So after buying two 6950's (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7073901) with the intention to unlock the shaders and slightly OC them to give me two 6970's I have discovered that they run way to hot for my system. At factory BIOS and clocks my two HIS 6950's run at 50 C (for the secondary card) and 60 C (for the primary) at Idle, and that is with me manually bumping the fan speeds up to a constant 50%. In games that push the cards (like Metro) the primary will get up to 85-90 C, unless I then push the fans to about 70%, in which case the temp doesn't quite hit 80 C.
Either way, those temps are just too hot for my comfort, especially considering the metal plate on the top side of these cards (in terms of in-case orientation) gets very hot to the touch, and I have a delicate looking audio card in the next slot over from my primary card.
Anyways what all this means is that I could do one of two things in my mind.
1) Buy a VGA cooler for this sucker
2) Buy a different card
Now the VGA coolers that I found are around $60-75. For that price, I could actually upgrade to a full 6970 and not have to unlock or OC anything.
Now this finally brings me to the GIGABYTE I mentioned in the title. The GIGABYTE GV-R697OC2 is the card that I found for the job here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125381
Looks like it would have some of the best cooling of cards I've found, and actually at the price of the 6950's plus cooler I found, these GIGABYTE cards would actually be cheaper.
I know that this card will dump like 80% of its heat directly into my case, but above these cards I have some damn good ventilation.
So my question to all of you is, for the price, and for a card that WILL keep themselves a LOT cooler, is this a good choice? Is there something else that would be a lot better? Build reliability and customer service are certainly factors I consider btw.
Thanks
Either way, those temps are just too hot for my comfort, especially considering the metal plate on the top side of these cards (in terms of in-case orientation) gets very hot to the touch, and I have a delicate looking audio card in the next slot over from my primary card.
Anyways what all this means is that I could do one of two things in my mind.
1) Buy a VGA cooler for this sucker
2) Buy a different card
Now the VGA coolers that I found are around $60-75. For that price, I could actually upgrade to a full 6970 and not have to unlock or OC anything.
Now this finally brings me to the GIGABYTE I mentioned in the title. The GIGABYTE GV-R697OC2 is the card that I found for the job here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125381
Looks like it would have some of the best cooling of cards I've found, and actually at the price of the 6950's plus cooler I found, these GIGABYTE cards would actually be cheaper.
I know that this card will dump like 80% of its heat directly into my case, but above these cards I have some damn good ventilation.
So my question to all of you is, for the price, and for a card that WILL keep themselves a LOT cooler, is this a good choice? Is there something else that would be a lot better? Build reliability and customer service are certainly factors I consider btw.
Thanks