This is my first multi-card build, and I have some questions that I'm hoping you might be able to help me answer (and hurdles to overcome).
I have two MSI N560GTX-Ti 448 Twin Frozr III cards plugged into a Foxconn Inferno Katana motherboard. I'm not a huge Foxconn fan, but it's one of the few 3-way SLI boards I could find that supports the LGA 1156 chipset (of which my i7 is). I would have preferred a GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD7, but alas, I cannot locate it anywhere -- new or used market.
The case is a COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN2 CM690 II, so I don't think case ventilation is a problem.
My main issue is that the two boards are SO close to each other (PCI-E 2.0 slot 1, and slot 2) that there is hardly any clearance whatsoever between the two cards -- we're talking maybe 1 or 2 millimeters, I think. In fact, I had to be so absolutely precise in its placement, that if there is even any weight added from the PCI-E power connectors, the fans of card 1 actually hit the back of card 2...so they're REALLY close together.
Anyway, the card in the second slot, under 100% load, runs at around 55-60 degrees.
The first card however, with its fans pretty much completely covered, jumps straight up to 98 degrees under full load.
Just to mention, I am not overclocking either card, or the system, in any way -- all stock speeds.
The card itself is rated as 'acceptable' up to 99 degrees, but somehow I'm thinking that this temperature, consistently, isn't very healthy for the card -- and the fan noise is ridiculous. I'm not sure, but the card might even be throttling itself in order to not go over that temperature?
I've had one instance where the monitor plugged into the first card shut off, assumedly from the card overheating. As far as I could tell, the computer became unresponsive as well. I haven't seen artifacting from what I can tell though.
Should I be concerned, and is there any solutions you can think of?
I added a scythe case fan that is sucking air directly from the spot in-between the two cards, but it literally made no difference in card 1's temperature. Perhaps the fan isn't high-speed enough? It's 120mm I think, but I'm not sure on RPM's -- it's just one I had in the house.
I don't really have the option of moving the second card to the last slot to free up air-room, as it's only a 4x slot...and actually butts up against the power supply, so anything in that slot would have to be a 1-slot only card. If I can resolve this current issue, I'm looking to drop in any single-slot Nvidia card I can find to use as a display card (my 240 won't fit, since it's dual-slot...bummer).
Any advice you all may have would be greatly, greatly appreciated. I've invested quite a bit of money in order to put this build together (even jumped up to the ATX-sized board from a mini-itx single-slot mobo just for octane, along with a PSU and both graphics cards), and really would like to be confident in the system's stability / longevity as a whole.
Thank you!
John
