My Mobo murdered my video card! Cooling help

[vaal420]

So I have 2x 6950's on my Asrock mobo. The PCIx lanes are so close together, the cards basically touch. I ran BF3 once, and the first card started glitching, and now has perma artifacts. I swapped over to the catalyst info, and the card was at 108c, with the secondary at 66c =x. So now that its dead, I have a new card to replace it, but im curious to know how I can deal with the issue of them being so close, cooling wise. Any ideas, outside of getting a new mobo with the lanes spread further apart? Im running a HAF case, and its full of fans that I have set up for optimal flow, so airflow around/near the cards shouldn't have been the cause of the temp spike. Thanks in advance.

 

[destrekor]

The only thing I can think of, save for purchasing a new mobo that has two expansion slots in-between the two x16 slots, would be to mod the cards with aftermarket coolers.

Did they run fine in other games (BF3 is seriously putting the heat on GPUs for some reason), or was BF3 the first game with those cards?

The other options are likely less preferable for you:
1. Sell/return those cards for other models with non-reference coolers that are more capable in tight-fit situations
2. Underclock the GPU
3. Watercooling

Honestly, underclocking is likely the only easy/no expense option available, but you are losing performance you paid for.

That's the thing you have to be careful with for multi-GPU usage. When purchasing, if you know there are no slots in-between, you have to be wary of reference cooler designs. Many of them have ventilation that is insufficient when the the main fan intake area is blocked.
In a case with sufficient cooling, non-blower style coolers would be ideal for your situation, where there is a zero-gap stack of GPUs. They aren't ideal for single-GPU environments, and the multi-GPU market is a small minority; thus, modern reference coolers for high-performance GPUs are often terrible in such a situation as they have zero consideration for that specific case. Especially since many of those in the market to actually use multi-GPUs from the start are now more commonly going with motherboards geared toward such usage and have two or even three expansion slots between the 16x lanes.

 

[tweakboy]

I totally agree with deskrekor. Good post.


108c is too much, 80's c is what you want. YOu need to cool the motherboard so its heat from the heatsink doesnt go to the video cards. Put a 120mm 1300rpm hitting the motherboard, Raise your video cards fan speed to 100 percent when you game. Dont let it control itself.

Artifacts are the vram getting too hot. gl

 

[hdfxst]

i had the same problem with an asrock mobo,the cards were about an 1/8 inch apart.i left the screws out and used a piece of foam to spread the cards apart and slid the mounting bracket under the adjoining slot covers.i gained about a 1/2 inch

 

[tweakboy]

Nice mod hdfxst. Doesn't sound to hard to do.

 

[vaal420]

Thanks for the replies and ideas. I have never really had to do any modding before. I was actually looking for a cooler for the rear of the 1st slot card, but apparently theres nothing to really cool back there. Im going to use the previous posters method to separate the cards, and im going to put in a 200mm side fan so blast the motherboard. At the end of the year im going to build an i7 rig anyways, I just need the cards to survive my BF3 and Skyrim sessions til then =P

Thanks again!