Cooling my SLI Setup?

[Asellia]

Alright, technically, this isn't about overclocking; they come overclocked, and I need better cooling due to frequent driver issues when they overheat.

I have a nzxt Zero 2 Crafted Series Ultimate Cooling Chassis case.

The graphis cards I have are the Gigabyte 1gb 560 Ti OC editions (GV-N560OC-1GI) (They have some uh.. piping or similar on the side, I assume heatsinks, and two large fans. Tehy're pretty closer together due to an x58 Sabertooth mobo.)

At the moment, I cannot afford replacing parts; gigabyte tech support said that it was a heating problem, I think so too, as it only happens when MSI Afterburner shows my cards going over 90 (Well, my main card in sli).

Do you you all have any suggested cooling systems for me? Fans, or liquid, whichever will cool them best. My price range is 100-200 I believe.. I'd prefer a closed loop/safe system on liquid cooling, since I'm kinda clumsy.

On the offchance Gigabyte support is lying, and my artifacts/driver stopped responding/ect is not heating, what should I do exactly? Demand a replacement?

 

[rubix_1011]

Open the side of your case and blow a house or desk fan on HIGH into the side of your case...see if you have the same issues with temps.

If your temps go down, you have a case airflow issue and should address it with better fans and placement or a new case.

If temps remain about the same, you have a card/hardware issue that should be corrected either by RMA'ing the cards, or choosing a better cooling solution for them.

 

[cyansnow]

maybe to try remedying the artifacts/driver problem you should go to nvidia system settings > performance > device settings and clock them at 850-830 mhz and see what happens.

 

[Asellia]

maybe to try remedying the artifacts/driver problem you should go to nvidia system settings > performance > device settings and clock them at 850-830 mhz and see what happens.

I did that actually, but thank you. I'm trying to sort out a good cooling solution, is all. I already opened case, temperature does go down, but I still feel it's kind of hot. I have no experience with cooling though, so I don't know what to buy with my case/cards/mobo.

 

[boiler1990]

If it only happens at high temps, it's an overheating issue. My GTX 470s and HD 6950s would BSOD (with a driver failure notification) or just black screen. In short, high temps result in significant instability, and from you've described your cards are just overheating.

I would go through your PC while it is on and figure out where the air is flowing from each fan in the case (case fans, CPU fans, and GPU fans). This way you can figure out which configuration would be the most efficient, and therefore result in much better cooling.

My guess is that the cooler from GPU 2 is dumping heat on the PCB of GPU 1 (or vice versa) and causing it to overheat. If you have 3 PCI Express x16 slots, I would move one of the cards to leave space between the two cards.

 

[Asellia]

Best answer selected by asellia.