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David Field

Triple SLI is bad for you

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By David Field
Nov 26, 2008 | 15 Comments
You know what the most appropriate use for triple SLI is?

I hate to break it to you, but it’s not for gaming.

It’s for kitting out the Nvidia booth at a trade show.

We built a triple SLI rig for our stand at Atomic LIVE. The build was all going reasonably well up until the part where Justin had to slot three high power, high performance, high heat output GTX280 cards next to each other with barely a millimetre of space between them.

This is a problem, because the backs of two of the cards block the intakes of two other cards, which starve them of air and cause them to overheat. Sweet Jesus, did they ever get hot and crash-ie. The fans on the cards were literally spinning as fast as they could, yet this wasn’t enough.

We’d strung a high powered fan on the outside of the case in an effort to forcibly pull as much air as we could through the cards’ heatsinks, yet this wasn’t enough.

We strung two more high powered fans inside the case and tried to force more air into the tiny gaps through which the graphics cards’ fans were already desperately clawing for air, yet this wasn’t enough.

After all this, the cards reported that they were working at 108 degrees. Celcuis. That’s 226 Fahrenheit. And to stretch the temperature conversion process to beyond breaking point, that’s about gas mark ¼ in oven terms. See? The cards are literally cooking at these temperatures.

This is a problem, because it was revealed some time ago that that the solder joints that hold and connect NVIDIA’s graphics chip to the PCB tend to get soft under high temperatures, and when this happens, the chip can just slip off – leaving you with an irreparably broken card.

You can work around these design limitations. You can play your games on lower settings so that your cards don’t overheat -- and in the process defeat the purpose of SLI. You could, of course, replace the heatsinks with some kind of watercooling rig for the price of an additional card. But all these workarounds will probably make you feel like you’ve paid a lot for a few products that aren’t designed to work well together.

A part of this problem is motherboard design, and another part is the way graphics cards have evolved. They used to be things that passed on graphics from the CPU to a monitor. Now they’re insane and vicious monsters that do a lot of heavy computation themselves and need current to be pumped directly into them from the power supply – like a block of South American apartments illegally hooking up additional mains lines to power air conditioners.

The other problem is that even though the cards need more space for their cooling systems, there’s not a lot you can do internally to increase the distance between dual slot coolers because PC cases are standardised according to the ATX specificaitons. There are seven backplanes in the case on the PC at my desk, and a triple SLI system would take up six of them.

The result is Gas Mark ¼. And whichever way you slice it, packing a lot of cards into a case and giving them hardly any room to breathe is a bad design. It’s as though the way the multiple cards would fit in a computer was an afterthought.

The good news is that I have a solution.

Underneath their sticker-encrusted black shrouds, dual-slot GPUs have a large heatsink in the centre and a blower-style fan in the back that moves air from below the card, through the shroud and then out the back of the computer.

I want to see a replacement shroud designed for multiple card setups. You’d unscrew the stock shrouds from the cards, throw away the blower fans and bolt the cards into a new Triple-SLI shroud.

A single 120mm fan would be bolted to the end of it so that the air source is transformed into an uninhibited expanse in the case. It would achieve the same wind tunnel effect, but be able to force the air over all the GPUs’ heatsinks with much more ease than the current system.

NVIDIA and partners: if you’re listening, I want royalties.
 
15 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
colganaitor
Nov 26, 2008 8:09 PM
 hehe.

But if you could afford Triple-SLI, couldn't you afford water cooling too?

I don't see many battlers going for a triple-sli setup.
SceptreCore
Nov 26, 2008 10:01 PM
 Looks like the AMD game is the way to play it these days... with just a fan hack the 4870 performs admirably... with surprisingly cool temps.

One ? though Faldo.. when you thought of this super way to cool them better... did you test their performance and overclocking?
nesquick
Nov 27, 2008 8:53 AM
 See if you made a 4 gpu (2 HD4870x2's) that would never have happened and the crowds would just be like omgwtfbbq at those sweet scores all day long :P
2SHY
Nov 27, 2008 9:59 AM
 Probelm is nesquick.....with the 4870x2 they already are quite toasty. So if you put them close together. You'd face the same probelm of being in close proximity.
SceptreCore
Nov 27, 2008 2:48 PM
 Nothing that CCC 8.11 can't fix 2SHY. Just bump the fans up and hey presto. Plus with the right board that provides adequate spacing, instead of 4 PCI-e x16 slots crammed together its fine!
Coggsa
Nov 27, 2008 3:08 PM
 I disagree.... kinda.

I reckon the best way is to design a heatsink that draws air in from the back or top of the card, thereby reducing the the reliance on having space between the cards. Most cases have a fan at the front, so it would be a easier to blow air straight in the back, and have air go straight through a heatsink and out the back. Only problem is the back width of cards aren't that great, so actual volumes of air might be small. Maybe some kind of funnel?
DiStOrTeD
Nov 27, 2008 8:29 PM
 @coggsa the air still has to go somewhere dude. Thats why its called air FLOW
p_francis_bennett
Nov 28, 2008 10:08 PM
 mate, that acer aspire with some dual gpu atiamd GPUs is looking good right now with water cooling
sethh
Dec 2, 2008 10:46 AM
 The only problem with the 2x4870x2 is that they doesnt perform as good as they supposed to...Will do further testing in our store, but with a i965+intel board + 2 cards, doesnt even got over 20k in 3d mark 06...And 2 4850 is almost as good as 2 4870 (few hundred points in the same....)You can admire the ATI cards, and they are good, but not as good as the hype around them.....IMO
p_francis_bennett
Dec 2, 2008 11:15 AM
 what about trying the setup in this article in the acer predator?
Coggsa
Dec 2, 2008 2:12 PM
 @DiStOrTeD: Yeah, I not explain really goodly.

I meant design the cards so the air enters the back of the card(as in closest to the front of the case) and exists straight out the back of the case(where the DVI cable goes).
I was thinking it might not then need to do so many right angles, and therefore might even be quieter?
Krispy89
Dec 3, 2008 10:40 AM
 I saw the tripple sli setup at the show recently, great demonstration of power but to me, that is just overkill. Even though it was achieving on average 60 fps on Crysis Warhead. I also saw its guts and it had more fans in it than a rolling stones concert. Must have been a nightmare putting it together. I'll never attempt it, not on the basis of the troubles that you guys encountered, but on the basis that I don't have the budget for it.
Chilly1
Jan 2, 2009 9:08 AM
 IT's true that backs of two of the cards block the intakes of two other cards but it wouldnt really matter if your case's cooling is fine, i'm using an antec 900 with triple 8800 GTX since jan 2008 and it has been always running fine , the temps are 56c 60c 61c at idle , not big difference between the 3. i never experinced any type of crashs becuase of the heat too. and who said that triple sli is a waste of money?? there is a bundle of triple GTX 260 (core 216) with an X58 EVGA getting sold @ $899.99 its performance is almost identical to 3 gtx 280 (if not better) and it will eat any quad crossfire configration that would cost you atleast $1300
Tezlin
Jan 29, 2009 8:16 PM
 So you just need a board with space between the SLI slots. -.^
Or am I missing something important?
hello0011
Mar 27, 2009 6:48 PM
 lol... 108 degrees that doesnt sound right...
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