Totally uneven heat in Crossfire 5870s

[TitusPullo]

I don't understand why your bottom 2gb card can't be used as the top card. It was suppose to come with minidisplay port to dvi adapters wasnt it? Mine came with 2. Or does it just not show anything when used as the top card with the dvi adapters?

I haven't tried using the DVI adapter with the Eyefinity card. I heard that the passive adapters, such as the ones that come with the card, do not work properly and often cause artifacts and such. However AMD's website says that the passive adapters ARE OK for up to 2 "legacy" (i.e. DVI or HDMI) monitor hookups.

So I will try this out when I get home tonight. I don't suppose anyone else has tried this?

 

[mhouck]

Seero's advice is good. You could also flip the positioning of the two cards so the eyefinity edition is on top and get a display port adapter. I'm surprised you don't have the adapter with the card.

But it really sounds like an airflow problem especially with the non-reference cooler on the GPU that's overheating.

 

[TitusPullo]

Now the best solution now is the move the 2nd card to the 3rd bank if possible. Otherwise, make sure the side fan, if there is a fan, blow airs in, not suck air out. Otherwise get something like this and blow air right on top of the cards where those fans are.

Yeah on my Gigabyte EX-58 mobo, there are only 2 PCI-e slots and they are pretty much right next to each other when you consider the height of each 5870 -- or any high-end GPU these days.

My concern is about whether my PSU requires replacing. I heard that after 2 years or so, the PSU loses some of its max wattage in effect due to capacitor aging. I used the Antec power calculator (http://www.antec.outervision.com/) to plug in my stats and it recommended a wattage of 873W (I set the capacitor aging to 30% for a conservative, worst-case scenario).

The high CPU temps of 106C are indeed bad, but it seems to me they would not result in outright PC shutdown, or in the case of the crash that happened after installing Catalyst 11.4 preview, a bizarre power failure to all peripherals while the card continued to run the game, as I described.

Isn't this strange incident indicative of PSU issues rather than card issues?

 

[five_seven]

I don't know what the Saphire card looks like offhand, but how similar is this a situation to the non-reference designs on the 5800 series that placed a single, large fan in the middle of the shroud over the GPU?

I've got an XFX 5870 that uses the single center fan versus the reference designs that used the smaller blower fan towards the end of the shroud. My eVGA board has both 16x lanes separated by a 1x so I suspect when I install a second card that they will literally have millimeters of space between them. Browsing through the 'Egg the only X58 board I found that had two slot spacing between PCI_16x 1 and PC_16x 2 was the ASRock board. Everything else only had single slot spacing between the two 16x slots. Sure, one could put the second card into an 8x slot farther down and yes, the performance is negligible based on argument but how frustrating it seems to have board layouts designed like that where the cards are pretty much a§-to-a§. Besides the wedge idea with fans it seems like the only other solution for cooling cards that close is to put water blocks on them.

 

[4ghz]

I haven't tried using the DVI adapter with the Eyefinity card. I heard that the passive adapters, such as the ones that come with the card, do not work properly and often cause artifacts and such. However AMD's website says that the passive adapters ARE OK for up to 2 "legacy" (i.e. DVI or HDMI) monitor hookups.

So I will try this out when I get home tonight. I don't suppose anyone else has tried this?

Yes I used 2 of the dvi adapters and one displayport to vga adapter to power my eyefinity setup and it works fine. I think the only people that have problems with the dvi adapters are people that run higher then 19x12 resolution.

 

[4ghz]

I don't know what the Saphire card looks like offhand, but how similar is this a situation to the non-reference designs on the 5800 series that placed a single, large fan in the middle of the shroud over the GPU?

I've got an XFX 5870 that uses the single center fan versus the reference designs that used the smaller blower fan towards the end of the shroud. My eVGA board has both 16x lanes separated by a 1x so I suspect when I install a second card that they will literally have millimeters of space between them. Browsing through the 'Egg the only X58 board I found that had two slot spacing between PCI_16x 1 and PC_16x 2 was the ASRock board. Everything else only had single slot spacing between the two 16x slots. Sure, one could put the second card into an 8x slot farther down and yes, the performance is negligible based on argument but how frustrating it seems to have board layouts designed like that where the cards are pretty much a§-to-a§. Besides the wedge idea with fans it seems like the only other solution for cooling cards that close is to put water blocks on them.

There were a couple of other x58 boards that had a space between the pcie 1 and 2 slots but I think they are all discontinued now. Asus p6t Deluxe, Deluxe v2, Msi Platinum, one or two other Msi boards and a Biostar board.

And yes pretty much all cards on top will run super hot sandwiched next to each other. The only exceptions I've found are reference gtx 465s, 470 and 480. They actually had holes in the pcb so the fan could draw air from the other side of the pcb. Nvidia had to add those holes because the cards ran super hot even with space for air flow. Of course once nvidia was able to tame temps they removed the holes for the gtx570 and gtx580 probably to save a few pennies.

 

[TitusPullo]

Yes I used 2 of the dvi adapters and one displayport to vga adapter to power my eyefinity setup and it works fine. I think the only people that have problems with the dvi adapters are people that run higher then 19x12 resolution.

I only have one monitor. So... when I put the Eyefinity on top, I use just a single DP to DVI adapter, right?

The only reason I bought the Eyefinity card, was because it was $20 cheaper than an identically clocked, non-Eyefinity 5870.

I figured for Crossfire, this would not be a problem.

 

[TitusPullo]

Besides the wedge idea with fans it seems like the only other solution for cooling cards that close is to put water blocks on them.

Well, the closed-loop GPU cooler by Coolit Systems would be perfect, but of course Corsair bought them out so they don't sell their Omni ALC GPU cooler anymore.

I am hoping to reverse the two cards positions, hoping the displayport to DVI adapter works, and that this will increase the space between cards without send temps through the roof.

Hopefully the reference design on the Sapphire Eyefinity will be cooler in Crossfire than the custom non-reference cowling design on the Gigabyte.

I will report on this tonight when I get home.

 

[Seero]

Yeah on my Gigabyte EX-58 mobo, there are only 2 PCI-e slots and they are pretty much right next to each other when you consider the height of each 5870 -- or any high-end GPU these days.

My concern is about whether my PSU requires replacing. I heard that after 2 years or so, the PSU loses some of its max wattage in effect due to capacitor aging. I used the Antec power calculator (http://www.antec.outervision.com/) to plug in my stats and it recommended a wattage of 873W (I set the capacitor aging to 30% for a conservative, worst-case scenario).

The high CPU temps of 106C are indeed bad, but it seems to me they would not result in outright PC shutdown, or in the case of the crash that happened after installing Catalyst 11.4 preview, a bizarre power failure to all peripherals while the card continued to run the game, as I described.

Isn't this strange incident indicative of PSU issues rather than card issues?

If PSU is the leading cause, then your system will probably shut down almost as soon as you fire the game, not 30 minutes down the road.

PSU does degrades, and it is part of your problem, but isn't the cause of the problem. You can buy a new PSU, but that doesn't solve your overheating problem much. Yes, it will help temps too believe it or not, because at high temp, electricity flow, and bad electricity flow leads to high temp. Proper cooling can fix all that, but sometimes it isn't easy to fix, like in your case.

I say, up fan speed first as it is free, and see if the system can stay alive.

 

[4ghz]

I only have one monitor. So... when I put the Eyefinity on top, I use just a single DP to DVI adapter, right?

The only reason I bought the Eyefinity card, was because it was $20 cheaper than an identically clocked, non-Eyefinity 5870.

I figured for Crossfire, this would not be a problem.

yep just use one of the dvi adapters that came with it and plug it into any of the minidisplay ports.

 

[veri745]

You can buy a new PSU, but that doesn't solve your overheating problem much. Yes, it will help temps too believe it or not, because at high temp, electricity flow, and bad electricity flow leads to high temp. Proper cooling can fix all that, but sometimes it isn't easy to fix, like in your case.

Poor quality PSU won't cause other components to run hotter. Capacitor degradation can limit your PSU's ability to provide power, but that will cause voltage dropoff at higher current levels, there's no such thing as "bad electricity flow" that "leads to high temp" unless you're refering to a short, which is certainly bad, and will certainly cause high temps (AKA fried components)

 

[Tempered81]

get a passive mini-dp to dvi adapter, and put the 2gb card on top, problem solved

 

[TitusPullo]

get a passive mini-dp to dvi adapter, and put the 2gb card on top, problem solved

Did precisely this -- max temps for the top card in DA2 with MAX settings is now about 85C, with a few flickers up to 88C.

Bottom card never tops 69C.

It turns out putting the Eyefinity on top and making sure it is screwed in a position where it's as high up in the PCI-e slot as possible created enough space between it and the Gigabyte.

As someone else pointed out, the declined angle of the Gigabyte's cowling-style HSF unit works far better when there is no other card beneath it.

Thanks you guys -- totally turned this situation around for me!

 

[Seero]

Poor quality PSU won't cause other components to run hotter. Capacitor degradation can limit your PSU's ability to provide power, but that will cause voltage dropoff at higher current levels, there's no such thing as "bad electricity flow" that "leads to high temp" unless you're refering to a short, which is certainly bad, and will certainly cause high temps (AKA fried components)

I didn't say the cause is due to the PSU, I said changing PSU will have minimal impact on temp. However, capactor aging has a relationship with the overall heat generation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Capacitors with high ESR can make power supplies malfunction, sometimes causing further circuit damage. CPU core voltage or other system voltages may fluctuate or go out of range, possibly with an increase in CPU temperature as the core voltage rises

Of course we can argue on the behavior of a defective circuit, but we really can't expect what exactly will happen when a circuit consists of bad caps. Usually, the PC simply shuts down. Sometimes it generates unstable voltage output, and sometimes, it pops and even catches on fire.