Mr. Bluntman
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2007
- Messages
- 7,088
Hopefully one of you [H]ard|Forum veterans can help shed some light on this. Over a year ago I obtained an ASUS P5N-D and two 9800 GTs for some SLI fun in a trade from another forum member. The build quickly turned into somewhat of a nightmare. When using Yorkfield processors 32-bit OSes BSOD upon boot and the top 9800 GT's fan spins quickly up to 100% under an uncapped 3D load. It doesn't matter which card (although one is significantly worse) I use the 100% fan speed persists. Temperatures go above 85C and keep climbling slowly. The bottom card is inaudible over the top one. I've already tried replacing the thermal compound twice (AS Ceramique 2) and if I attempt a third time I'll need new thermal pads, and this had some effect, but still the fan on the top card reaches 100% fan speed. It's annoyingly loud. So the questions are:
1. Is this normal for 8800/9800 GT cards to be so loud in SLI?
2. If it is not normal, are my cards defective/burnt out? They produce no artifacts outside of normal game/driver bugs.
3. Do I need to find a motherboard with wider spacing between PCIe x16 slots (ergo more than 1 slot spacing, which will be difficult since this isn't 2008 anymore)?
4. Should I replace my cards with other samples or just use better thermal paste/new pads?
Any help would be great so I know if I should invest more time/money into this setup or just give up on it and SLI different cards.
1. Is this normal for 8800/9800 GT cards to be so loud in SLI?
2. If it is not normal, are my cards defective/burnt out? They produce no artifacts outside of normal game/driver bugs.
3. Do I need to find a motherboard with wider spacing between PCIe x16 slots (ergo more than 1 slot spacing, which will be difficult since this isn't 2008 anymore)?
4. Should I replace my cards with other samples or just use better thermal paste/new pads?
Any help would be great so I know if I should invest more time/money into this setup or just give up on it and SLI different cards.