The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Yeah, I notice that of both Gigabyte's AM2+ and i7 boards, none of them are really designed for dual graphics.

 

That is really interesting. Well, regarding the Asus, I'm looking at just the blue slots. I'm not thinking about using the blacks at all.




The $366 newegg revolution has blue slots at 1, 3 and 5, making me think I could put a card in 1, and another in 5. That provides 4 spaces - 2 spaces worth of air for a 2-slot 4870x2, and 1 space for a Palit - thus I think I could put 2 palits on a revolution.

But you're right - lots of DOA reviews. Hmmmm. Do you like MSI better? I haven't looked at that.

Are you saying, Sam, that the Asus 3-fan, even with 2 slots of air spacing, will be starved for air in your opinion.

Well, anyway, if you do test out the arctic, and it looks promising, for about $75 a card, then I guess I could stop worrying about Palit or Asus and just get the cheapest "turbine" 4870x2 I can find on ebay or new, and slip on the arctic.

HOW MANY SPACES OF COOLING WILL THAT ARCTIC NEED?

Am I still out of luck with Gigabyte even with the arctic cooler? I guess so, right? It still needs room to breathe.

Rich

 

Not especially, the MSI board seems to have complaints about rather lacklustre overclocking performance, which isn't something you really want to see in such an expensive board.
Also, am I the only one not particularly impressed with the chipset ooler on that Asus board? It isn't very big.
The Asus 3 fan cooler in my mind is a bit of a waste really, it will do the job in a 1,4 / 2,5 /3,6 configuration ok, but to do the best job it really should be 1,5 or 2.6. The stock cooler will handle 1,4/2,5/3,6 well enough as the fan is at the back.
The Arctic will probably be much the same, but it looks like quite a substantial cooler and the drop in performance from having fans all along and the cards close together should be negated by how well the cooler performs in the first place.
The Palit will definitely be hopeless in a 1,4/2,5/3,6 config as the coolers will basicaly be touching. 1,5/2,6 will probably work alright, but I don't think you'll gain much benefit over the stock cooler unless you use 1,6.
As you can see the Revolution board offers all 6 slots, 1 to 6, though I don't know what combinations get full bandwidth.

The MSI X58 Pro, perhaps one of the more 'value' i7 offerings at £169 offers 1,3,5, but only 1,3 use 16x. The X58 Platinum offers 1,4 and has a big beefy northbridge cooler, but literally nothing else, which seems absurd.
The Gigabyte EX58-UD3R and UD4 only offer 2,4. The UD4P, UD5 and Extreme offer 2,4,6 but only 2,4 use 16x. The UD5 and Extreme in my mind have the best chipset cooling of most of the i7 boards.
The Asus P6T offers 1,3,5, but only 1,3 use 16x. The P6T Deluxe looks a bit better with 1,4,5, but each of the PCIe slots is a different colour, not sure what that suggests. The Rampage II Extreme only uses 1,3,5, with just 1,3 being 16x.
Amazingly DFI make a microATX i7 board! Not sure that's too much use here though, even though it does have two PCIe 16x slots. I should hope so really, for £210. Their full size ATX board, the T3eH6 uses 1,3,5 and it's 1,5 that get 16x bandwidth. A good start, but I'm not happy with how the board is designed. The power regulation is only on one side like simpler 775 boards, and the chipset cooler seems a little lacking. The T3eH8 is much better in that regard but costs £279...
Here's an interesting one, the XFX X58I uses 1,3,5 but it's 1,5 that get 16x. That may work, but I don't think you'll fit a triple slot card in slot 5 in the average case as there usually isn't any room below the motherboard. The X58 3x SLI uses 1,3,5 all at 16x ad has a frankly ridiculous chipset cooler. Seems like a reasonable board, but it won't fit two Palits, and can we trust EVGA now?
The Biostar TPower X58 uses 1,4,6. All three slots puport to be 16x. Whether that's true or not I don't know, but the fact that they use 1,4 is very impressive. This board is now bookmarked, The Biostar Tpowers have a good reputation for overclocking. This board is £211. The chipset cooling on it looks reasonably good too.
Foxconn's Renaissance board offers 1,2,4,5 and 1,4 at 16x, but it looks like it might be a Watercooling only board. The Blood Rage is laid out the same way but in a more air-cooling-friendly fashion, but at £277 it's an absolute fortune.

 

Well, you're right. I was wondering about the chipset cooling also on the revolution, at £270. It doesn't look that substantial - but I figured, well, maybe there is more to it than meets the eye. I simply assumed that it must be as effective, or more so, than the cooler on the £219 Asus Deluxe, which looks a lot more impressive.

Regarding putting a Palit at position 5 on any board, the revolution or any of the others you have mentioned, I am okay regarding the Antec 1200 case which supports 7 expansion slots, so continues one more slot past the normal 6 on the motherboard. In other words, if I put a Palit at 5, it will still be able to breathe out the top of the card at position 7 through the back of the Antec.

That's why I like the revolution, with a full 4 spaces of separation, letting me put even a Palit in position 5. The £290 Rampage Extreme offers 2, 4 and 6 at 16x, so I would get 4 spaces of separation with 2 and 6, but I couldn't put a Palit in slot 6, because the top of the card, at position 8, would face a solid piece of metal.

I couldn't agree with you more - I wouldn't trust just giving it one slot worth of spacing, so for that 4870x2 I think I would need a board with 4 slots of separation between the 16x slots.

The Asus deluxe at £219 has that really impressive northbridge cooler with that splayed out rising set of fins - they make a big case for effectiveness of chipset cooling. The hot slots are 2 and 5, so you have 3 slots of separation. Probably the arctic cooling solution will be able to breathe, but as we said I would be afraid of trying out the 3-fan asus card. I have a feeling that I shouldn't use that card unless there are 4 full slots of separation between the 16x slots, as you said, 1,5 or 2,6.

The £270 Revolution is very pricey, but I am really attracted to that 4 slots of separation - the Rampage Extreme also has 4 slots of separation if I give up on the Palit idea. I can put a two-slot card in slot 6 and it will breathe out the antec case in position 7.

I'm thinking that even with the arctic cooling solution, two slots of separation would be better than 1. It's hard for me to imagine that the revolution and rampage extreme, costing £40 or so more, don't have at least as effective chipset cooling as the deluxe - although to the eye it doesn't look as well-engineered at all. It looks rather basic, doesn't it, compared to the cheaper deluxe.

That £211 board you bookmarked, the Biostar TPower X58 at 1,4,6 looks promising as long as I discard the idea of using Palits - a two-slot 4870x2 can go in slot 6 and breathe out the Antec which provides for seven ventilated slots as I said. So that board, actually looks like the very best spacing of all, with 5 spaces of separation between 1 and 6!

For any two-slot 4870x2, that's three slots of spacing - for example the 3-fan asus design would have 3 full slots of separation - or the actic cooling solution would have three slots of separation. Forgetting for now about the Palit, that sounds the best of all. (Let's do some more research on that board! - well, at first glance, newegg specs are showing 16x 16x and 4x - so you can't run 3 16x boards, unlike revolution, but I still wonder if that means you could put a board in slot 1 and slot 6 and get 16x from both that way.)

Rich

 

Rich, motherboards have 7 expansion slots. Asus boards just don't use the top one. The slots start from #2 downwards.
My board for instance goes:
1,16,1,1,16,PCI,PCI - seven slots.

 

Wow, thanks for that correction! (Boy was I confused!) That changes all my calculations, lol.

I am still attracted by the 4 slots of spacing of the Revolution, pictured here again below with the corrected slot numbers. The hot slots are 2 and 6, meaning that the Palit is out even for that board, because the Palit would extend into 7 and 8 - 8 being a solid piece of metal on the Antec case. (And the more expensive Rampage is completely out for 4870x2, with hot slots 3,5,7, meaning 7 is no good for any two-slot 4870x2 card.)
But I just read a bunch of reviews on the Revolution - quite a few problems it seems - and also, the northbridge cooling does seem a little skimpy to me now that you point it out.

I know that you were disillusioned by the Anandtech review of the arctic cooler 7 pro hsf compared to the ultra 120, but for what it's worth, the Asus P6T Deluxe that you mentioned in your earlier post, according to Newegg won the Anandtech Editors Choice Award in their x58 roundup.

It has the following configuration:



Did I get those slot numbers correct? (If so, it appears to me that the hot 16x slots are numbers 3 and 6 albeit different colors.)

Also it has that impressive Northbridge cooler, and this newegg reviewer mentions some more interesting points:

That's the same hsf I would be picking up - pretty much the same one you use. I am coming back to this motherboard, even though it has only 3 slots of separation (assuming I am correct about slots 3 and 6 being 16x) because of all the troubling reviews about the other boards, and because of the extra engineering on the chipset cooling.

Also there's that biostar you mentioned, for £14 less. The chipset cooling looks pretty impressive as well. (Notice however, that it is missing a section of heatpipe, compared to the asus above. In the Deluxe middle picture, see the left-most "heat-pipe" indication. Even per the top picture, the Revolution motherboard is also absent that extra section of heatpipe - but the Rampage does have that section. It appears that the P6T Deluxe has similar cooling engineering as the top Rampage Asus motherboard which costs £73 more - no wonder it got that Anandtech award.):



Did I get the slot numbers correct on this one - basically take the last slot, call it #7, and count backward, is that correct?

It looks like both boards are pretty nice, and similar in price.

My impression is that the asus, with that extra section of heat pipe, and with the standoffs to mount the 40mm fan on the northbridge cooling sink, is the better choice for only £14 more. Would you agree? (I would want to verify of course that white slot 6 is a 16x slot.)

But anyway, if it came down to one of those two boards which are similar in price, because each has "only" 3 slots of spacing between the two 4870x2 cards, that means:

#1, Palit is out - Palit won't even work with the Revolution on top

#2 I wouldn't have confidence in the asus 3-fan 4870x2 because I believe with only 1 slot of spacing it would end up starved for air.

So with either board, I would hope that you got good results with your testing of the arctic gpu cooler. Then I would just pick up a couple of the cheapest (loudest lol) turbine 4870x2 boards I could find, and follow your lead and "fix" them with the arctic! So good luck, mate, with your testing!!! Haha

Rich

 

To be honest, it's all academic as far as I'm concerned. I'm shortly going to be auctioning off my second 4870X2. There is no combination of settings, cooling etc. that runs quad crossfire stable, and to be frank, not being able to play any games with such expensive hardware is ridiculous. The X48-DS5 may well go as well, as it's too much money to have sitting around with no purpose. I've sadly already sold the HX 520W PSU so I have to keep one of the big PSUs, but it's no huge loss on that front, as the Zalman is quieter.

Believe it or not, the problem I have with Quad CF is absolutely unique on the internet, there is not a single reported case, but since it's not a fault with the PSU, Motherboard or either of the cards, it has to be a fundamental compatibility issue. I've given it two entire months of working in many cases 6+ hours a day on nothing but this, but I've had enough. I've spent enough on this upgrade (let alone the system as a whole) to have built a new system from scratch containing an i7 940 CPU, let alone the 920, and all I've achieved is a higher frame rate in Left 4 Dead for about 5 minutes, before the screen goes blank.

 

Yikes!

I thought you had it all solved!! I thought the BSODs were a thing of the past!

Great Mother of God!

I am very sorry to hear that Sam!

Well, just like all those World War II battles that I like to indulge in on the big Dell, I can understand that there sometimes comes a time to fall back and regroup. If your system refuses to cooperate despite all the painstaking effort you have devoted to solving this problem, then that time has come for you.

What the heck could it be that you haven't already changed??

For now, sounds like I will be better off thinking of a one-4870x2 system!

Out of curiousity Sam, when you say that your situation appears to be unique on the internet, then let me ask you:

Who, if anybody, is actually having success with quad CF?

Shall we all just wait for the 5000 family, with 4 processors on one card?

Rich

 

BSODs only appeared temporarily when Catalyst 9.2 started decaying. Having reinstalled it they are gone (though 9.2 still has no support for PowerPlay)
Several review websites claim to have quad CF setup. Most people on the internet (more importantly, people who don't actually own the setup) spam that the scaling is really bad and it's of no use for that reason. This is completely false, the scaling with Quad crossfire is actually rather good. The difference is, it isn't stable. The fault I encounter is that (presumably) the chipet shuts down the PCI express bus, which causes the cards to go into pre-POST mode, the second card becoming completely stone cold, the first being slightly warm at the back as GPU1 is still powered via the motherboard. The higher the chipset voltage, the earlier this happens, to the extent that if I set +0.3V on the chipset (required to reach 3.95Ghz) without a case fan blowing on the chipset, I have approximately 10-15 seconds before the screen goes blank. This is tense because it takes about 12 seconds to get into the BIOS and change the voltage back. The bus will happily shut off even in the BIOS. When it does so, the green status LEDs on the top card, the middle one turns off. Not a single soul mentions the green LEDs on the X2s, only the red ones for when their board doesn't support the card, their PSU is crap or they haven't plugged the PCIe power connectors in.

I have a feeling the problem lies with the internal core temperature of the northbridge, but what I don't understand is that as you up the voltage, the temperature has to be lower. (It would make sense if it had to remain constant but the temperature rose due to the high voltage, but the required temperature actually gets lower)
The only other thing I can think of is perhaps to reduce the frequency of the PCI Express bus.
I would of course like to be able to try using the Accelero Extreme 4870X2 coolers and exhausting the air out the side, but that's significant expense, and also they're still not on sale yet.

 

Little update, removing Loadline calibration, adjusting CPU/PCIE Clock driving control, none of it helps, the only solution is to add a big fan, and that only delays the problem, not eliminates it.
The X48-DS5 is making more and more bizarre electrical noises, accurately replicating the hiss of a sleeve bearing fan even when all the fans in the system are off, not to mention making an irritating beep sound which I presumed was coming from the chokes on the X2s, but I'm actually pretty certain it's from the CPU area, as it's loudest through the rear case fan, not the graphics area or the PSU.
Add to that my USB sound card no longer works in one particular USB port, and the wrong light comes on the BIOS (the CMSS light, not the power light) I have a suspicion the board is, to put it abruptly - '****ed'.
I'm trying to get hold of Shaffaaf to see if I can borrow, and potentially buy his Maximus II Formula (yes, it's a P45, but if it does work with two cards, I can sell some stuff and then plan an upgrade to a board that can handle the cards from the off - the Rampage Formula does not inspire confidence, it has severe problems POSTing with two cards installed. At least the DS5 gets further than that!)


Here's an interesting picture:

Here you can see there's quite a lot of space beneath the bottom of the motherboard in the NZXT Tempest case...




Here are some photos from our latest LAN event.
http://fragsoc.co.uk/gallery/2009-03-07/DSCF1921.jpg
http://fragsoc.co.uk/gallery/2009-03-07/DSCF1920.jpg - I'm the guy in the green jacket surrounded by Mountain Dew...
http://fragsoc.co.uk/gallery/2009-03-07/DSCF1912.jpg - my right hand, and some of my monitor... haha
http://fragsoc.co.uk/gallery/2009-03-07/DSCF1907.jpg - mmm, big projectors... By my calcs, they're about 200-220".

 

Wow, I just popped over here from the builder thread where you HAVE secured use of shaff's board.

So it's not BSODs anymore - it's the motherboard just refusing to run those two boards.

Well I hope you're able to return that DS5 under warranty - strange hissing? - "happily" shutting off the pci-e bus on you - even in the bios? "Bad Board, Bad!!"

The Maximus looks really nicely cooled - awesome looking sinks and pipes.

The Tempest shows a lot of room in that picture, but the Tempest suffers from the same problem as the Antec 1200 - only 7 expansion slots!

Until your post of a couple days ago, I wasn't thinking at all of using that Rampage X58 - and when I came across that Canadian picture ........

. . . . . . . . .

I thought - "how the hell is he able to space out the second board which means he's running it in slot 7?" Then I looked up his case - 10 slot PC-P80 Lian-Li (which interestingly enough was in my top three case options along with the Tempest and Antec 1200.) "Ah hah - his case gives him more than 7 slots so his second card breathes just fine in slot 7."

I mentioned on the other thread - when I read up on the spedo - that being the only case Microcenter had with over 7 slots - they talked a lot about keeping the graphics card compartment entirely separate from the cpu and chipset compartment - just what you were discussing. I didn't get the advanced version with the giant fans and the little partition - but I can fabricate something myself from a piece of plastic - or just let the boards themselves provide the partition as we talked about before.

I think I'm going to have fun with the spedo case. As I work on it I'll post some pictures and we can decide where the fans should go. They support multiple side fans, and I can mod some additional. They support a bottom fan - but I think the Zalman will cover part of the holes they provide - so I'll drill some more, lol.

Thanks for the fragsoc pictures - that's a helluva lot of Mountain Dew - your favorite??

I think you've got the right idea with hanging onto the Lexa for the frag socs. For sure, we know that counterstrike doesn't need dual 4870x2s, so why should you try to lug that HAF around?

What games do you guys play? And what was up on the projection screens - looked similar to what was up on your monitor. Was that a diagram of the tables and the LAN layout - or is that gene-splicing and all you guys are participating in the Stanford folding project? Hahaha.

Rich

 

LOL @ Fragsoc pics. Stocked with enough Dew sam? lol I hope it helps your Left 4 Dead playing performance XD We have to play sometime

I even see GIRLS!!!!!! One on a 22" monitor it looks like and one on an ASUS Eee PC XD Nice.


It looks nice but that's too many people to LAN with for my taste. Too much hardware for me to analyze all at once. Too many people in close proximity to my "Area 51" if you will. I don't like competition for specs and I hate moving all my hardware

The biggest LAN I've been to was like 12 people. I had the best machine by far. Followed by an E6600 at 3.4GHz with 8800GTS 640's in SLI and a Phenom 9950 BE at 3GHz with an HD3870X2.

I dunno what it is, but other people's PCs inspire the OCD in me and I get really stressed out seeing all the sloppy builds. Like I have a panic attack. I can't handle it XD

Meh, I've been such a social recluse since I stopped dating XD

 

Haha. We'll have to get you into Boozer's boat club mode, lol.

Yeah, Sam's group throws some nice fragsocs looks like. By the way, speaking of LAN parties:

I was reading Canuck hardware review of Rampage X58, and then I thought I would see what they had to say about the DFI Lanparty, and guess what:

. . . . .

I will be a SOB! I don't know if this motherboard will be as stable at running dual 4870x2 cards as the Rampage, but if it is, you're not going to have the "squishing them together" problem of every other board - slots 2, 4 and 6 are the hot slots, and cards in slots 2 and 6 get the full 16x lanes - 4 slots of separation!!

This is the best board for dual 4870x2s from that standpoint. The question is: will this board oc the 920 to 4ghz, and will it run those dual 4870s totally stable while it is doing it (with appropriate ventilation of course.)



They've got a little trick "flame thrower" sink for the Northbridge IOH that you can put out the back of the case for guys like me and Jeff who won't be going to Lan parties. The hardware canuck guys showed a drop in nb temps of 2-3 degrees - that can't be a bad thing.

What's everybody's take on DFI?

Edit: I looked up on top of the page, and Sam had already noted the improved graphic card spacing on this motherboard:

So I guess nothing really new that Sam didn't already know about. The issue comes down to stability of operation of the dual 4870x2 cards. If only the Rampage Extreme has the stability on the x58 1366 platform (Sam will be testing the Maximus x48 and hopefully that motherboard will work for the 775 platform) then after proven stability in slots 3 and 7, one could always slide the second card from 8x slot 7 to 16x slot 5, squishing it right up against the card in 16x slot 3, and see if performance improves significantly as expected.

If so, then one has the choice of either 1. living with loud turbines going full speed as they struggle for air, lol, or 2. getting the Danger Den 4870x2 waterblocks or something similar and cooling the gpus that way (leaving the cpu the way it is on the ultra 120 air cooling.)

Rich

 

Well, the Maximus II is up and running in my system. No BSODs or black screens, and on top of that, to my absolute amazement, the reduced bandwidth of the P45 bus seems utterly ineffectual, I can't tell the difference!
With a lot of Lian Lis and some other cases Rich, the PSU can go at either the top or bottom. If you put the PSU at the top, there's a huge gap to play with underneath, which is probably the case with that picture. I believe it also the case with the HAF932 I've bought. If I do that, I can have two 120mm bottom fans to boot, not just a lowly single 80 (which had to be removed to ue the Maximus as the second PCIe slot is one slot further down so the second X2 is now right at the bottom)

It was indeed a layout on the projectors, and Mountain Dew is probably one of, if not my favourite soft drink, especially the Cherry version.
Lol you get stressed out seeing slippy PC builds? Or you get stressed if your PC's not the best at the event?
I love big LANs, there's nothing quite like a 24 player Team Fortress 2 game when everybody you're playing with is in the same room.

The DFI board is very interesting, and duly noted. I have no expectations it'll be anything less than awesome at overclocking, it's a DFI, it's what they're meant for! Someone at Fragsoc has the X48 DFI board with the same heatsink that runs out the back. They run a single HD4870 1GB, and a Coolermaster Cosmos. That thing is a tank!

 

Sam, you're up! And I'm just heading for the rack!

MAXIMUS IS STABLE SO FAR
Wow, so you're running stable so far on the Maximus!! GREAT NEWS! Did I just read on the builder thread that you played Left 4 Dead for a full hour just a bit ago with the side fan off, and still no crashes!! Hahahaha. The hardest working case fan was sitting there unplugged LOL. Those temps don't sound that bad either at 70 to 75. And if the Dominator memory runs that cool - I'll just let those spreaders work instead of the HR-07s. You don't even use the little fan, right?

And you're finding to your astonishment that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference running both cards on 8x versus 16x.

Now THAT is a big fat surprise!!

I guess the really good news then, beside the GREAT news that it's now working for you, is that when we finally get four 5000 family 45nm gpus on a single card in about a year, the present technology 2.0 16x bandwidth is so big, that we won't have any trouble raping crysis with two of those 5870x4 cards in an 8-gpu system! Hahahaha (assuming catalyst keeps improving so we can scale all those gpus)

Yeah, I don't know what Jeff meant exactly either - why does he have to be so competitive and always have the best rig, lol!

So you guys play Team Fortress at those Lan events? That must be hot! Which class are you - the Russian heavy? Haha.

That was the other game that Miles was animating as part of a three-man team with his buddies Moby and Ariel when he first went up to Valve in Seattle 6 years ago - he stayed there for 4 years and was taken off TF2 to help finish Half Life 2 (He asked me once about TF2 and he seemed disappointed when I said I probably wouldn't get it as I only like to kill Nazis. Duhh - I'll have to get it for sure, along with L4D.)

Here's my setup on the spedo, Sam.

You can see I'm locked into bottom PSU.

But I think I have a lot of options. There is space for a bottom fan, even with the long zalman psu. And I can put fans all over that door - hell I might end up with four fans on that door - I'm serious! I'll drill the door to death, lol. Who needs those big 230mm fans when four 120s will rock and roll just as silently, right?

POSITIVE CASE PRESSURE
Besides adequate airflow in each of the two main zones, the main ventilation principle I believe I should adhere to is maintaining perceptible positive pressure inside the case at all times - for dust prevention.

One time Sam, you mentioned that you opened the Lexa and you felt hot air wanting to come out. It didn't seem as though that was the result you wanted, but in my mind, that's exactly the way the case pressure should be. There should be a dust filter on every intake fan, and any usused vented slot covers or other vent holes are exhausting air. That way you never get any dust buildup on the ultra 120 or on any of the other sinks - so you never lose your cooling efficiency. I keep thinking about Ray's laptop, out there in Saudi Arabia, and ALL THAT DUST that he found, lol.

TOP CASE SECTION - HSF AND CHIPSET
Versus the antec 1200 case, I have lost one front intake fan for the top section. But the ceiling fan is not that dedicated antec 200mm exhaust. The vent holes are there and nothing else. I'm going to make that an intake - you heard me right!

So looking at the top section, there are two 120mm exhaust fans out the back, and we said they should be left as exhausts, because any attempt to turn one of them into an intake might suck in hot air exiting the vented slots, and the little 40s I'll be adding. There is also a side 120mm exhaust behind the motherboard if you can believe that. Then there is an optional top 120/140mm fan, and optional one or two door 120/140 fan. I believe those three should be filtered intakes - two on the door and one on the top. Why not?

I'll drive fresh air in from the side and the top, three intake fans, and push all the ultra 120 hot air out the back, assisted by the three exhaust fans - mostly the rear two exhaust fans. (I know hot air rises, but since when did that worry us, ever since we started talking about blowing hot air out the bottom, lol!)

BOTTOM GRAPHIC CARD COMPARTMENT
On the lower graphic card section, I have the one front filtered 120mm intake. Versus the antec, I lost the one bottom front intake - there is only one front spedo fan, not three. I have rear vented slots - six of the 8 slots will be free to vent.



And I can add three little 40s to help the rear venting as indicated.

Now that doesn't give me much venting so far. One front fan is blowing in, at the same level as the lower door fan area, and I can adjust the floating fan bar to asist that middle intake to blow directly on the graphics cards. And I have some passive rear venting and the little 40s.

I still have available the one or two lower door fans, and one bottom fan behind the Zalman. So of those optional three, which should be intakes and which should be exhausts? Do we want to try your idea of bottom exhaust - I can put a fast 120 behind the zalman at 1600 rpm. The spedo sits on risers, so it's a little higher off the ground than the antec was as the pictures show. So how about two lower door filtered intakes, and a floor exhaust - maybe even a 140 if I can fit one in there. That would give me a total of three intakes, and disregarding the Zalman PSU, three tiny 40mm exhausts, a floor aggressive 120mm or 140mm exhaust, and some extra vent holes out the back below the 40s and on the vented slot covers.

Alternatively, the floor could be an intake, the lower modded extra door fan could be at floor level as another intake.



And then the original lower door fan area could be an exhaust as you had suggested for the antec. Here's some color coding, lol.

So I have intake from front - same height as original lower door vent. Move disk drives to upper chamber, then remove barriers to front intake fan. Position floating fan bar to assist front intake fan in blowing directly on graphics cards. Bring fresh air in from floor, and mod a new door intake as indicated, low down to prevent a short circuit with other higher door vent, providing three fresh air intakes. Make the original lower door vent an exhaust as you had suggested for the Antec 1200.

So three intakes, and exhaust out the side door, back little 40s, and back vents, and a tiny bit of flow out the Zalman back. Adjust fan speeds for positive case pressure, and hopefully that's enough exhausting of hot gpu air. What do you think?

Rich

 

For a chipset they're not great, most chipsets don't break 50. Some new TIM and more case fans will easily sort that out though.

Right now Crysis runs terribly, only one GPU is active, but the fact that some furious alt-tabbing makes Crysis far worse and Warhead far better (though still dire, I really think we're going to need CPUs twice as fast as i7s to run Warhead at Enthusiast) suggests that it's just Catalyst 9.2 and it's general mediocrity. Now I have my power meter back, my PC is drawing 430W from the wall idling at the windows desktop. It draws 270 with normal drivers!
I'll have to take your diagrams on their own for your case as they don't match anything I can find on the net for the Spedo. The bottom only PSU is unfortunate, as it has space for a bottom 120mm fan, but any reasonably sized PSU like a Zalman will block that slot off so it can't be used. The same problem occurs with the HAF - here's proof:
http://images.ncix.com/forumimages/90622AF9-13EE-7967-9AD2105D63ACB22B.jpg
That's with the HX 1000W, a smaller unit than the Zalman (if you can believe it!)
Of course, you could always stick the fan on the outside of the case.
Normally, the two rear fans and one other exhaust (such as the top) would be plenty to match all the other points you mention being intakes, so I personally would want to go with top fans being an exhaust, especially in your case, as unlike with a top PSU mount, the rear case fan is right at the top, and the air will go in and straight out, not touching any components (remember, the motherboard tray is in the middle, not the top, there's nothing up there to cool)

What I meant about the hot air with the Lexa was it was trying to come out the front. That's not how it should be. Front exhaust?
I read about the underside fan, an interesting approach to say the least, but not especially functional. the most of the trapped case heat from a system with multiple GPUs is down the bottom.

Overall, the way I would try doing it first is:

Front intake fan
Side intake fan(s)
Floor intake fan (if underneath case)
Rear exhaust fans
Top exhaust fan
PSU & GPU exhaust

I tell you what though, one thing I didn't miss with Asus boards was the destabilising program chains. I presumed they'd fixed with it with their newer boards, but it doesn't look like they have. One program will inexplicably crash, then another, and so on in a chain reaction. The entire system never completely crashes, and you can still shut it down, but you can use fewer and fewer programs. It's irritating. If it's too much of a regular thing I won't be keeping this board after all.

 

I haven't taken the case out of the box - but I'm going by the newegg pictures:

Okay, let me see if I have this straight. (I see what you mean about bottom fan being blocked by psu - I forgot about those cables. Yes I can mount an intake under the case. I see what you mean about top intake going right out the back - makes sense. Ok back to top exhaust. Good.) Here's what I've got then:



So front intake, bottom intake, four intake fans on door. All back is exhaust, top exhaust, behind mobo exhaust, psu exhaust, exhaust vents.

Do I have enough exhaust venting for the graphics cards? Do I need the little 40s? If I need them, should I use even more of them - like maybe 6 40s along the entire length of vent holes?

Rich

 

That's basically a very similar approach to what I'm going to try with the HAF, but I'm probably going to stick the PSU at the top with a 120mm fan, rather than use the big 230. I'll have to experiment with which way works best. At least with the HAF I don't have to take my CPU cooler off when I move the PSU!

 

Ok then. And what about the 40s. Should I just try it first with the vents and see how that seems, or use at least 2 or 3 of those 40s?

I see what you mean Sam about being open to higher end motherboards. Yeah, if that's what it takes to reach stability.

For i7 you mentioned Biostar and DFI.

If you think that DFI definitely has merit - it has the best spacing of all with 4 slots of spacing between the two 16x pci-e slots. They say they have simplified the memory timings section of the Bios a bit which might help an oc noob like me.

The Biostar looks absolutely beautiful - the manual says that the slots (three slots apart) drop to 8x each in crossfire. Of course you have just proven THAT doesn't matter - but on the future 5000 series graphics cards upgrades it might. That might make the DFI the better choice between those two.

Rich

 

The 40s may be of some use, I'm not sure, with all the other bigger fans at work I get the feeling they may be a bit inconsequential, on top of that 40mm fans have terrible bearing resonance, so they might get annoying.
To be frank, DFI saying they've simplified their BIOSes will mean they've brought it in line with all the others. DFI BIOSes used to be absolutely mind-boggling. The good spacing and rear extra heatsink are nice features, that almost (but not quite) justify the price!
I didn't know about the speed drop with the Biostar, but you're right, will that be so much a problem? Of course, thinking ahead, it might not hold back two 4870X2s, but next gen GPUs might be a different story.