Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: My new mining rig - quad 7970 - Going for 3Gh/s
by
bitbrandon
on 29/04/2013, 02:08:02 UTC
I think due to the design on these cards there's no good way for me to place the fans. They draw air in from the front, and mostly exhaust through the top leading edge of the card. The heatsink fins run perpendicular to the length of the card, so not much air can make it out the end. The rear of the card does seem to vent a bit, but I'm pretty sure most of it comes out the top or directly inside the case.

I swapped the fans and it's not much better like expected. One card seems to run a tad bit cooler (90 instead of 95), but I still have it slowed way down. The others are all still running at 95 or so, throttling every now and then. I don't much care for the cooler design on these cards!

Thanks for the comments guys!

Edit: I think I might have a problem with the thermal compound on one of these cards. It sure seems to idle higher than the others. Taking the cooler off is going to void my warranty though, isn't it?



I just noticed that the fins are indeed not parallel to the board... stupid design IMO. Also, re-applying the thermal compound is alright with some manufacturers, but I'm not sure if Gigabyte is one of those. *IMPORTANT* If you do apply new thermal compound, please please only apply a super tiny amount. Less = More in this case and considering the GPU chip is less than half the size of a CPU, it should only be around a couple millimeters at most. Let me get a link for you that describes this, but for CPU's. Found it: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/What-is-the-Best-Way-to-Apply-Thermal-Grease-Part-1/1303