Hi Everyone,
Here's my situation:
I am running 2 x Asus GTX 660 Ti Direct CU2 OC Edition cards (SLI) in my system that has a mAtx motherboard. I have an i5-3570K which is socket 1155 and this was the ONLY mobo I was able to get my hands on that supported SLI with this socket.
My issue is that my top graphics card is getting pretty darn hot, and I have read that this can happen with mAtx boards. The cards have to be right next to each other, leaving not the most amount of room. Both have an open air cooler (not blower / reference) but I'd like to think that my case has great airflow. In some instances with not the most demanding games the top one can be 30 degrees Celsius hotter than the bottom one. Neither are overclocked more than factory OC at this stage.
In terms of performance they do just what I want, and play all of my games very well (as you'd expect) with my 1440p monitor. It's just the heat that's bothering me. Ambient temperatures in my old-style house in summer can be 30 degrees Celcius on some days - this is something I am working on. In some rare instances they do throttle from the heat
I think. I have used GPU tweak to try to alter this.
I have 2 x 140mm intake fans at the front of my corsair 450D case, 2 x 120 exhaust at the top (no radiator here) and 1 x 120mm at the back that's also cooling my CPU using a corsair H55 all in one water cooling thing. Would you guys think this is sufficient? The PSU is intaking through the bottom of the case.
My questions are these, if you'd be so kind to help out:
- How can I more effectively cool my graphics cards without resorting to custom water cooling? All in one cooling solutions (like many CPU options these days) I would consider but don't know how to go about it. Plenty of room for radiators in this case.
- Is the performance boost and efficiency that comes with a single card solution worth an upgrade to a GTX 970? It would be about $150 over the price I would get for selling both 660Ti's (Australian prices are redonkulous, but what can you do?)
- Would any of my components bottle-neck a 970's performance, or are any bottle-necking my current setup? How would I go about checking this?
What I have (some mentioned above):
- Intel i5-3570K
- Asrock Z77 Extreme 4-M
- 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 memory
- 2 x Asus GTX 660Ti Direct CU2 OC
- 250GB SSD
- 1TB HDD
- Corsair 450D Case
Would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you all so much in advance.
Tim
PS - What it looks like:
Here's my situation:
I am running 2 x Asus GTX 660 Ti Direct CU2 OC Edition cards (SLI) in my system that has a mAtx motherboard. I have an i5-3570K which is socket 1155 and this was the ONLY mobo I was able to get my hands on that supported SLI with this socket.
My issue is that my top graphics card is getting pretty darn hot, and I have read that this can happen with mAtx boards. The cards have to be right next to each other, leaving not the most amount of room. Both have an open air cooler (not blower / reference) but I'd like to think that my case has great airflow. In some instances with not the most demanding games the top one can be 30 degrees Celsius hotter than the bottom one. Neither are overclocked more than factory OC at this stage.
In terms of performance they do just what I want, and play all of my games very well (as you'd expect) with my 1440p monitor. It's just the heat that's bothering me. Ambient temperatures in my old-style house in summer can be 30 degrees Celcius on some days - this is something I am working on. In some rare instances they do throttle from the heat
I think. I have used GPU tweak to try to alter this. I have 2 x 140mm intake fans at the front of my corsair 450D case, 2 x 120 exhaust at the top (no radiator here) and 1 x 120mm at the back that's also cooling my CPU using a corsair H55 all in one water cooling thing. Would you guys think this is sufficient? The PSU is intaking through the bottom of the case.
My questions are these, if you'd be so kind to help out:
- How can I more effectively cool my graphics cards without resorting to custom water cooling? All in one cooling solutions (like many CPU options these days) I would consider but don't know how to go about it. Plenty of room for radiators in this case.
- Is the performance boost and efficiency that comes with a single card solution worth an upgrade to a GTX 970? It would be about $150 over the price I would get for selling both 660Ti's (Australian prices are redonkulous, but what can you do?)
- Would any of my components bottle-neck a 970's performance, or are any bottle-necking my current setup? How would I go about checking this?
What I have (some mentioned above):
- Intel i5-3570K
- Asrock Z77 Extreme 4-M
- 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 memory
- 2 x Asus GTX 660Ti Direct CU2 OC
- 250GB SSD
- 1TB HDD
- Corsair 450D Case
Would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you all so much in advance.
Tim
PS - What it looks like:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram