Crossfire Temps

[Jonnygrunge]

Guys ambient temps in my "man cave" are increasing due to this "summer" weather! Averaging around 24-26oC.
Anyway my Crossfire setup 2 ASUS 280X TOPs, the top card was hovering around 81oC, bottom card around 65oC, after a short while gaming, both cards at 99%.
I have two Apaches on the side of my Stacker 830 case, one blasting air on the GPUs the other is exhausting.
I have an exhaust on the top, two intakes at the front, and an exhaust via my PSU and my Tundra TD03 radiator (push/pull)
My fan profile is set to 80% for the top card, and 75% for the bottom, I am thinking of increasing this to 90% during the summer months, noise is not too bad! I game with headphones anyway.
What in your opinion is the safe upper limit for the 280Xs, bearing in mind I want a few years out of these, before an upgrade!
Thanks in advance.

 

[Jonnygrunge]

Your fan configuration sounds a little messed up. The two side fans should be both going same way either intake or outtake.
Have the two front intake, side intake and top or back outtakes.

I will swap over the fan tonight!

 

[Jonnygrunge]

+1

The problem with your cards is that the exhaust heat INTO your case. So you need to make sure air can exit the case as quickly as possible. I would go into positive and negative air pressure but it's hardly needed here.

Front = intake
Top and rear = exhaust

But my only change would be to experiment with the sides. Try them as intake and measure DELTA temps from ambient. Then try them as exhaust. It may work. But always measure DELTA temps as you need to be as scientific as possible

Have you thought about running your second card in the 3rd x4 slot? You won't notice much difference in actual FPS but I would bet your temps would decrease. With 280Xs you also don't need a crossfire cable, so distance between isn't an issue

Good luck

Great advice lads, very much appreciated. I think I will "flip" the other side fan to make it intake. Install a fan within the room to help with ambient temps. I will change my top card fan profile to a summer one, fan at 90% and see how that goes. Just out of interest temps up to the mid 80s are fine for the Tahiti XT GPUs?, bearing in mind, mine are pre-factory overclocked to 1070/1600 "stock" what I am running them at the moment.
Thanks again.