6950 2gb in CF. Top card idles at 70.

[bigFOIG]

I have an XFX 6950 2GB and a HIS 6950 2GB in crossfire and whichever card I have on top idles 70 degrees and 90 degrees under load. Is this normal? There is 1 PCI slot of air between these cards, which is what the motherboard recommends with 2 GPUs. What can I do to reduce the temps? Thanks.

[Arinoth]

I imagine you have the default fan profile, which is designed for single card setups and is kind of crappy at that. One of the issues is your fan speed on your primary gpu is running too slow. Check out the thread in my signature to help narrow down/solve the problem.

[Prolab]

Well, i use MSI afterburner to control both fans. Since i cant stand the whining noise of the fans, i have the set up at around 1900 RPM.

The bottom card has a fan directing it so, it idles around 50C with the fans around 1300 RPM. The top card runs 65-67C but the fans spins around 1900 RPM. Although both cards never go up 75C when there's load.

[bigFOIG]

I guess I have to live with louder fan settings before going WC. Thanks for the tutorial Arinoth, didn't know there was a "Fan" tab there on Afterburner.

[Jared11]

I too have this issue with my SLI GTX 280's. My tope card typically at idle will be 5-8C (Celsius) above the lower card, which I believe is the action of heat rising from the lower card. I tried replacing the thermal paste, which made a small decrease in idle/load temps, but the fact remained that the lower card is heating the card above.

I fixed this by using the RivaTuner Fan Control. Before I run any game, I set both GPU's to 70%. HOWEVER, if your top GPU is idling at 70C all of the time, that is not very good. I would invest in either a better case with better thermal managment, or if you already have a good case, add some more fans to cirulate the airflow. I realize that you may have already corrected the problem with a fan controller, but if you constantly run the fans higher to compensate for the heat build up, it will only decrease the life of your GPU fan assembly.

The case thermal management and airflow setup in a case should be assisting all hardware components inside. The GPU(s) need to aquire cool airflow from outside of the case. If there was no input of positive airflow, than the GPU would consistantely cycle warmer and warmer air as heat builded inside of the case. (This is unless one utilizes watercooling on such hardware components)

70C at idle is far too hot to patch with a GPU software fan controller. There must be another culprit if these numbers are in fact correct. (Unless ATI has completely messed up on a driver update, which is unlikely if regarding a fan control cooling function)

[KaptCrunch]

Originally Posted by Jared11

The case thermal management and airflow setup in a case should be assisting all hardware components inside. The GPU(s) need to aquire cool airflow from outside of the case. If there was no input of positive airflow, than the GPU would consistantely cycle warmer and warmer air as heat builded inside of the case. (This is unless one utilizes watercooling on such hardware components)

70C at idle is far too hot to patch with a GPU software fan controller. There must be another culprit if these numbers are in fact correct. (Unless ATI has completely messed up on a driver update, which is unlikely if regarding a fan control cooling function)

yes case air flow does matter, @ 70c sounds if air is being recycled an not changed.

are using your case side panels or open case?

[bigFOIG]

Heh... Well, I have the 600T White edition. And I'm using the window side panel instead of the panel that fits fans. I guess a 200mm intake at the front isn't enough intake. But it's all good. I've taken off one of my cards until I get my WC going. Which hopefully is soon!

[clshades]

are you able to increase the gap between the video cards? Some mobo's have 3 pci-e ports.