Custom Cooler For SLI?

[Kaose]

Hello, i'm having trouble finding out from anyone if 2 custom cards for SLI will make much of a difference from 2 reference or "Founders Edition" cards, their will be 3x 120MM Fans at the front 2x 120MM At The Top And A 140MM the back, their will also be only 1 Slot spacing between cards, i'm okay with hot gpu's but i don't want any throttling and i would love to have a little overclocking headroom, also if it matters, im looking at Asus ROG Strix cards with the Triple Fans.

[StormEye]

I have had experience with SLi using reference 780ti, and it was not a very good experience as it was either

1. Throttling pretty bad, due to temperature issues

2. EXTREMELY loud, due to fans running full blast to prevent throttling

 

I moved to non-reference 980ti SLi but the cooler design was not that good, so I did not over clock much and limited fan speed to prevent noise. It was much better experience than the reference 780ti.

 

Now, I am using ASUS Strix 1080ti and its absolutely silent. I am having more issues with case fan noise than the Strix's fans.

 

I can safely say that Strix series cards are VERY good with cooling performance and noise reduction if other Strix cards are anything like the ones on my current 1080tis.

[jet224presents]

7 minutes ago, Cryosis said:

Hello, i'm having trouble finding out from anyone if 2 custom cards for SLI will make much of a difference from 2 reference or "Founders Edition" cards, their will be 3x 120MM Fans at the front 2x 120MM At The Top And A 140MM the back, their will also be only 1 Slot spacing between cards, i'm okay with hot gpu's but i don't want any throttling and i would love to have a little overclocking headroom, also if it matters, im looking at Asus ROG Strix cards with the Triple Fans.

unless your dead set on going SLI you should generally go for a one card solution especially for nvidias 10 series with limited support for SLI

Strix cards  sound like they would offer plenty of cooling

[Kaose]

1 minute ago, StormEye said:

I have had experience with SLi using reference 780ti, and it was not a very good experience as it was either

1. Throttling pretty bad, due to temperature issues

2. EXTREMELY loud, due to fans running full blast to prevent throttling

 

I moved to non-reference 980ti SLi but the cooler design was not that good, so I did not over clock much and limited fan speed to prevent noise. It was much better experience than the reference 780ti.

 

Now, I am using ASUS Strix 1080ti and its absolutely silent. I am having more issues with case fan noise than the Strix's fans.

 

I can safely say that Strix series cards are VERY good with cooling performance and noise reduction if other Strix cards are anything like the ones on my current 1080tis.

this will be my first time going SLI ever, so i really don't know whats best, i thought that throttling might happen on custom cards when put in SLI tbh but i do agree reference is very loud and hot as my Titan X Pascal which im currently running hits 89 degrees when fully pushed and around 84 when gaming but is constantly loud no matter what temp, i mainly want custom coolers for the looks tbh as my new colour scheme will not fit with the reference cooler.

[Kaose]

1 minute ago, jet224presents said:

unless your dead set on going SLI you should generally go for a one card solution especially for nvidias 10 series with limited support for SLI

Strix cards  sound like they would offer plenty of cooling

im probably going to wait for Volta now to go SLI as im already running a Titan X Pascal and thats plenty as i play at 1440p

[StormEye]

1 minute ago, Cryosis said:

-snip-

ASUS Strix 1080ti in SLi has not throttled on me due to temperature issues for me, ever.

 

It never even reached high 70s even running at full GPU usage. And thats with me not raising fan curve as I like my system relatively quiet.

 

And since you are looking for the colour scheme matching, I suppose Strix card is pretty good (if the one you are looking for is similar to 1080ti Strix), as it looks subdue (colour wise) without RGB on, and RGB will be the one determining the actual look of the card.

[Kaose]

4 minutes ago, StormEye said:

ASUS Strix 1080ti in SLi has not throttled on me due to temperature issues for me, ever.

 

It never even reached high 70s even running at full GPU usage. And thats with me not raising fan curve as I like my system relatively quiet.

 

And since you are looking for the colour scheme matching, I suppose Strix card is pretty good (if the one you are looking for is similar to 1080ti Strix), as it looks subdue (colour wise) without RGB on, and RGB will be the one determining the actual look of the card.

my color scheme is a White, Light Blue and black, got the idea/inspiration from this (the board i'm going to use) i think the Strix with RGB to match colour scheme will look great tbh

[Zyndo]

17 minutes ago, Cryosis said:

Hello, i'm having trouble finding out from anyone if 2 custom cards for SLI will make much of a difference from 2 reference or "Founders Edition" cards, their will be 3x 120MM Fans at the front 2x 120MM At The Top And A 140MM the back, their will also be only 1 Slot spacing between cards, i'm okay with hot gpu's but i don't want any throttling and i would love to have a little overclocking headroom, also if it matters, im looking at Asus ROG Strix cards with the Triple Fans.

with that much case ventilation, your should be totally fine with an aftermarket cooling solution. Its worth noting that no matter what you do, that top card is going to be running quite a bot hotter (unless you make a custom liquid cooling loop) so you're not going to be able to achieve the same overclocks as you would with a single card.

 

Which STRIX are you after? thermal output between a 1070 strix and 1080ti strix would be a fair bit different.

[StormEye]

Just now, Cryosis said:

-snip-

I think Strix would be good, as it does not have much colour on its own and matches black overall.

You can go with that cyan'ish blue RGB on the Strix to match your mobo's RGB

[Kaose]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

with that much case ventilation, your should be totally fine with an aftermarket cooling solution. Its worth noting that no matter what you do, that top card is going to be running quite a bot hotter (unless you make a custom liquid cooling loop) so you're not going to be able to achieve the same overclocks as you would with a single card.

 

Which STRIX are you after? thermal output between a 1070 strix and 1080ti strix would be a fair bit different.

i was going to do 1080ti but its "Most Likely" getting near Volta now so i might just wait it out till a speculated "1180"

[Zyndo]

9 minutes ago, Cryosis said:

i was going to do 1080ti but its "Most Likely" getting near Volta now so i might just wait it out till a speculated "1180"

well its worth noting the 1080ti STRIX card is a 2.5 slot card (whereas the lower 10 series models are all 2 slot cards), so you're not going to be having a ton of breathing room even with a 3 slot PCIe space. gonna be a lot of heat in a small amount of area. I still reckon you will be fine, but your top card is going to be a fair bit hotter and louder than your bottom card... so don't be trying to overclock its nuts off or anything like that. if you have the budget you could always combat this problem with a custom loop and then take all your overclocks to the next level!

 

waiting may not be a bad idea either considering you apparently already have a Titan X Pascal. Since a single 1080ti and Titan X Pascal are nearly on par with each other, there isn't going to be a particularly huge performance boost in most games by going 1080ti sli. Some games will scale very well and you'll definitely see the performance boost in those situations, but not a ton of games do nowadays. waiting for next gen cards should at least guarantee you get some kind of performance step up for you investment, even when SLI support isn't quite there (or MDA/LDA or whatever they're trying to phase it out to).

[Kaose]

1 minute ago, Zyndo said:

well its worth noting the 1080ti STRIX card is a 2.5 slot card (whereas the lower 10 series models are all 2 slot cards), so you're not going to be having a ton of breathing room even with a 3 slot PCIe space. gonna be a lot of heat in a small amount of area. I still reckon you will be fine, but your top card is going to be a fair bit hotter and louder than your bottom card... so don't be trying to overclock its nuts off or anything like that. if you have the budget you could always combat this problem with a custom loop and then take all your overclocks to the next level!

 

waiting may not be a bad idea either considering you apparently already have a Titan X Pascal. Since a single 1080ti and Titan X Pascal are nearly on par with each other, there isn't going to be a particularly huge performance boost in most games by going 1080ti sli. Some games will scale very well and you'll definitely see the performance boost in those situations, but not a ton of games do nowadays. waiting for next gen cards should at least guarantee you get some kind of step up for you investment.

yeah well the the new Titan Xp has made me kinda forget about the Titan cards tbh as i only bought the card in December and it has been "Replaced" in terms of performance twice in the just over 4 months iv'e had it

[StormEye]

28 minutes ago, Cryosis said:

yeah well the the new Titan Xp has made me kinda forget about the Titan cards tbh as i only bought the card in December and it has been "Replaced" in terms of performance twice in the just over 4 months iv'e had it

I do not think people should buy top tier cards (especially Titan series) if one would be disappointed that it will be dethroned soon. Its more of a bragging right, and a costly one.

 

I, for example, bought 1080ti knowing fully that Volta is coming sooner or later and will have to move to it. Heck, Titan XP got announced soon after I placed pre-order for my 1080tis.

[Mick Naughty]

Only issues I've had with sli are using open air coolers. Temps got

too high for me. Then the added noise with more fans. Never had a card thermal throttle. Doubt I ever will. 

 

I prefer blower style in every situation. My cards barley get out of the 50's. The 10 series being so bad I'd rather put them on water like I did in my spare rig.

 

if the spacing is right and great airflow you can get away with open air coolers. Much easier then doing aio's or custom cooling. Which is the route I would go if I didn't care about noise. 

[StormEye]

1 hour ago, Mick Naughty said:

Then the added noise with more fans.

 

1 hour ago, Mick Naughty said:

My cards barley get out of the 50's.

 

You probably had fans turned WAY up if your temps never went over 50 using FE coolers.

[Mick Naughty]

7 hours ago, StormEye said:

 

 

You probably had fans turned WAY up if your temps never went over 50 using FE coolers.

Yea doing some tests so that would only make sense. If I do 70% on the card I can do low 60's. But all of my cards have vapor chambers. Idk what they did with the 10 series. 

[Frankenburger]

I came from SLI 1080 ACX 2.0, and the top card was choked out beyond belief. It ran much louder than any of my previous reference cards, and it was way hotter than it should have been (85c vs 68c). Because of this, the top card was severely throttling down to the 1700MHz range, while the bottom card was sitting comfortably at the 1900MHz range. This was with 2 slot spacing. 1 slot spacing would probably be much worse.

 

If you want to SLI, go reference/FE.

 

Right now, I'm currently contemplating a Kraken G12 shroud and Corsair H55 AIO for my SLI 1080Ti's. It's an $80 solution for each card, which isn't bad IMO.

 

Gamersnexus did a similar mod to their Titan X(p) and found it greatly stabilized their clocks. I would imagine that when pushing the envelope, the AIO liquid cooler will enable the card to scale even better on max OCs.

 

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2568-titan-x-pascal-hybrid-results-clock-throttling-on-reference

 

In the meantime though, I'm fairly content with my FE coolers. They aren't as loud as the reference coolers of the past, and are doing a good job keeping my cards cool. My top card typically reaches 80-82c, while the bottom card usually lingers around 72-74c at +130MHz.

[Kaose]

On 4/29/2017 at 3:19 PM, Frankenburger said:

I came from SLI 1080 ACX 2.0, and the top card was choked out beyond belief. It ran much louder than any of my previous reference cards, and it was way hotter than it should have been (85c vs 68c). Because of this, the top card was severely throttling down to the 1700MHz range, while the bottom card was sitting comfortably at the 1900MHz range. This was with 2 slot spacing. 1 slot spacing would probably be much worse.

 

If you want to SLI, go reference/FE.

 

Right now, I'm currently contemplating a Kraken G12 shroud and Corsair H55 AIO for my SLI 1080Ti's. It's an $80 solution for each card, which isn't bad IMO.

 

Gamersnexus did a similar mod to their Titan X(p) and found it greatly stabilized their clocks. I would imagine that when pushing the envelope, the AIO liquid cooler will enable the card to scale even better on max OCs.

 

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2568-titan-x-pascal-hybrid-results-clock-throttling-on-reference

 

In the meantime though, I'm fairly content with my FE coolers. They aren't as loud as the reference coolers of the past, and are doing a good job keeping my cards cool. My top card typically reaches 80-82c, while the bottom card usually lingers around 72-74c at +130MHz.

i can live with a loud 85 degrees and a little throttling if it matches my color scheme, i just don't want the cards to go past 90 degrees which my Titan X Pascal at stock speeds and stock fan curve does sometimes when fully pushed