So my third EVGA 780 SC arrived in the mail yesterday, courtesy of some sweet deals on the forums here. Due to some short-sightedness and impulse purchasing on my part, I have two with ACX coolers and one with the awesome Titan-style blower.
Obviously, right off the bat, the wheels start turning (about $1000 too late), "I'm going to have cooling issues."
Just as I expected, the top card, which is also the workhorse, gets pretty toasty, pretty quick, while gaming.
I have a 200MM fan exhausting from the side panel, right at card level (for reference, this is in a HAF XM). But it doesn't seem to be up to the task. I didn't worry about the coolers when I bought these cards for two reason: 1) I didn't initially plan to SLI, and 2) I figured I would eventually water cool. Now it's looking like "eventually" is going to be "immediately", or I'm going to have to pull the third card out and wait until I can get all the pieces together.
Long story short, does anyone have any personal experience cooling tri-SLI or tri-Fire configurations and, if so, is water the only way to make this work? I know I could always roll back settings and reduce the load, but really, whats the point if you can't crank everything up?
So let me know; pictures of your setup, explanations of your cooling methods, etc... Anything is helpful at this point. I'm staring at another $500+ in hardware (blocks, fittings and backplates) and I would like to not go in as half-cocked as I did spending the first $1000.
Obviously, right off the bat, the wheels start turning (about $1000 too late), "I'm going to have cooling issues."
Just as I expected, the top card, which is also the workhorse, gets pretty toasty, pretty quick, while gaming.
I have a 200MM fan exhausting from the side panel, right at card level (for reference, this is in a HAF XM). But it doesn't seem to be up to the task. I didn't worry about the coolers when I bought these cards for two reason: 1) I didn't initially plan to SLI, and 2) I figured I would eventually water cool. Now it's looking like "eventually" is going to be "immediately", or I'm going to have to pull the third card out and wait until I can get all the pieces together.
Long story short, does anyone have any personal experience cooling tri-SLI or tri-Fire configurations and, if so, is water the only way to make this work? I know I could always roll back settings and reduce the load, but really, whats the point if you can't crank everything up?
So let me know; pictures of your setup, explanations of your cooling methods, etc... Anything is helpful at this point. I'm staring at another $500+ in hardware (blocks, fittings and backplates) and I would like to not go in as half-cocked as I did spending the first $1000.