:lol::lol:

Cat beside an open computer chassis, I predict good things in your future.

As described, Tri-Fire with three cards wouldn't work with my board. That's the downside of how ASUS arranges the PCIe slots.

But, Tri-Fire with a Dual and a single GPU card will/would work very well. That's the way I would go.

Cat! :D

New parts YAY
 

2600k added, ud7 added, corsair 1000w added, new ram added (other 8gigs didn't come yet >>), h70 added, GPU Water cooming SOON!! Surprisingly my raid didn't have to be rebuilt booted just fine. Odd crap though If i dont use the power cord that came with the hx1000 my comp cant even stay on.

Best part is the upgrade didnt cost me a dime =p

Sweeeeeeet!

How in the world do those cards cool themselves?

Barely. Welcome to AMD's screw up. It's AMD's screw up because Nvidia doesn't suffer it. On any of this or last generations cards.

Not well. I used paper to create some gaps. I am using custom fan profiles. IT gets very loud to say the least but I game with headphones so I don't hear it. However, water is coming. In gaming i get temps of low 80s,70s, and 60s from top to bottom card with fans going from 50% to 75% across the cards.

My new P67 mobo and rig:

edit - for h50/70 owners - how do you have the fan's airflow set on the rad?

From what I read the h70 want to have intake on the back for max cooling on the cpu. Of course this will raise gpu temps a bit (unless you flip that side fan).

Thanks; that is the orientation I have going in the pics.

The difference in a case with good airflow is minimal. Just a couple of degrees. It's not worth pumping all the heat from the cpu into the case to heat up the rest of the components for that imo.

Corsair indeed DOES recommend this. It did NOT work well at all for me. I had to reverse the fans to act as exhaust to get good performance out of the H70. I'm positive though it's purely a matter of the positioning of the front intake fans that spoiled Corsair's recommended direction.

The difference for me was tremendous. Nearly a 10C difference. But against Corsair's recommended direction. Your suggestion is more accurate in my situation at least, then it may be for others. But it wasn't a matter of dumping heat into the case, it was a matter of conflicting air flow.

Luckily I can mount mine at the top for the time being. Eventually I will have to move it to fit a rad there.

So far the cpu is sits pretty stable at 34c (idle).

It is just the recommendation, doesn't mean it is going to be the optimal setup for all PC cases. I don't imagine having it blowing into the case would work very well on Silverstone's Fortress or Raven series cases either.

They have a spinny fan on them. Surprisingly, if you're running 3 $250+ cards, you typically have a fairly good airflow case. Turns out that forethought on cooling is required. Mosh has a hateon for the amd reference cooler design, but I can't find any other independent evidence its a problem, but we'll see how it works out.

It is a problem. It forms a perfect sealed lid at the end if I don't jam a piece of paper or something between the cards at the ends. Granted I saw this coming since that's what pretty much anyone else running trifire with 3 cards is doing is jamming something there till watercooling. Creating that little gap does change temps by several degrees on 2 of cards for me. The design is flawed and mosh isn't the only one who has a severe issue with it. Several review sites have pointed it out and so have many end users who have a tri setup or have 2 cards on top of each other.

REALLY? So 3 people reporting the same thing on your MOST visited forum isn't evidence beyond my own? Wow, cavey. Open the eyes, man. This is an issue. Also, try google. Evidence of this issue is WIDE spread and closing your eyes and saying "I don't believe it, I don't believe it" isn't working. I was only the FIRST to report this issue on this forum, but hardly the first internet wide. People are complaining all over the place about crappy air flow on AMD cards due to inconsiderate design on AMD's part.

Edit: And what forethought are you babbling about???? OH, you mean don't use AMD cards in a board that will use Nvidia cards fine? Not acceptable for an answer, Cavey, at all. I can run a pair of GTX 590 easier then I can run ANY modern AMD card in multi-GPU on 2 of the VERY nice motherboards here in this house. 2 6870's? Run warmer then 2 GTX 590's, that's unacceptable and wrong of AMD to allow to happen. While my newest motherboard wouldn't be made to suffer problems with AMD, my other 2 previous boards, a Gigabyte X58-UD3R and a EVGA P55 SLI handles ANY choice of Nvidia card just fine. The Gigabyte board came to market with Crossfire and without SLI support and is STILL better with SLI then Crossfire, thank you AMD.

For reference, here's who all has complained about this issue causing them direct problems in JUST THIS THREAD ALONE.

1. Me - Moshpit
2. junglist1996
3. nycdarkness

I'm pretty sure 3 witnesses counts for SOMETHING as evidence, Cavey? This HAS to count. You're outnumbered now, and a quick Google search is just chock full of evidence. You haven't seen much evidence because you're intentionally not looking for it, is my theory. I believe you want to believe it's a "user-error" issue. Let me assure you, it's not. AMD makes no mention that you cannot use perfectly good Crossfire certified motherboard for Crossfire with any higher end modern card of theirs without hoping there's a third party cooling solution. This is on AMD, not us, we picked Crossfire certified motherboards. I really think you should quitting pointing the finger back at us. Instead, maybe consider SOME of us know how to research and build a computer just fine, and AMD screwed up by not considering serious thermal issues that their cards will face in their own certified multi-GPU configs.



Nycdarkness' PC makes a GREAT example here. We're looking at one of the industries TOP enthusiast motherboards from Gigabyte, the UD7, in this picture. That's a bloody EXPENSIVE motherboard! The very best of Gigabyte's P67 line in fact! If you want triple GPU, it's this or the Asus Maximus. There is no other option for Sandy Bridge + triple GPU/triple card except lesser known brands like Asrock and such.

Yet look at it. How can you sit here and deny this, Cavey? LOOK AT IT. He had to stick paper in there (adding stress to the slot, btw) to make it gap enough for ANY airflow. Is that Gigabyte's fault? Nope. Stick 3 Geforces in there and there's no problem. Stick 3 Radeons in there and pray they don't burn each other up.

VISIBLE EVIDENCE!

Easy dude, you're gonna blow out a capillary!

This is how to cool a card - http://bit.ly/iM727C

Very nice third party cooling, and well suited to this task. But, the problem remains, stock cooling on AMD cards is poorly thought out for use in a broad range of certified compatible motherboards.

Edit: And cavey, you should know I have THICK capillaries by now, they don't pop easy :p

I fully agree on this and have my own experience with a pair of HD5970's in quad crossfire....The top card would run noticably hotter and the fan turn quite a bit faster(and louder) for that card when under load, mainly because a lot of airflow is being blocked by the lower card...



Fact is that with the pissing match going on between Nvidia and ATI on who builds the fastest cards, the power consumption is steadily going higher as each new generation is introduced, both companies include protection circuitry and driver optimizations to recognize certain applications and automatically throttle them down to keep temperatures, noise and power draw under control, that at least for multi GPU users that have multiple cards in their systems, it's becoming problematic to keep it under control, even with good case ventilation, while keeping the PC from sounding like a vacuum cleaner when it's running under load.


I took the next step and moved to water cooling....I'll be installing it over the next few days now that the water loop for the CPU's is done...





The vertically mounted radiators at the front will be the ones cooling the video cards....I was just doing some mesurements and pre fitting them to see how it'll work out.

NICE looking system, Shadow!

So here's the updated list of those complaining about this issue directly affecting them, in this thread alone:

1. Me - Moshpit
2. junglist1996
3. nycdarkness
4. shadow001

Shadow, was the dual 5970's setup on your SR-2 motherboard or a previous build, and if so, what motherboard was it setup on if I may ask?

Edit: And I bet that was one HELL of a heavy lift to get that case up on the table :p

Hi Cavey - Could you even get three of those cards on a mobo?

I believe the answer should be yes, but it's also VERY notable that this cooler has cut outs along the top sides of the cooler that allow air to flow into the fans when there's another card right on top of it. HMMMMMMM! Seems even third party coolers consider Nvidia's little trick to be valid while AMD seems to ignore it all together.

Hmmm... I didn't mean to start a war on the issue. I was really just looking at the picture and wondering. I had heard of some others complaining about it before.

I'm very interested in a 3 card solution in the future and I'd rather not run into those type of issues. My guess is that AMD is going to have to address the issue in the future as these multi-card solutions are some what more feasible in terms of cost.

I wasn't trying to rip on AMD cards or anything. They are definitely in the running for my next set of cards, just based on current trends and not actually knowing what they are going to release, along with not knowing about the competition is releasing.

In any case, I'm already anxious to see what's next on the high end.

No, they were on an first generation X58 board, the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5, but just like the above picture of the UD7, the X16 PCI-e slots only had a 1 slot spacing between them, so both cards were right next to eachother like the UD7 picture once they were installed....


The problem would be reduced quite a bit if using motherboards if the slot spacing between the main X16 PCI-e slots can be set with a 2 slot gap like this model:




There's 7 full lenght PCI-e slots, so 3 cards could be installed in slots 1, 4 and 7(counting from the CPU socket) while leaving a 1 slot gap between each card(slots 3 and 6), so that the fans on the video cards aren't blocked in the least, but boards like these are expensive(500$), and require the use of an XL ATX case like the cooler master HAF-X.


And yes, the case is heavy as hell despite being aluminum with all that stuffed in it(it's probably close to 100 Lbs right now), and going to get heavier still once the water loop for the video cards is done and more wire management is completed...


But i built the water loops to handle a lot of heat and the one for the video cards can dissipate nearly 1500 watts of heat while the GPU's will never exceed 65*C under full load and remain quiet, so there's a lot of wiggle room, and from now on i'll buy next generation video cards and only have to get the water block for the card....The rest of the cooling gets re-used(radiators, pumps, fittings, reservoirs, fans).


It's the jackhammer aproach and there's a lot of work to set it up, but it solves the heat and noise issue once and for all...:lol:

Aluminum is heavy stuff! Sure, it's lighter then steel, but that's only a relative statement.