I need some advice

[dave1029]

Recently, I bought two Titan X's to SLI them, but they run extremely hot. With the top card starting to throttle after about 10 minutes. The bottom card runs fine, however. Anyways, with AMD releasing their new best stuff, it looks like I may have to OC my Titans just a bit to stay ahead of the curve till Pascal, but it seems as if I'm going to need a new cooling solution if I want 20% gains per card. I'm looking at the EVGA ACX 2.0 replacement cooler, but I'd like to know what you all think. I understand water cooling is the best for overclocking, but I would really rather avoid that if I can. Thanks in advance.

Edit: I'm scared of water.

 

[Silverforce11]

Open fan designs are even worse than blowers for SLI, all that heat is dumped in the case and next to each other.

If you have SLI and want to get a good OC without the crazy noisy blowers running max speed, water is the only easy way.

Look up EVGA Hybrid cooler, its compatible with Titan X.

Else look up Kraken G10.

These are the best options that will give you the benefits of water cooling with much less hassles & a lot cheaper (not that you would care for price, Titan X SLI and all!).

ps. If you're adventurous, look at the link in my sig, water for cheap.

 

[dave1029]

So you're saying that, that the ACX cooler wouldn't help at all? Or that I might as well spend some extra money and be rid of the heat problems altogether. I mean I'm not trying to overclock these things to 1400 mhz. Just 1200.

 

[Silverforce11]

Open fan blowers for SLI setup with 250W GPUs squashed together = recipe for disaster.

Titan X's blowers are as optimized as you can get for an air setup for SLI. Period. If that's not enough (crank fan up higher), then water is your other option.

 

[dave1029]

I will admit that turning the fans up to 60% allowed me to do a 10% OC for both without any throttling. I just don't know if I have space to do a water cooling solution for both. Maybe just the top card. I don't know. Would water cooling the top card and using the ACX for the bottom card work?

 

[Silverforce11]

Then just turn up the fan speed. Did you really expect a blower to keep 250W+ (OC) under control without higher fan speed?

A lot of people who boast of 1.4ghz OC on Titan X etc are the ones running 80-100% fan speed. It's ridiculously noisy but they probably game with headphones so it doesn't bother them.

Top card is the priority for water yep.

 

[kasakka]

I would water cool both of them. If you can fit a 2 fan size radiator in your case that should be plenty to cool both cards. If you don't mind ugly looks, you can always put the radiator outside the case too.

Don't be afraid of watercooling. I used to run a VERY ghetto, custom built watercooling setup for years and had a few spills here and there and it never caused any issues. I moved back to air simply because it would've been costly to replace all water blocks when I upgraded to Ivy Bridge and new GPUs. With the all-in-one setups today putting up a watercooling system is really no harder than installing the cooler for a CPU.

3rd party air coolers can work just fine in SLI. I have a 970 SLI and before that had 770 SLI and both were fine with the Gigabyte Windforce 3X and Asus DCII coolers. Installing a side fan to the case did help temps a lot though even when it runs at low silent speeds. That might be something you could try if you have a side fan slot. My Fractal Design R3 case's front fan slots are pretty close to useless for airflow so the side fan was a much better choice.

 

[dave1029]

I would water cool both of them. If you can fit a 2 fan size radiator in your case that should be plenty to cool both cards. If you don't mind ugly looks, you can always put the radiator outside the case too.

Don't be afraid of watercooling. I used to run a VERY ghetto, custom built watercooling setup for years and had a few spills here and there and it never caused any issues. I moved back to air simply because it would've been costly to replace all water blocks when I upgraded to Ivy Bridge and new GPUs. With the all-in-one setups today putting up a watercooling system is really no harder than installing the cooler for a CPU.

3rd party air coolers can work just fine in SLI. I have a 970 SLI and before that had 770 SLI and both were fine with the Gigabyte Windforce 3X and Asus DCII coolers. Installing a side fan to the case did help temps a lot though even when it runs at low silent speeds. That might be something you could try if you have a side fan slot. My Fractal Design R3 case's front fan slots are pretty close to useless for airflow so the side fan was a much better choice.

I do have a side fan, and I believe it helps a lot. Blows right on that top card. My case has pretty good airflow... it seems what the other guy is saying is that the air cooler I'm looking at is only going to be good if my case is properly getting that hot air out quickly. The only problem with water cooling both is I have no idea if I have enough space for two radiators.

 

[dave1029]

Then just turn up the fan speed. Did you really expect a blower to keep 250W+ (OC) under control without higher fan speed?

A lot of people who boast of 1.4ghz OC on Titan X etc are the ones running 80-100% fan speed. It's ridiculously noisy but they probably game with headphones so it doesn't bother them.

Top card is the priority for water yep.

Noisy... you mean it's your own personal Jet engine right?

 

[Silverforce11]

Open air coolers:

Don't forget SLI 970 is ~160Wx 2 = ~320W.

SLI Titan X OC is 250W+ x 2 = ~500W of heat dump in your case and your cards are going to recycle that warm air. Not a good idea.

 

[dave1029]

Open air coolers:

Don't forget SLI 970 is ~160Wx 2 = ~320W.

SLI Titan X OC is 250W+ x 2 = ~500W of heat dump in your case and your cards are going to recycle that warm air. Not a good idea.

But aren't they recycling that air with the stock coolers already on there? I know nothing about proper cooling so please explain.

 

[Silverforce11]

But aren't they recycling that air with the stock coolers already on there? I know nothing about proper cooling so please explain.

Stock blowers take in your case ambient air, it passes heatsink, it heats up, its exhaust out your case.

Open air coolers take in ambient air, passes heatsink, heats up, dumps the heat into ambient air... and again it goes. You need a lot of airflow to keep 500W of GPUs dumping heat into its ambient enclosed environment from being bad.

 

[dave1029]

Stock blowers take in your case ambient air, it passes heatsink, it heats up, its exhaust out your case.

Open air coolers take in ambient air, passes heatsink, heats up, dumps the heat into ambient air... and again it goes. You need a lot of airflow to keep 500W of GPUs dumping heat into its ambient enclosed environment from being bad.

So basically unless I have incredible airflow, open air coolers can possibly make my setup worse, but watercooling is the 100% surefire way to make sure these bad boys stay cool. Got it. Thanks.

 

[LTC8K6]

If you have good airflow through the case, then open air coolers are fine. The hot air is still quickly exhausted right out the back of the case.

 

[cbrunny]

I've never heard that blowers are better for multi gpu. I guess it makes sense. Is there a link or something somewhere that would support this? Might change which card I buy this go-around as I expect to SLI/CF it at some point in the future.

 

[xthetenth]

Would a water loop on the top GPU make the situation enough like a single card for the bottom to be well served by an open air cooler by making most of the top GPU's heat exit the case and most of its air needs come in a different part of the case?

 

[kasakka]

Would a water loop on the top GPU make the situation enough like a single card for the bottom to be well served by an open air cooler by making most of the top GPU's heat exit the case and most of its air needs come in a different part of the case?

It will most likely make a disparity to the cooling and thus overclocking. You can setup a single radiator to handle both cards but the radiator should be larger than those 1-fan size ones in that case.

 

[iiiankiii]

Don't be scared, homie. Water ain't that bad. If you have a CLC on your CPU, you're already treading water. Man, I don't think you have a choice. You'll have to go water cooling if you want to overclock those TXs. Most will hit 1500mhz with a modded bios (1.25v and increased power limit). I think you can get away with water cooling the top card and using an open air cooler on the second card. That's will work. That will allow you to overclock your Titan Xs without throttling.

 

[sam_816]

If budget is a constraint (looks at the 2 mighty titans) which I think its not, you can hire a professional to install water loop in your pc.

If you want to try on your own then you can start with installing hybrid water cooler by evga on the upper titan n see if it helps. If you are happy with it you can do the same for the second one... Just my 2 cents..

 

[tential]

No one mentioned returning the cards from the 980ti instead?

 

[dave1029]

Don't be scared, homie. Water ain't that bad. If you have a CLC on your CPU, you're already treading water. Man, I don't think you have a choice. You'll have to go water cooling if you want to overclock those TXs. Most will hit 1500mhz with a modded bios (1.25v and increased power limit). I think you can get away with water cooling the top card and using an open air cooler on the second card. That's will work. That will allow you to overclock your Titan Xs without throttling.

Nah my CPU isn't water cooled. No need. The thing runs cold though. Witcher 3 in 4K and it doesn't even get into the 30's. But it does have amazing airflow. Twin fans that push air out and 3 intake fans... not even including the noctua fan I have on it. Unfortunately, my graphics cards only have one fan that helps with pushing air out. Since it's "lower" in the case.

By the way, what is the max overclock I'm looking at? From what I understand, they are limited by 275 W TDP. But that number doesn't mean anything to me.