Dilemma: video card cooling water or air your opinions

[faudau]

OK let me set this up:

Video Card is: ATI/AMD 4870 (not X2)

now I have 2 of these and one sits in my main rig (mid-tower) the other is an SFF.

here is my dilemma:

clearly watercooling is better for any component and compared to the avg. 60-70c degrees I see with the stock cooler on said video cards, w/cing the core runs between 30/40c (no-brainer)

however my issue is around the GDDR 5 ram more than the core: with the stock cooling said VRAM also has a temp of around 60/70c (since cooler contacts both core and ram)

but with heatsinks on VRAM with w/c i am seeing temps of 90/100c or more

I am using the swiftech MCW60 the main reason is that the "custom" blocks that cool it all run a pretty penny and for the most part not easily resellable. (I'm sitting on custom blocks for a 8800GTX and G92 8800GTS that no one wants :S)

so I wanted to get some opinions about this. My main rig is a NZXT Tempest so it moves air pretty well however the SFF it really packed in and I have recently put that one back on air due to incredible (read dangerous) temps using heatsinks on the ram

I am going to run both in my main rig in crossfire mode.

so what do you guys think? blow a fan across the ramsinks? or just stick with air for the combo?

thanks

 

[Cooney]

I don't think it will make much of a difference putting a fan blowing on ram sinks, a mid tower now days with the size of those cards is like a oven, water will definitely help but I think a full tower will solve most of your problem.....