Sli cooling options?

[Drew Fletcher]

Hey everyone!
I'm relatively new to pc gaming and i was wondering do you need to water cool cards in sli or is there a safe alternative?
im building my first desktop pc and i want at some point to have 2 gtx 970's in sli but water cooling is a bit too expensive for me to afford so is it necessary? 

My system is 
amd fx-8350
msi 970 gaming mobo (2 pcie 2.0 x16)
8gb ram 

and a thermaltake mid case my friend gave me not sure the exact model name but its dimensions are
17.5" long
15.75" tall
6.5" wide
(measured from the inside)

Any advise would help and be much apreciated Thanks!

[Guest]

No, water cooling is almost never necessary

[Senzelian]

...

Nah, you don't need water cooling for SLI. You'll be fine with even the reference cooler. But I would still recommend to get a nice card from EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus and so on with a good and quiet cooler on it.

[SirSquid]

How close are the cards together?

[Drew Fletcher]

How close are the cards together?

i dont have them yet i just wanted to know if it would be worth getting one 980 and never getting to try sli (bc 2 450-500$ cards is too much) but hers the mother board so you can look at the pcie https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=92D1FDF2289F889B!171&authkey=!ABNmnu753TSgiUA&v=3&ithint=photo%2cJPG

[Drew Fletcher]

Nah, you don't need water cooling for SLI. You'll be fine with even the reference cooler. But I would still recommend to get a nice card from EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus and so on with a good and quiet cooler on it.

Thanks (: im getting two evga's http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487076&cm_re=gtx_970-_-14-487-076-_-Product

[SirSquid]

i dont have them yet i just wanted to know if it would be worth getting one 980 and never getting to try sli (bc 2 450-500$ cards is too much) but hers the mother board so you can look at the pcie https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=92D1FDF2289F889B!171&authkey=!ABNmnu753TSgiUA&v=3&ithint=photo%2cJPG

You are good, no need to change the cooling.