GPU LL Testing FAQ

[Dubslow]

One last thing about case airflow, if your motherboard is a standard not-fancy, then the PCI slots are such that your cards are almost touching, separated by a few millimeters tops; then one card is dumping the entirety of its heat into the other. You'll have to ask nucleon/Xyzzy how they solve that problem.

[flashjh]

Thanks for all your replies. Though I have been building systems for many years, I have never had two fusion generators in my case before ;)

As for all the suggestions, I have decent air flow and the cards are not too close together, but I think the stock coolers are just really bad.

Originally Posted by Dubslow

at full load in 80F rooms, it rarely gets above 65C. What temperatures did you see them get up to?

How can the cards be lower than room temperature?

Mine were around 70C when I checked, but the system didn't shutdown when I was around to see.

If the fan suggestions work, I should be ok. Since the system does nothing but factoring, P-1 and CL, I could also take it all out of the case for better airflow.

[kladner]

Last I saw, nucleon was doing it with open cases, or no case at all, and half a dozen household fans carefully adjusted to blow on the hot parts.

Xyzzy showed pictures which seemed to depict closed cases. But he did refer to them as very loud. This argues for something like the horrific Delta fan I linked to above. If you have to share a room with such a machine, the side-panel-off-with external fan might be more tolerable. A 120mm at 4800 RPM would make a nasty snarly sound. The loudest thing I have is a 92mm that runs flat-out just under 4000, and I keep it throttled back.

Also, be aware that the current draw of that Delta is too much to plug into a motherboard's fan headers. Either you run it full tilt, or you get a fan controller that can handle the current.

Maybe parking the open case where a window unit A/C can blow into it is the answer for keeping things quieter.

EDIT: What brand and model are these 580's? I am curious about their cooler arrangements. They pretty much have to be heat pipe coolers. It is possible that they are not getting the best heat transfer from the GPU's. Short of going to water cooled, it might be possible to improve things by redoing the heatsink compound. There are GPU water cooling rigs out there. They solve the problem of heat accumulation by putting the heat exchanger outside the case.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by flashjh

How can the cards be lower than room temperature?

Theoretically they can, but here is not the case. Maybe you did not notice the "F" after the 80.

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Theoretically they can, but here is not the case. Maybe you did not notice the "F" after the 80.

Yes, card is closer to 150F. Conventionally, all computer hardware temperatures are reported in Celsius, for at least a few reasons I can see: Depending on the particular hardware, 90-100 is the hard cutoff for overheating. It also has less digits than it would in Farenheit. (Around 85 is where I might push my 2600, and AMDs are a bit less tolerant of heat; nVidias should have similar tolerances to Intel.)

[flashjh]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Theoretically they can, but here is not the case. Maybe you did not notice the "F" after the 80.

Yup, missed that ;)

[kjaget]

Also, don't forget the obvious. Not sure how dusty your computing environment is, but hit the heat sinks & fans with some compressed air and see what comes out.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Yes, card is closer to 150F. Conventionally, all computer hardware temperatures are reported in Celsius, for at least a few reasons I can see: Depending on the particular hardware, 90-100 is the hard cutoff for overheating. It also has less digits than it would in Farenheit. (Around 85 is where I might push my 2600, and AMDs are a bit less tolerant of heat; nVidias should have similar tolerances to Intel.)

I have read that 55C is the "heat wall" for Thuban-based Phenom II's. Around this point they are said to get unstable, at least, and you are flirting with damage. I don't let mine get over 51.

[aaronhaviland]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

One last thing about case airflow, if your motherboard is a standard not-fancy, then the PCI slots are such that your cards are almost touching, separated by a few millimeters tops; then one card is dumping the entirety of its heat into the other. You'll have to ask nucleon/Xyzzy how they solve that problem.

I started using one of these to move the middle card of my 3-GPU system for better airflow: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058UVVX2/
I might use another, to make it a 4-GPU system (it's a 4-slot mobo, in a too-small tower case)

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by kladner

I have read that 55C is the "heat wall" for Thuban-based Phenom II's. Around this point they are said to get unstable, at least, and you are flirting with damage. I don't let mine get over 51.

When I was using a 1055T (hex core 2.8 GHz) it ran up to 65C on stock cooler, and never had stability issues.




Also note, regarding flash, that it was in fact a bad power supply causing his issues, which are now gone.

[flashjh]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

When I was using a 1055T (hex core 2.8 GHz) it ran up to 65C on stock cooler, and never had stability issues.




Also note, regarding flash, that it was in fact a bad power supply causing his issues, which are now gone.

Thanks for all the help. Turns out my power supply was giving up; the extra heat caused the fans to go faster and the system was shutting down.

I replaced the PS but I'm also upgrading the CPU cooler. I would really like to get the 580s cooled off, but without moving to liquid, I don't think there's much I can do.