yes, it gets very hot and very loud. i built the rig specifically for bf3 and can't wait..only 6 more days! when gaming it can max out to around 85C on the hottest card. havn't really checked though since removing some obstructions in the case (3.5 drive bay rack). the cards do howl at full tilt...makes me glad i game with headphones.
my water setup is the rasa rs240 kit. i was considering watercooling the gpu's but for me it's too high of a price for too little gains, especially considering that my cpu is the main bottleneck at my resolution.