GTX 470 SLI cooling

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CruisD64

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I have 2 vf3000 on my GTX 470's in SLI both on full blast. Is it normal that while playing Crysis 2, GPU1 hits 94c but GPU 2 only hits 65c?
 
Then seriously something is wrong. My cousin got the same coolers running on a pair of 5870s, and they max out at something like 60-65c. You should check the seating on GPU1 in my opinion. How is the airflow for those coolers? How tight are the two cards?

EDIT: and my crossfire with stock coolers, that are extremely tight, get equal temperatures when gaming - give or take a few degrees. (Not the same temps as you or my cousin, just saying the temps doesn't differ that much between the two cards)
 
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The airflow in the case seems good. It's a 700D with all fans chugging. I've replaced all the fans with Scythe's and the videocards are taking the top and bottom PCIe slots. Due to the size of the aftermarket coolers, that leaves about 1 slot width between the two cards. What's strange is that they idle at almost the same temps. 33c and 29c respectively...

I will reseat the cooler tonight though and see what happens.
 
If you play other games or perform some type of synthetic stress test, is there still such a temperature variance between the two?
 
Cruiza said:
If you play other games or perform some type of synthetic stress test, is there still such a temperature variance between the two?
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You know, I haven't tried a synthetic test. I'll try Kombuster tonight as well, but I did play some Fallout 3:NV and the variance was much less. It was 64c to 55c which seems normal, however Fallout doesn't tax 470's in SLI let alone a single 470, so I'm not sure what that means...
 
Gotcha. I'm just thinking maybe Crysis 2 doesn't take advantage of SLI very well and therefore is maxing out your one card but utilizing the other much less. Hence the difference in temps. Just a guess, though.
 
Cruiza said:
Gotcha. I'm just thinking maybe Crysis 2 doesn't take advantage of SLI very well and therefore is maxing out your one card but utilizing the other much less. Hence the difference in temps. Just a guess, though.
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If that is the case, I feel like I may have wasted my money on the aftermarket coolers as the stock cooler provided similar temps. Granted, the noise is less but it's still noticeable.

I probably need to dust my case too though.
 
Cant dust make a big diffrence in temps? Im not sure but i thought it did..
 
Aus10 said:
Cant dust make a big diffrence in temps? Im not sure but i thought it did..
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It can, but the case didnt seem THAT dusty. The 700D has dust filters on the bottom though which could be really clogged since it pulls air from bottom up. I didn't get a good look at those. It's possible the pressure inside the case isn't fluid which could mean the hot air isn't escaping easily.
 
Sounds like it's time to get those babies wet! ;)

I would run some other tests to see if the temp variance persists. If the one card does keep hitting high temps, you may want to remove the cooler and take a look at how good of contact it's making with the GPU. Sometimes a (relatively) simple reseating of the cooler can make a huge difference if it was a bad mount.
 
Cruiza said:
Sounds like it's time to get those babies wet! ;)

I would run some other tests to see if the temp variance persists. If the one card does keep hitting high temps, you may want to remove the cooler and take a look at how good of contact it's making with the GPU. Sometimes a (relatively) simple reseating of the cooler can make a huge difference if it was a bad mount.
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Cruiza, out of curiosity, how did you pick your alias? Mine is Cruis because i have a 1976 Toyota Land Cruiser. Longshot, but i was wondering if you do too :)
 
Haha, not the case for me.

Many years ago, a childhood friend of mine and I used to ride our bikes around town while drinking Jones sodas. We would ask the other, "Want to go cruisin'?" Therefore, we/our bikes were cruisers. So Cruiza is just a twist on cruiser, haha. That was probably twelve-ish years ago, and I've used the name as my forum aliases and gamer tags ever since. :cool:
 
I would reseat the cooler, something is clearly wrong there. I've seen a guy on another forum using two of those for overclocked GTX480 sli with good results.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
I would reseat the cooler, something is clearly wrong there. I've seen a guy on another forum using two of those for overclocked GTX480 sli with good results.
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True.... also I would check the amount of goop you used. Too much and it actually insulates the heat from transferring to the heatsink.
 
I just saw someone on another forum mention the same exact issue. Here is a link.

Have you tried swapping the cards just to be 100% sure that its not the cooler?
 
I would run the cards one by one by themselves through Furmark or MSI Kombustor.
That should give you the answer... bad TIM application, odd SLi scaling, or just stacked cards
 
I am sure its semi Normal. Make sure you are using the newest Nvidia Drivers. My 2 MSI GTX 465 Golden Edition cards in SLI max out at nearly 90-95C on the top card while running Crysis 2. The bottom card is dumping heat directly into the top card and hence why the top card runs so much warmer :(
 
@ OP
I also have two gtx 470's, only with stock coolers. Would you happen to be running a two monitor setup?

Unfortunately with two monitors nvidia drivers will not allow the first graphics card in an sli setup to downclock. This can result in your top card always being at a fairly high temperature while your second card is allowed to downclock and cool off. For this reason my top card is almost always a higher temp than my other card.
 
CruisD64 said:
I have 2 vf3000 on my GTX 470's in SLI both on full blast. Is it normal that while playing Crysis 2, GPU1 hits 94c but GPU 2 only hits 65c?
Click to expand...

Could just be shitty thermal paste on the first card, or too much/little all the same result.
 
shizzdizzle said:
@ OP
I also have two gtx 470's, only with stock coolers. Would you happen to be running a two monitor setup?
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Sorry for taking so long to respond. I've been up at Tahoe and haven't seen internet access til now.

I'm running just a single monitor. I ran furmark before I left and both cards got pretty high which makes me think I may just have a dirty case. I know, stupid me if that's the case, but I will be home tomorrow night. I'll probably play around with it on Friday if my studio doesn't suck me in ;) . Thing is... I was playing Black Ops and the temps were nearly the same hovering around 55-60.

First things first then, I will dust the shit out of my case and see if that helps. Next I will check both cards independently and lastly will reapply TIM. If none of those work, I will cuss loudly.
 
How close are the cards next to each other? When I had my two GTX 480s in a micro-ATX motherboard (stock coolers), they were sandwiched right next to each other because of the lack of space on a M-ATX motherboard. The top card got significantly hotter than the bottom one, due to being cut off from air from the bottom card as fans suck fresh air from the bottom.

When I put them in an ATX motherboard with at least an inch of space between the two, the top card's temperature is much lower, by at least 10C, almost the same as the bottom card (still stock coolers).
 
nerdydesi said:
How close are the cards next to each other? When I had my two GTX 480s in a micro-ATX motherboard (stock coolers), they were sandwiched right next to each other because of the lack of space on a M-ATX motherboard. The top card got significantly hotter than the bottom one, due to being cut off from air from the bottom card as fans suck fresh air from the bottom.

When I put them in an ATX motherboard with at least an inch of space between the two, the top card's temperature is much lower, by at least 10C, almost the same as the bottom card (still stock coolers).
Click to expand...

They're as far away as they can be. PCI-E slots 1 and 3. I have about a slots worth of space between the two cards.
 
So I dusted out my case and reran kombuster. Temps on top card hit 101c.

Reseated the heatsink and the temps dropped! I also turned the fans up a notch. Now GPU1 Peaks at 71c and GPU2 at 67c. Looks like that did it!

Thanks for all the suggestions! I appreciate it. :)
 
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