SLI spacing on the slots temp wise?

[zod96]

Having spaced the cards how much of a temp drop is their really? I mean if it loads now at 80 I don't want to buy another motherboard for $200 to get an extra space or two and only have my temps drop from 80 to say 75, big deal. Ideally I would like the top card to come close to the bottom card which is at 65 degrees. Would spacing the cards drop it that much?

 

[stahlhart]

How many slots apart are they now? I'm guessing that if you had at least one free slot separating them and a side panel fan directed in, any extra spacing wouldn't amount to more than a few degrees or so.

 

[Rifter]

Mine were showing 10-15c Raise in loaded temp on the top card when sandwiched. After purchasing a EATX case and moving one to the very bottom my case temps are alot better for all components, even dropped CPU temps by 5c as well.

And thats with only 460's, im sure more power hungry cards are worse.

 

[zod96]

About how many degrees did your top card drop?

 

[BD231]

Ouch, bad design on that board actually, they should have put the 8x slot where the 4x slot is I wonder why they did that .... I'm actually lucky, I have room enough to fit 2 three slot coolers *BUT*, the fans on the Accelero are close enough to the other card that I needed to create some room for the top card to breath due to the weight of the sink pulling the top card down.

Like mine your cards should have *some* give, probably not nearly as much with a light stock cooler but I'd imagine you have a little. I took a cheap thin motherboard fan and stuck it deep enough between the two to slighty bend the top card up a bit and the bottom one down a little which gave me *MUCH* better temps.

If you have any give to work with don't be afraid to prop the top card up and get it some breathing room, just be sure not to put so much pressure on the cards that you start to bend the slots on the board themselves. You should only need about half an to an inch in spacing to make a big difference in temps.

 

[Rifter]

About how many degrees did your top card drop?

10-15c, depended on the game. Games that stressed the cards to the max showed close to 15c, games that had GPU useage under 60% were closer to 10c. And thats with a MSI hawk and a MSI cyclone card, the Cyclone cooler was removed and lapped with the GPU also being lapped and new thermal paste applied, the hawk is 100% stock and was the bottom card. Thats also with a 860Mhz clock speed.

I consider it worth it for buying a EATX case just to get cooler temps if that helps your decision

 

[zod96]

I went ahead and ordered the Gigabyte UD3P for $150. It has more space. So we'll see if it lowers my temps or not...