Water Cooling advice

MSD

Hey,
I have 2 Gigabyte GTX 560s windforce http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3881#ov
I am looking to water cool them since SLI does not work for me when using air cooling (since they are stacked close to each other one of them does not get enough air).
Can anyone give advise on what kit to get that works with these?
Thanks

Beej

When i first read the title i said to myself useless. Since water cooling 2x 560 will be soo much costly, for a mild oc headroom.

But since your problem is heat and spacing then your logic is 100% correct.

Sadly you will only benefit from lower temps and noise, as for oc the gtx 560 series is clocked so high already, oc headroom is small.
Anyway, this gigabyte has a different pcb, also gtx 560 ,i think and i searched alot, doesnt have a full waterblock.
So, here are your options:
1) Universal gpu block (EK-vga upreme hf, koolance gpu 220, swiftech mcw80, or xsps rasa gpu) reservoir, radiator, fans, tubes, distilled watter, fittings, silver kill coil, anto bioside. I am sure even the most extreme pc cant get you some of the items...
2) use an antec kuhler/h60/h80..etc and do the modd using zipties.

I suggest going for 2, since you will have almost similar results with less hasstle and way less money.
Also you dont need to h2O both cards, just do it for the upper one, that will help alot.

thunderman

Hello,

IMHO i think that its too much of a hassle to SLI two mid-range cards especially that you are not running the Ti version, and properly water-cooling them is definitely not cost effective anymore.
The Windforce cards do run awesomely cool as long as they are in a single card configuration, whats causing overheating in your case is that both cards are keeping the hot air inside the case and not ejecting it out like the reference design.

- What Mobo are u running ? if you motherboard allows you to use the third slot instead of the second do it even if you loose PCIe speed, you can then add a barrier between the two cards (made of non conductive material of course) to try and make two different compartments

-another solution would be to sell the two 560's and replace them with a single 580, you would be way more future proof with 1,5 or 3gb of Vram and even if at stock you would loose approx 10% of raw performance the OC headroom of the 580's is usually high enough to allow to have an increase of more than 15% over the 560's in SLI while running much cooler. (it is easier to have a stable high OC on a single card than on an SLI setup)

you would later have to chance to go SLI with two 580's should you need it.

I'm currently running an SLI of GV-N580UD 580's with Windforce 3X cooling but well spaced cause my R4F allows it and OC to 912Mhz Core speed each and the top gpu is barely reaching 75C

On another side should you choose to water-cool them using Beej's second option such as the closed loop H60 or H80 be careful to effectively be able to cool the GPU(s) but also the VRM's Mosfets and Memory chips or you would be running into big troubles and system instability especially in an sli setup and possible hardware damage.

Good Luck and nice modding

MSD

Hello all and thanks for the replies
I have an Asus P6x58D-E MB and it supports triple SLI
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6X58DE

Now the reason I went with SLI on medium level cards is because I read it somewhere on maybe tomshardware that it would give me better performance than going for a single higher end card.

I currently have the cards in x16, x16, x1 config, i could switch to x16, x8, x8 by using the 1st and 3rd slots instead of the 1st and second right?

Am I to expect a noticeable difference from running 16x?

yasamoka

With GTX560s, no, no noticeable difference, not even with 580s.

The thing is that SLI 560s would be more powerful than a single high end card from the same generation, but right now it's matched by the highest end single cards like the GTX680 and the HD7970.

Now once you consider what you would be paying for water cooling equipment:

If you're cooling a single GPU then:
1) Pump: MCP655 $90
2) Radiator: 140mm rad or 280mm rad: Magicool rad $40
3) Universal GPU block: $60 OR full cover water block: $100
Cost = $190 - $230

If you're cooling both GPUs then:
1) Pump: MCP655 $90
2) Radiator: 280mm or 420mm rad: Magicool rad $40-60
3) Universal GPU blocks (2): $120 OR full cover water blocks (2): $200
Cost = $250 - $350

Paying $190 for cooling with a single GPU waterblock is IMHO not taking advantage of water cooling properly (once you have the WC kit, you can't miss out on getting awesome temps and OCing).
On the other hand, paying $350 to cool both cards is too much, since for that price, you could probably get a Radeon HD7870 and OC that to close to HD7950/70 levels, where it would be close to performing as good as 560s with 100% SLI scaling.

Short answer: WC is hard to justify for your setup, because of these costs.

Now what you could do is try to fit the 2nd 560 in the 3rd slot (providing your case allows you to do so), and watch the temperatures. If that doesn't work, then you could buy a PCI-Express extender (flexible cable) and mod the case a bit so that the 2nd 560 hovers above a slot further down than the 2nd PCI-E slot. That way, you could have enough spacing while the 2nd GTX560 is electrically connected to the 2nd slot. Of course, if the 560 fits in the 3rd slot without any problems, then this is the solution I would recommend.

shant

i don't think one of the cards will heat up, have you tried running them sli first or you're just guessing it will heat up ?
ive seen lots of cards in sli without any temperature problems