Soundcard in between SLI Config

[DRFTsil40]

I have an old X-Fi Xtrememusic soundcard that is sitting in between my 2 MSI 560ti Twin FrozerII.
The Motherboard I'm using is a Asus P8p67 pro so as you can see in the picture, do you think it's cutting it too close? I'm using a Corsair 600t black case btw.
(The soundcard is right under the top GPU)
My only main problem is that whenever I play The Witcher 2, my top card peaks around 90-95c and that was when the sun was out for a week and the outdoor temperature was around 17-20. But on other games my top card only peaks around 72-75c.

This soundcard has been in my old setup and i just put it in my new build computer. In the past, the drivers had been glitchy in my old computer and I had to keep reinstalling them. Just about yesterday, when I turned on my computer, I would get this repeating, kinda like echoing, sound whenever I would load up a video on youtube or music. I tried reinstalling the drivers again and it still was "echoing". I disabled my soundcard and used my onboard sound instead for 1 day. Today I tried using the soundcard and it's working again. My question is, would the possibility of my soundcard failing is because it's overheating? are my gpu temps fine?
I'm reconsidering buying the Asus Xonar STX soundcard which is a PCI-e 1x card and I could put that on top of the first GPU card, but atm I don't have enough money to spend for that.

(ok since I can't post pics/links, I will show them in my next post i guess)

[KaptCrunch]

Originally Posted by DRFTsil40

I have an old X-Fi Xtrememusic soundcard
My question is, would the possibility of my soundcard failing is because it's overheating? are my gpu temps fine?
I'm reconsidering buying the Asus Xonar STX soundcard which is a PCI-e 1x card and I could put that on top of the first GPU card, but atm I don't have enough money to spend for that.

(ok since I can't post pics/links, I will show them in my next post i guess)

Realtek® ALC 892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC

Coaxial and Optical S/PDIF out ports at back panel (can use only 1 port, not both @ same time)


have current stereo that supports optical/coaxial inputs, the onboard sound is far better then old CT X-fi.

the sli gpu issue of heat is the more gpu/cpu power used then other games has nothing to do with soundcard

whats your air flow in case fan layout

note x-fi has software switch for open mic = echo

[Arinoth]

What do you have your sound card driving? If its not overly high end speakers you're probably best to remove the sound card to allow more air to flow to the primary graphics card and just use onboard. Also, how is the air flow in your case, you essentially are going to need a window/side fan to be pulling the hot air out as those cards pull air from outside the case and dump the hot air inside, rather then pull air from inside the case and dump it outside.

[DRFTsil40]

I know that the more gpu/cpu intensive a game is the more heat it's gonna produce, i was just asking if maybe my soundcard was too close to the videocard. I don't have the echo effect in mic and the "echoing effect" is not really an echo, it's a screeching sound that keeps repeating along with the sounds from videos/music I play.

I have a 5.1 logitech z5300, corsair hsa1 gaming headset. I do notice a big difference in gaming with this soundcard compared to onboard, positioning was more precise when I had this soundcard. Sound seems to be dull for me when it comes to onboard sound.

For the airflow, I have a 200 intake fan in front, a 200 exhaust fan on top, a h70 cpu cooler blowing air into the case, an extra 140 fan to the right of the video cards to push more "cold air" from the 200 intake fan.

When I turned on my computer this time, the screeching sound is back so i have to disable the soundcard and I will take it out soon.

[KaptCrunch]

can use a pci ribbon extender to give top gpu its air flow back

or other option to WC the 2x gpu's = 4 gpu's sure is alot of heat there

case air flow needs to be turned up a few notches

[jcmaz]

+1 to KaptCrunch's idea.

Not too sure what your case is, but i'm cases offer an eighth PCI slot on the side of the case. If there is enough space, you can fit your sound card there.

[Arinoth]

KaptCrunch has a great idea, another would be potentially picking up a pci-e x1 sound card which would allow you to use it in future systems as PCI is slowly being phased out for the most part.

I happen to have an R4 sitting ontop of my two cards (spaced out) which does indeed help lower the temps a bit as it gets some of the hot air away from the cards.

[DRFTsil40]

wow thanks for that idea! i never even knew there was such thing like a pci ribbon extension. do i have to put that entended pci on another slot then? As I stated before I am using a Corsair 600t case with the plain side panel, I might consider buying the sidepanel with window/mesh and install fans on it or go buy a new soundcard that uses pci-e 1x. But for now i`m going for which ever save me money. Right now I see that NCIX have the yateloon fans on sale, are they any good?
I`m also considering buying a portable air conditioner as my room is quite small (I might use some gift cards i got from futureshop after helping cleaning up downtown last thursday) . I hope that this summer won`t be really hot.
What is this R4 you are talking about, what does it do?

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it!

[Arinoth]

Coolermaster R4 NCIX.com - Buy Coolermaster R4-L2R-20AC 120MM Blue LED Case Fan 2000RPM 69CFM 19DBA 3/4 Pin - COOLERMASTER - R4-L2R-20AC-GP - in Canada , its a case fan. I essentially have one pulling in the cool air (at the moment) and blowing it across the two heatsinks of the graphics cards. In your case you're probably best putting a fan pulling air out as you are using a case where the air is partially circulated inside, whereas i'm using a tech bench (open ended case) and all the hot air the cards dump aren't recycled back onto it.

[DRFTsil40]

It seems that my soundcard doesn't work anymore, but as I did some googling on onboard sound, I updated to the latest driver and wow, onboard sound do come close to the sound of my old soundcard! Not very good when it comes to music/movies but it's decent on games.

Due to my limited budget atm, i'm thinking of buying extra case fans for now but I don't know where to put them.


I won't be able to install fans on the side panel, so any ideas on where to put fans to improve airflow? Would placing another fan close to the gpu with the fan blowing upwards be beneficial?