woody86

Well, I have two 9800GX2's installed on my folding rig. The first one is a BFG that I bought from a forum member who is pretty well known. However, he had reseated the card with new thermal paste, and had cutout some of the grille on the back plate to improve airflow. The second one is an XFX that I bought from some guy on eBay. The card was in amazing condition when I got it, and looked like it had never been run. The cards are installed on the first and third PCI slots on my K9A2 Platinum.

Now onto my issue. When running F@H I've been noticing that the BFG card has been running a bit hotter than the XFX one. It wasn't until recently, when I had all four GPU cores folding 511 work units that I realized just how big of a difference there was. The cores on the BFG are running about 18-20*C hotter than the stock XFX one!! This is the first time I've seen temps on any of the cores reaching 90*C, and now I want to get this taken care of. I have an Ultra Kaze that's a few inches in front of the cards that blows on them both pretty evenly, so there is enough airflow coming in. I'm not sure what happened, but do you guys think this could need to be reseated? Is there something else I should take a look at?? Both cards look surprisingly dust-free, so I don't think there would be that much of a difference there, or at least not 20* worth of difference. I did notice that the BFG has an older version of the BIOS (v.9/.10) and the XFX is running the newer BIOS (v.11/.12) could this be the cause of the extra 20*??

I'm open to any ideas here, but I was hoping to hear what you guys think, and get some input on this. I haven't taken apart either card yet, so I'm not sure how easy it'll be for me to get the BFG reseated with new TIM, but I'd be willing to give it a go. So what do you guys think?? Any advice/tips are GREATLY appreciated! Thanks in advance

woody

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corky dorkelson

Is the BFG above the other card? Because in multi-card setups, the top card almost always runs hotter because the bottom card is radiating heat up to the top card.

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caraboose

The top card will always run hotter then the bottom card. (Unless they are both watercooled, then its the one next in the loop)

The BFG is above the XFX one right?

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09-12-09

woody86

Yes, but there is a gap of 2 expansion slots between the two, and I have those open at the back of the case. So the air coming in from the Ultra Kaze can push cooler air between the cards and right out the back as well. I forgot to mention that above But it still seems pretty extreme temp difference, doesn't it?

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caraboose

Not really, my 8800gt's when I had them there was a 2 slot gap between the two, but the top card was always 20*c hotter then the bottom and there was alot of airflow in the case at the time.

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09-12-09

Camaro5

Have you tried switching the cards and seeing if temps change or stay the same?

woody86

No. C'mon that would be too easy of a test! I need to hook up some kind of internal temp sensors and stuff, then route a couple voltmeters to measure the voltages going into the cards. Then I can have a conference with thermal engineers from all across the country to determine what the proper output should be, then pass that along to mathematicians from MIT who would run algorithmic analyses on the engineers' data.....

Ok, going to swap them around and reboot. Will let you guys know how it goes

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woody86

Hmm... I didn't think there would be that much of a difference But ok, I am going to swap them around, and see what happens.

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DK_mz

+1, i would try this first

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woody86

Ok, well I had a RAM issue when I rebooted, so that took a bit longer than I was hoping, but I got them switched around, and back up and running. However, something's rotten in the state of Denmark. The BFG which is now on the bottom, is still running 5*C hotter than the XFX which is now on top. I also didn't realize how much the fan is favoring the bottom card. It's blowing almost directly on the lower card, with only a small portion going to the top one. So it's still running hotter on the bottom slot, and with better airflow.

So what do you guys think? Would the BIOS on the BFG change the temps at all? Should I reseat the GPUs on that card? Is there something else I may be overlooking??

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