Gtx 260 sli Heat problem

Do you have a side panel fan? How about having a good side panel fan that will push air out from the case faster? Or just generally have a negatively pressure'd case so that you push out hot out of the case.

My fan setup is :

front, side panel & rear: 120mm stock cooler masters (guessing abou 60 cfm each)
top: 2 dynex 70 cfm 120 mm
bottom: thermaltake 78 cfm 120 mm

intake: front bottom side
exhaust: top back

all fans run at full speed on 12 volts.

On the asus p6t X58 mobo the 2 pcix16 2.0 slots put the cards RIGHT next to each other. Like the top 2 cards of a 3 way sli setup. I'd guess it's about .5 cm or 1/8" space between the cards. I KNOW this isn't helping the heat.

Will swaping all the fans out (I can mount 140mm in 3 of the slots) with the higher cfm fans fix the problem or do I need to look into watercooling, case modding?

I know no one can give me an exact answer, but has anyone faced a similar issue and overcame it?

I had a CPU heat problem till I bought a Noctua 1366se heatsink. But this gpu heat problem has been there since the start of the build ( about a month ago )

You should try underclocking and see if that does it. You need stability before performance.

You need to get those PSU cables out of the way to. tape them to the bottom or up the side of the case to get them out of the way. Just do anything for better airflow. It'll make a huge difference on noise levels and cooling.

Stability over performance is true. I looped 3dmark vantage for 4 hours and was fine. I played Lost Planet DX10 all settings on the highest available at 1920x1200 with 4xaa for 3 hours and was fine. But an hour of crysis on ultra high heats up the gpu past 90c and crashes. Furmark will crash too.

So I feel I am close to being stable.

I have the wires out of the way the best I can (I should of went modular).

Good idea about the open case with an external fan, but I can't rely on that as my cooling system for a number of reasons. But to test it, I have a very strong fan I can blow into the side of the case with the panel off. If furmark overheats with that, then no air cooling solution will work. I have to wait till Saturday to try it though.

The first thing I'd do is remove one of your graphics cards then benchmark it heavily to confirm it is stable.

Then do the same for the second card just to confirm it's not one of your graphics cards that's having heat issues.

PSU:
Is your fan outside the case?
If you have the fan inside the case you'll pull in hot air. This can also cause your computer to crash.

Also, try leaving the side of the case OFF and even blowing a large room fan across your graphics cards just to confirm it's entirely a heat issue or at least a heat issue that can be solved by fans.

Before this i7 system I was running a phenom system with 1 gtx260. I used Card for about 6 months. I got firmiliar with it's temps and general behavior.

When I built the i7 system I built it and ran it with one card. I benched the system with stock clocks it ran fine. The gpu temps were the same as in the phenom system but I got better frames per second due to the CPU upgrade.

Two days later I added the second brand new card and enabled sli.

And yes I do get artifacts before a crash. While playing crysis trees won't render properly, water looks odd, and other textures are missing.

Today I played for a half hour, but with the case open. Logging gpuz in the backround. The temps maxed out at 87c with no crashes.

I had a SLI 9800GTX+ in exat case as you, but my old P5N32e SLI PLUS had the 2 16x slot very far noe from the other. So the bottom fan was blowing to the lowest card and the side fan in the mid of the top one. My 2 BFG 9800GTX+ OC (770core) was awesome and ran very cooool. maxing in the mid 60c.

PSU was breathing from the bottom to the outside so the PSU wasnt eating the case. Room was in the low 20c.


Wich card get HOT ? bottom or top one.
ROOM TEMP ?