Hi Guys,
Have been a customer of overclockers for a while, and normally frequent other forums, most of them tend to be in the US though so I figured I would join this forum
Anyhow, as a first post I thought I would throw something out there.
I have a Zalman Z11, not a bad little case, I got a bit fed up of the hulking great big full ATX I had in my last build, and wanted to make something a little neater.
Anyhow, did a build a couple of months back, it was time to replace my old system I got from OCUK, it lasted me nearly four years but it was time to move on. I wanted titan like performance for a much more reasonable price, and a good CPU to overclock so:
Zalman Z11 case
I7 4770k
CoolerMaster Liquid cooler
MSI G45 mobo
16GB GSkill Ripjaw 2133mhz
512 SSD for OS and supporting progs
2TB baracuda for games
1000w PSU
x2 EVGA 760 OC ACX
Worked like a charm, temps were real good for that lot, CPU cores averaging around 26 at idle and max out at 50 on a 30 min burn in, under normal gaming conditions they sit low to mid 30's though, GPU's were sitting around mid 60's. Was very pleased, and everything fitted in nice and neat. I could run anything maxed out with those two cards.
Well, I then decided to do away with my 42" screen and go for Nvidia surround, as my system wasn't being taxed, so I went and got three thin bezel 23" AOC's and a new desk set up and away I went.
Looked amazing, BUT, I then started dropping frames on Black Flag (everything was fine apart from Dynamic fog and intense ship battles), then put Crysis 3 on and couldn't run 5910x1080 (bezel compensation rez), ARMA III I had to start reducing quality and post processing + rez, needless to say, I wanted the system to last a few years so wasn't too happy.
Anyhow, I decided an upgrade was needed, and after registering both cards with EVGA for a step up, after a few weeks one of them was a queue zero. I sent the card back to EVGA for step up to a 780 (other was still in the queue). Fast forward three weeks, and no tracking the courier lost it. I stupidly used one of these rubbish parcel websites, so the courier won't deal with any claims or speak to you about the parcel, I had to go through the parcel idiots and they have no phone number and never answer your questions.
After weeks of being fed up I decided to not be hold to ransom any more by idiots and I bought x2 Zotac GTX AMP's in this country and fitted them.
Anyway, performance was now fantastic, I had the same FPS if not more in surround than I did with the 760's SLI'd on a single screen, but it came at a price - HEAT!
The second GPU in the lower slot was sitting at around mid 60's under load, but the top was getting a little cooked and was peaking at the 79 degree temp target I set (can set 80 and it will just go to it right away and throttle the same anyway). So I have the top card running warm and throttling most of the time. It has to be said, that the 200mhz ram overclock is solid, and the core clock still throttles down to more than most other cards on the market (around 1050) but I want to try and keep stable at it's boost clock and a few degrees cooler.
The 780's were quite a bit larger, and took some persuasion to fit in to the case, so I had to move things around a bit to get them in.
Anyway, that is where I am now, trying to cool the top card some more.
Yesterday, I reversed the two front exhaust fans to take air in, moved the secondary (500gb HDD for backup files) to the bottom of the 3.5" bays, removed the hot-swap plate that blocks flow from the front and rejigged some cables to allow flow from the front to the cards. I then fitted another 120mm fan just inside the HDD bay wall blowing onto the cards.
I'm hoping this will help a bit, but still need some ideas to help cut the temps down. Oh, I was going to order two back plates as well to see if that would help.
There's a few piccies attached for reference, one of the 760 set up and one with the 780's, you can see it is a bit tight.
Cable management isn't my strong point, but believe it or not, there are as many wires routed through and round the back and cable tied as there can be, I can only just close the back panel. I just have a ton of cables that the case is making hard to route neatly, but the ones beside the GFX cards I moved away to the front and back edge to allow flow.
I've yet to try my few subtle mods though, as sadly I broke the SLI bridge I had yesterday, I removed it when re-wiring a few bits and moving things around, It ended up on the floor and me standing on it! Oops, what an idiot...
Anyway, sorry for the long winded post, but thought I would give you guys a bit of history and where I am up to now.
Cheers!
Have been a customer of overclockers for a while, and normally frequent other forums, most of them tend to be in the US though so I figured I would join this forum
Anyhow, as a first post I thought I would throw something out there.
I have a Zalman Z11, not a bad little case, I got a bit fed up of the hulking great big full ATX I had in my last build, and wanted to make something a little neater.
Anyhow, did a build a couple of months back, it was time to replace my old system I got from OCUK, it lasted me nearly four years but it was time to move on. I wanted titan like performance for a much more reasonable price, and a good CPU to overclock so:
Zalman Z11 case
I7 4770k
CoolerMaster Liquid cooler
MSI G45 mobo
16GB GSkill Ripjaw 2133mhz
512 SSD for OS and supporting progs
2TB baracuda for games
1000w PSU
x2 EVGA 760 OC ACX
Worked like a charm, temps were real good for that lot, CPU cores averaging around 26 at idle and max out at 50 on a 30 min burn in, under normal gaming conditions they sit low to mid 30's though, GPU's were sitting around mid 60's. Was very pleased, and everything fitted in nice and neat. I could run anything maxed out with those two cards.
Well, I then decided to do away with my 42" screen and go for Nvidia surround, as my system wasn't being taxed, so I went and got three thin bezel 23" AOC's and a new desk set up and away I went.
Looked amazing, BUT, I then started dropping frames on Black Flag (everything was fine apart from Dynamic fog and intense ship battles), then put Crysis 3 on and couldn't run 5910x1080 (bezel compensation rez), ARMA III I had to start reducing quality and post processing + rez, needless to say, I wanted the system to last a few years so wasn't too happy.
Anyhow, I decided an upgrade was needed, and after registering both cards with EVGA for a step up, after a few weeks one of them was a queue zero. I sent the card back to EVGA for step up to a 780 (other was still in the queue). Fast forward three weeks, and no tracking the courier lost it. I stupidly used one of these rubbish parcel websites, so the courier won't deal with any claims or speak to you about the parcel, I had to go through the parcel idiots and they have no phone number and never answer your questions.
After weeks of being fed up I decided to not be hold to ransom any more by idiots and I bought x2 Zotac GTX AMP's in this country and fitted them.
Anyway, performance was now fantastic, I had the same FPS if not more in surround than I did with the 760's SLI'd on a single screen, but it came at a price - HEAT!
The second GPU in the lower slot was sitting at around mid 60's under load, but the top was getting a little cooked and was peaking at the 79 degree temp target I set (can set 80 and it will just go to it right away and throttle the same anyway). So I have the top card running warm and throttling most of the time. It has to be said, that the 200mhz ram overclock is solid, and the core clock still throttles down to more than most other cards on the market (around 1050) but I want to try and keep stable at it's boost clock and a few degrees cooler.
The 780's were quite a bit larger, and took some persuasion to fit in to the case, so I had to move things around a bit to get them in.
Anyway, that is where I am now, trying to cool the top card some more.
Yesterday, I reversed the two front exhaust fans to take air in, moved the secondary (500gb HDD for backup files) to the bottom of the 3.5" bays, removed the hot-swap plate that blocks flow from the front and rejigged some cables to allow flow from the front to the cards. I then fitted another 120mm fan just inside the HDD bay wall blowing onto the cards.
I'm hoping this will help a bit, but still need some ideas to help cut the temps down. Oh, I was going to order two back plates as well to see if that would help.
There's a few piccies attached for reference, one of the 760 set up and one with the 780's, you can see it is a bit tight.
Cable management isn't my strong point, but believe it or not, there are as many wires routed through and round the back and cable tied as there can be, I can only just close the back panel. I just have a ton of cables that the case is making hard to route neatly, but the ones beside the GFX cards I moved away to the front and back edge to allow flow.
I've yet to try my few subtle mods though, as sadly I broke the SLI bridge I had yesterday, I removed it when re-wiring a few bits and moving things around, It ended up on the floor and me standing on it! Oops, what an idiot...
Anyway, sorry for the long winded post, but thought I would give you guys a bit of history and where I am up to now.
Cheers!
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