Severe Crossfire overheating problems

[killari]

Im running a rig with the specs in my sig. It seems that when I have both cards in temps just sky rocket.

With just 1 card in the idle temp (gpu) is roughly 49 degrees and with both in idle jumps to 80. Under load with both cards the temps are just insane and can quickly climb to 110 degrees before sending the system to crash world.

Here's a pic of the rig:

Ignore the cable mess, this was just a quick photo whilst I was trying to sort a couple things out. In general it's neat and shouldn't cause any issues.

The gfx cards in question are two of these:

As you can see with this motherboard it's a super tight fit and there is hardly any space between the two cards.

I have modified an Akasa Vortexx Neo to fit into the top one, but it didn't really change the temps by much. Also I believe this board is not of reference design which did make it a pain to change the cooling.

Any ideas? Oh I also have a side fan door and there are 2 12cm fans blowing onto both gfx cards.

Thanks all!

 

[killari]

Unfortunately that doesn't sort the issue, both cards had the same cooler at the start of today and the temps were just as bad.

 

[killari]

-There is loads of room at the back of the case.
-Will do in a bitty
-The H-50 is sucking air out (there are 2 noctua NF-P12's in push/pull)
-Am looking into ambient case temps now

 

[killari]

I have limited capacity to measure the ambient case temp but these are what I'm getting:

From thermal probe somewhere in the case: 26.4
And these are from Everest:

Motherboard: 36
CPU: 33
Cores 1-4 mean: 43
NB: 58
SB: 58
GPU1: 80
GPU2: 78

Just a note: When both the gfx cards had the same cooler the temps reported now are roughly the same.

 

[killari]

Sort out the cables then slot a nice big fan, a 220 mm behind the graphics cards and blow it on them direct...that would work...but to be honest...just buy a better case that is the easier option. Or just leave the side off and blast the fan from the side...either way it would cool them...although saying that they seem to be running within spec.

Cables aren't normally like that, it was just a quick photo I took whilst I was sorting some stuff out.

There are also 2 12cm fans blowing at full speed straight onto the Graphics Cards (had to remove them for photo purposes).

I don't think theres much wrong with the case. It's more like the positioning of the PCIE slots on the mobo is a bit too tight.

 

[killari]

Had a shot at swapping the cards round, but it didn't work. The bolts that hold the akasa cooler get in the way of the fan of the zerotherm cooler. Here's a better pic of the spacing between the cards. It seems pretty dismal

 

[killari]

The crossfire bridges aren't long enough, looked around but haven't had much luck finding longer ones. Also you can't see it there but in the 3rd position the cooler obstructs the USB and Firewire headers

 

[killari]

Watercool the cards would be the best way but you would'nt get much change from £150 and that's just using core only blocks. Full cover blocks would be much more expensive.

Yeah being a student a proper water cooling solution isn't really a viable option. The card being a non reference design probably doesn't help either.

 

[killari]

those slots are ridiculously close....are all i7 boards like that

Its worse than ridiculously close, the cards actually touch and bits from the back of one card can block the fan of the one behind it, I've remedied this problem uncreatively but it there are still airflow issues. I don't know if it is representative of the X58 or P55 boards as a whole though.

 

[killari]

What are the temps like with the stock coolers? My old 4870 crossfire setup ran cooler with the stock coolers than it did with both cards under an accelero twin turbo. This wasn't due to the cooler - the twin turbo is amazing with a single card, but rather the spacing.

The aftermarket cooler was thicker than the stock job, meaning there was less room for cool air between the cards. It also had less directional airflow than the stock ones, the stock jobs suck in air and dump it out the case, the aftermarket ones hardly exhausted anything - raising ambient temps local to the cards.

Another less likely possibility is that your install of the coolers my have been less than superb - doutful though judging by the sounds of how many times you;ve swapped them over.

With the stock cooler my temps were pretty much the same. I thought that maybe if I had a cooler which vented hot air directly out it may help the situation, but unfortunately it didn't really do much.

@twist3d0n3 :
The NB and SB temps are probably related to the GPU temps. The SB is located under the heatsink which is under the tail of both graphics cards. The NB is located above the first graphics card and all the heat from that card radiates onto that heatsink. Also I believe both NB and SB are connected by a heatpipe.