Galaxy GTX460 SLI heat issues

[dava04]

Hi I need some bright ideas and clever suggestions.
Just built a new system.

i7 930 - 6gb kingston ram - 2x Galaxy GTX 460 1gb (the one with the detachable fan), MSI X58 Pro E, 500gb HDD, the case is something generic ATX, but there are enough connections in it to mount a total of 6 x 6" fans (1300rpm), and i have done just that.

THere are two in the front of the case, blowing air inwards at the back of the 460's and southbridge, one beneath the bottom 460 pulling air out, two above the 460's pushing air inwards, and one pulling air out next to the CPU.

THe problem is that the galaxy fans seem to be spinning in the wrong direction and sending the hot air to the back of the cards, and not out the front exhast ports - Is there something I can do about this to reverse their direction?

Basically the two cards are cooking the southbridge, temps hover at 77degC and when i go to play farcry 2 in SLI i get 20-30mins from a cold start and then the computer spontaniously reboots, most annoying.

I am currently in CHina, the ambient temp here is 35degc at the moment.

I am at the point where SLI isnt worth it any more, and selling the other card as there seems to be no solution to this issue.

Some help would be appreciated, or has anyone noticed this same problem with the galaxy card so we can give them some grief, i would like to keep my SLI set up.

Thanks

 

[Tamz_msc]

They come with the detachable fans, so you have put it in the wrong way.Just put it the other way round.Here is what I consider ideal airflow in a case:
1.All front fans should be intake fans.
2.All rear fans should be exhaust.
3.All side/bottom fans should be intake.
4.All top fans should be exhaust.

 

[dava04]

THe fan being in the wrong way around does sound logical, however if you look at one of these boards in the flesh you will see that they are designed to be in the card only one way, and that the way they came out of the box. I can turn the fan around and place it back into the card, but then the fan would stick out by about 1cm and therefore not be flush with the heatsink and as such i would imagine it would do a worse job at moving the air.

I have actually tried simply removing the fans and having the case fans blow on them, the bottom card and top card both over heated quickly.

I was considering taking off the entire plastic housing, in which the fan is mounted allowing the entire heat sink to be exposed to the case fans, however I cant see a way of taking said housing off.

My fans are layed out in exactly the same way as you are suggesting in points 1,2 and 4, (seems my terminology is a little different) but my bottom fan is pointing directly into the fan of the 460 and so that is blowing directly onto the card, seemed sensible.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Ensure proper cable management.35 degrees ambient is hot but even then the GTX 460s should not be that hot.The galaxy cards come factory over clocked.Try underclocking them.

 

[dava04]

THe GTX460 clocks are 700 GPU and 1400 shader 1800 memory, for the moment I have given up and taken the offending card out, to get on with the serious business of playing games

All the wires are tied up tie wraps and oved as best as possible.

My next plan will be getting a desk fan tomorrow taking the side of the case off and directing it at the south bridge, fingers crossed it will be enough.

I would be interested to here from the Tom's hardware testers about how they didnt encounter this problem or overcame it. Are the expensive rampage etc boards really that much better at keeping the south bridge cool?

 

[dava04]

As an update I noticed a utility which comes with the card called a magic tune, its for overclocking and allows control of the fan speed.
SO i set the fans to 100%, it helped, the GPU temp fell to 33C at rest and 51C under load, however the southbridge stil eventually got cooked and the computer rebooted.

Still waiting for Tom's hardware testers to weigh in on this one!!! Do they not read the forums?

 

[notty22]

You could try a Antec Spot fan and bend it over that chip.

 

[dava04]

Thanks for the suggestion, that fan looks quite cool, i wonder what kind of output it has, that might work.

 

[dava04]

THe RAM was faulty yes, i kept getting the blue screen of death, that was another problem.
If it didnt blue screen it only turned off, and I mean an abrupt turning off when playing a game for 20 mins or more, after the restart looking at temps of 77+.
THe RAM has been changed, to be fair I havent tested the SLI again since the new RAM, I will test it soon.

So if the south bridge can tolerate up to 110C, maybe there is a saftey 'feature' that shuts it down over a certain temp, like with a laptop, ever heard of this?

If there was some other issue, wouldnt the PC blue screen and create a memory dump, I really dont know what would make the PC just turn off, straight dead... any ideas?

 

[dava04]

P.s. the PC has been checked and parts replaced for testing and proved in fine condition, PSU, CPU mobo etc, all have a clean bill of health, from me and the computer shop.

 

[dava04]

The PC is completly new, a totally new build.
When the PC restarted it came back on straight away, I didnt notice anything relating to the LEDs in the case, didnt look.
But back at the shop we got one more PSU and tested same thing happened PSU proved ok.
I am running Win 7 OEM trusted source, Its been on my other PC since Win7 went retail X64, not a problem.
Bit defender was the first program I put on the computer, scanned virus free, and every day since virus free, however I have been getting lots of cookies deleted for some reason, on both PCs, they seem to be 'infected' with cookies more these last two weeks, usually none, so that was a little strange.

The ram is all new, again, all the same speed, actually i have been up now for 6+ hrs, been playing GTA4 and farcry 2, not in SLI, just one card, but curcially no blue screen.

Also been working, on skype, excel etc, doing business so the PC has been tested on all systems, seems ok.

SLI will be the next thing, i want my other card back in, fingers crossed a desk fan solves the problem.

 

[OvrClkr]

I donot think ur southbridge temp are hot enough to make ur pc restarts. My SB TEMP ARE ABOUT 80C WHEN PLAYING GAME. BUT MY PC NEVER RESTARTS.sa can take temp upto 110c.u pc has other problem faulty ram.cpu. Psu.

your SB runs at 80c when playing games? That's quite unlikely since the SB normally runs cooler than the NB. What program are you using to monitor your SB/NB temps?

 

[OvrClkr]

I use everest.my SB temp always has been hotter than NB.if my sb is 80 then nb will be 65 to 70.i use intel dg43nb board.

gotcha, I thought you were running an AM3 board.

 

[nforce4max]

Are you in the city or out in the country? If you are in an area ware the air is clean then open up the windows. Ware I live it gets that hot for 1/3 of the year to ware it can on rare days push 40c outside and in the house. It is alarmingly hot when one can cook pizzas and cookies in the car. What I did was to use any generic 80mm fan and sit it on the floor of the case near the bottom card and the SB. I got a XFX 780i that I landed on ebay for $30 but had to RMA for another $8.77. It does get rather hot but replacing the compound does the trick along with the fan mod. If you got 750i on up then you have little choice but to do the fan mod. 40mm fans are just right for the job especially a double height fan but they can causes issues with cpu coolers. If your setup is different than mine and isn't a monosink then there is a kit that can be bought but they aren't cheap even in the US.

 

[dava04]

Update, the PC has been up and running on one card perfectly fine all week.
So I thought all is well, time to put the other card back in, I also bought a 13inch deskfan.

SO the 2xGTX 460s with the case open and a desk fan sat right on top of them, and the system still restarts after about 5mins of playing a game (just cause 2)

On restart I went staight to the bios and the temps are CPU 38C IOH 66C System 44C, these dont seem high to me at all, and that IOH temp is a 10deg C lower than usual. Usually on the restart after its failed the IOH temp is 77degC.

Therefore its not a heat issue, that now seems fairly certain, but what the f... could it be, mobo problem?

Both cards work fine individually.

Help please.

 

[nforce4max]

Since ur system run fine with single card then ur system is fine and also ur card.Only culprit has to be the psu somehow it is under powering the system when two cards are installed.Or there could be some issue with the mobo that it is having problem handling sli.Update ur bios and also try running 2 cards without sli one as a gpu and other physx.Report back ur finding.

What you should have said was to check the volts in bios and with speedfan...

 

[notty22]

What size psu do you have ? Was just reading in another forum a fellows pc
I7 930 @ 3.77
single gtx 460@ ?
Running prime 95+furmark pulled 600 watts at the wall. I would say that another could pull 200 more. Food for thought.

 

[OvrClkr]

lol at teh 94c temp from the top 460, must have been sandwiched pretty bad.

 

[dava04]

Ok, So I ran both cards in the machine this afternoon, with the deskfan positioned on top of the open case, results are as follows.
2 cards in SLI disabled, no problems at all, unsurprisingly.
2 cards in SLI enable, GPU1 set on PhysX, took 10mins for the PC to restart, temps on restart were CPU-35 / IOH-66 / System-41degC.
With PhysX on GPU2, the system lasted for about 30mins before restarting, the temps were basically the same as above.

The monitor is plugged into GPU2

THe temps of the GPUs underload with the fan on max hover around 55degC.
GPU1 is running at 1.037v
GPU2 is running at 1.000v
GPU clock 700
Shader clock 1400
Memory clock 1848
THese are the default values for the galaxy cards, as stated by the galaxy utility that comes with them Magic Panel HD.

I havent messed with the overclocking at all, all I have done is turn the cards fan setting to 100%.

THe PSU is an XILENCE 800w gaming edition.

Again in the bios I havent changed a thing, all the values are default as stipulated by the components, the full system has not been stable with all my parts, i.e. SLI so i havent even thought about OCing yet.

I will try these programs (prime 95+furmark) and see what they say - although I should imagine that it wont even make it to the end of the test without restarting.

 

[dava04]

ALso just looking at my power supply, there are 4 x +12v rails, all capable of sending 18amps down each rail, I am assuming that 2 of these 12v rails are the GPU power supply cables.

 

[dava04]

Unfortunatly, I live in China, it is hard to avoid said crap, and actually a quick search gives this power supply reasonable reviews.

I am looking for a calculator now, to see what the total power need would be, as initally I was going of the power needs of the original toms hardware review of the GTX460, and the SLI review, where power consumption is again given, both of these reviews would suggest that not more than 500w at load was ever used.
My system is I7 930, 6gb ram, MSI X58proE, 2x460 1gb, 1x500gb western digital HDD, 5x 6inch fans, I have no optical drives, no other cards or addons.
Anyone want to guesstimate power needs?

 

[dava04]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-sli-geforce-gtx-480,2694-10.html global wattage 470w.

This system is probably more thirsty than mine anyway, so an 800w PSU is running at 58% capacity, that quite 'safe'. DO we agree?

Or is this review on this site for SLI 460's talking rubbish?

 

[dava04]

I will look into it, do we think 800w is enough, or go bigger?

 

[dava04]

RIght then, I have just spoken to the computer market, to see what they have, I hope i dont have to take a trip to Hongkong just for a PSU, but I will report the outcome.

 

[dava04]

OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ750FTY - would do the job?