Computer Cooling - Best Practice (GPU Intensive)

natemac · Mar 10, 2016

I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about keeping my GPUs cool that doesn't involve Water-cooling.
This PC is build only as a GPU Render computer, there is very little load on the CPU but the GPUs do get pushed to 100% for a length of time.
I would like to add a third if not a forth GPU(I know this case can't handle the forth).
I don't care about noise as this is in a separate room.
This is how I currently have my fans set up:

I wasn't sure if the top fans should pull out hot air or push in cool air, I chose them as exhaust as heat rises, although the CPU is on a water cooler so not sure that matters as much.

My Temps under load reach about 83ºC:

Any advice would be great, as this isn't my expertise. Thanks!

weberdarren97 · Mar 10, 2016

The top fans should blow out along with your radiator. Does your case give you the option to raise the HDD bays? If it does then that would allow cool air to get under the second card from the front fan instead of being pushed into them from the side of the top card thanks to the HDD bay blocking the bottom fan from producing any significant airspeed.

snurp85 · Mar 10, 2016

I agree with the above comment on moving the HDD bays if possible. it might help if you have a side case fan that blows cool air directly onto the gpu's. Alternatively, it might be possible to add some cardboard to direct the air from the bottom front case fan directly to your graphics cards. just a thought.

geofelt · Mar 10, 2016

The key to good cooling is better INTAKE.
In time, all of the intake air will get heated up and exit the case somewhere.

Looking at your setup, I would do three things:

1. Remove the lower hard drive cage to allow the front intake air more unrestricted airflow into the area where the graphics cards are. It looks like hard drives can be located in the top bays.
At the very least, remove the unused drive caddys to allow better airflow.

2. If noise is not a big issue, you can replace the front intake fans with higher rom versions. Noctua makes some fans up to 3000 rpm. (VERY noisy)

3. I can not tell what kind of cooling your graphics cards now have.
A Blower type cooler is best. Otherwise the top cards will tend to get short changed on fresh air.

Lastly, The graphics cards target 80c. as an operating temperature to get the maximum possible performance.
The cards are designed to tolerate such heat, so do not worry too much.

In the coming year, we should see better performing and more efficient pascal cards. Look for those.

weberdarren97 · Mar 10, 2016

geofelt :

The key to good cooling is better INTAKE.
In time, all of the intake air will get heated up and exit the case somewhere.

Looking at your setup, I would do three things:

1. Remove the lower hard drive cage to allow the front intake air more unrestricted airflow into the area where the graphics cards are. It looks like hard drives can be located in the top bays.
At the very least, remove the unused drive caddys to allow better airflow.

2. If noise is not a big issue, you can replace the front intake fans with higher rom versions. Noctua makes some fans up to 3000 rpm. (VERY noisy)

3. I can not tell what kind of cooling your graphics cards now have.
A Blower type cooler is best. Otherwise the top cards will tend to get short changed on fresh air.

Lastly, The graphics cards target 80c. as an operating temperature to get the maximum possible erfoormance.
The cards are designed to tolerate such heat, so do not worry too much.

In the coming year, we should see better performing and more efficient pascal cards. Look for those.

The installed cards are already blower style, this is determined by the fact that the top card is actually running cooler than the bottom one.

natemac · Mar 10, 2016

weberdarren97 :

So the harddrive bay is not removable... That is said until I used some sheet metal shears to it.... No more Hard Drive Bay.

snurp85 :

I think I try this, just to add a little more cooling.

geofelt :

These are the cards I puchased: http://www.microcenter.com/product/453354/GeForce_GTX_980_Ti_6GB_GDDR5_V1_Video_Card

So the fact that it's holding at 83º seems to be okay, if it's trying to target 80º. Do you think I'll have an issue if I put a third card in between those two?

weberdarren97 · Mar 10, 2016

natemac :

Yes I think that would present an issue. But even if you did manage to cool it well enough, are you sure that the PCIe x16 slot between them will run at x16 if you start using it as well? You'll want to check your motherboard's manual and make sure that none of your PCIe x16 slots are sharing bandwidth with any other slots you're currently using.

natemac · Mar 10, 2016

weberdarren97 :

PCI Lanes aren't as important with the Render Engine since I'm not trying to run anything on the actual computers display. It's only calculating data, I'm only running at 8x on both at the moment I believe and the benchmarks are reading at 2x speed when a single then a double GPU.

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