Help with understanding cooling

Curanir

Curanir

Curanir

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Joined
9 May 2007
Posts
16
Ive always bought (from OC) fairly high end kit and not bothered with the OC'ing in the past but with budgetary concerns (e.g. Girlfriend checking my bank account) i was kinda limited this time around so i bought a i7 920 bundle, a couple of Gainward GTX 260 GS's and a Coolermaster HAF932 ( i hate scratching my hands in cases so bigger the better)

Everything works fine, not quite brave enough to OC up to 4.0ghz yet, im just playing with SLI for now. Installed Vista Ultimate x32 and it couldnt quite cope with Crysis/DX10 so tried 64bit and whilst it runs fairly smooth at Ultra High 1920x1200 the 260s shoot up to 90C in about a minute and the fans kick in and it feels like im living under the heathrow flightpath again.

All the settings are on stock, 40% fan for the GTXs and they ramp up when they need to.

So what i want to know is whats the best way to cool this beastie down with minimal noise, the afore mentioned g/f was frowning big time last night.

I notice that the bottom GTX quite neatly manages to cut the airflow off from the top one, this causes it to run about 5-6C hotter.
I was wondering if i could move the bottom GTX to the 3rd slot and use the tri sli connector but im still going to have an issue as with the HAF932 the psu in the bottom of the case cuts the airflow again.


I could also consider watercooling but eeesh thats a whole new bag of tricks to learn.

Any ideas?
 
Well i thought that if you ran it hotter it reduces the lifetime of your components. The major pain is the noise of the fans. Keeping it cooler reduces the need for fans therefore the fans run slower and therefore less noise.

So yeah i guess it does matter purely from the noise point of view. The aural pollution is affecting the most important component in this equation - my girlfriend.
 
I like the look of the accelero but reading a few review it seems the VRM cooling aint so good. Also will it fit the gainward layout? Isnt it supposed to be different to the GTW260 reference layout?
 
I only checked if it was compatable with the old and new 260's
But your right the gainward uses a non-reference PCB with 4+1 phase PWM design

Looking at the pic's the accelero may with a bit of tweeking just replace the current heatpipe array - leaving the VRM cooling as is.
Or get out the jr hack saw and cut the vrm HS to suit :)
 
Ok didnt bother with that after checking a few reviews, the dimensions of the fan/sink wont fit inside a dual slot so not sli compatible.
 
Change the password/PIN on your bank account. Much cheaper.

Unless it's really hot (as in crashing during games), I wouldn't worry.

If it's really noisy (I don't know if Nvidia hardware is compared to ATi, but hey), then buy some foam earplugs. :)
 
to start off remove one of the 260s and see what temp a single one gets too, try it in both slots as well to see if one area is cooler than another.

what sort of cooling does the case provide to the graphic card slots ?

have you taken the coolers off and checked how the thermal paste is put on ?
 
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