a lot closer. Roughly 85° versus 80°
 
It wasn't my idea of how crossfire works either, seems crazy with one burning itself out at 100% reaching 100 degrees, and the other just chilling at 13%.

The advice to seperate the cards as much as possible is good, I was going to use a bit of paper folded up to wedge in the side, then after a moments though, decided i'd rather not burn the house down. I will find something less burnable though and certainly put it on the edge between the cards.

I'm certainly in the market for a new motherboard, looking for one with larger spaces between the PCI-e, and one which would run the cards happily, but i'm really stumped as to which to get. I currently have an MSI-X58M, and whilst it's good, it's just not good enough with a few little things like this.
 
When it comes to PC's and using the word "wedge" it apart I personally never think its a good idea, putting any kind of unneeded stress on a card will shorten its life.

What you need to look at is the cost of a new board compared to the gains, for me I play BF3 online so turn my graphics down anyway, if I started replacing my board just to accommodate the crossfire it might be cheaper to just to upgrade to a more powerful single card, than replace a perfectly working board
 
I totally agree hornett.

A new card would help me out with a few issues though - Currently with my overclock the northbridge gets very hot, which is a known issue for these board, also it would mean I can get access to SATA 3 and USB 3, which will hopefully mean I keep the rest of my current set up a while longer.

If it fixes those issues, I'd have no reason to change from my i7 920 for quite some time, as i'd have the interfaces for any new cards / SSD / drives, so I'm still really thinking about a new motherboard. It's a lot of bother to have to set it up, but if it fixes these issues then it could be worth it.

Thanks,
 
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