3870 crossfire temps

This is my first dual card setup. Is it normal to have the primary card 10-20C hotter than the secondary one? The primary idles at 50C and is 80C under load. The secondary idles as low as 38C and is never over 60C at load. Both cards have had their stock TIM replaced with AS5. In fact, after seeing the temps, I reapplied the AS5 to the primary, assuming I had done a poor job the first time. No change, however.
I plan to replace the stock coolers with duoorbs at some point in the future.

No difference in temperature with my cards. They're always within 5 degrees and generally within 1 degree of each other using cpuid's PC Wizard 2008 monitoring program and using ATI tool's "fuzzy cube" program.
However with 3d running, the core temps are aways around 80 degrees celcius and never around 60.

In a P180, my bottom card ran hotter than the top under load using the stock coolers.

If you have a case that's wide enough and has even moderate airflow, I highly recommend the Accelero S1's.

Totally quiet, will never fail, and they keep temps very very low at idle and load. We're talking 30-35c idles and 55c-60c loads after hours of COD4 or Hellgate.

Perfect for the 3870's. And you can buy two for the price of one DuoOrb.

I've heard good things about the Acceleros but I also heard that they're not usable with crossfire since they interfere with the bridges, and there are no longer crossfire bridges like there are for SLI.
Are the temps you quoted passive or with the turbo-module (or 120mm fan)?

Promii said:

I've heard good things about the Acceleros but I also heard that they're not usable with crossfire since they interfere with the bridges, and there are no longer crossfire bridges like there are for SLI.
Are the temps you quoted passive or with the turbo-module (or 120mm fan)?

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Passive with decent case airflow, and I'm using them just fine in Crossfire. The fins slide up and down on the heatpipes, are not connected to each other, so the cable slides right between them. That trick won't work with the SLI cable because the SLI bridge is right smack dab in the middle of the first heatpipe.

Takes all of 2 seconds to do, though you'll need to keep the cable on the top card when you put it in the case. But that's no biggy, there's enough slack to easily pop it off and on the bottom card's connector for installing/removing the cards.

Remember, unless you're driving a 2500x1600 30" monitor, you only need one Crossfire cable with the 38xx cards.

Also, you CAN run two cables if you need to, just requires a little cosmetic mutilation of the top card..bend the fins between the first and second heatpipe enough to pass the cable end through, then bend back into shape. It'll kink the second cable a hair because the first heatpipe is a bit too close, but nothing that'll stop it from working.

Good to know. I'm only driving 1680x1050 so I'll ditch the second connector.
Your setup looks remarkably similar to mine. Considering that case as well. Currently using an NZXT Lexa which looks really nice but I find falls short in certain areas.

Promii said:

...Currently using an NZXT Lexa which looks really nice but I find falls short in certain areas.

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So does the Stacker. You'll need to spend about $20 for Dynamat or something similar, and a whole lot of time tightening every screw on the case and stuffing gaps with foam.

Well, you don't have to, if you don't mind your case sounding like a '75 Pinto going 60mph down a gravel road.

But besides the noise/flimsy issues which comes with the territory because it's such flexible (pardon the pun) case, it's a nice unit.

Looks good, plenty of room, lots of options.

I recently upgraded to water cooling on the CPU and was able to flip my motherboard in less than a minute, BTX style, to make room for a bottom mounted 120.2 radiator and fans.

Afterwords, I took great pleasure throwing my ThermalRight Ultra Extreme 120 against a concrete wall several times, then lobbing it as high as it would go out in the alley. I hated that thing, worst $50 I ever spent on cooling. But its death was amusing.

My TRUE120 seems to be treating me alright so far.
One more question about the Acceleros. They seem very wide, would they require me to remove my side panel fan? It is in line with my primary card. I would like to be able to keep it to have some air blowing on the cards. Seems good airflow would be important with these things.

Finally got myself a pair of the S1s. Had to ditch the side panel fan after all, but it's no big loss.
These things are amazing. Temps on my primary card dropped from 50C idle / 90C load to 28C idle / 45C load. Completely passive!

Thanks for the advice guys

Promii said:

This is my first dual card setup. Is it normal to have the primary card 10-20C hotter than the secondary one? The primary idles at 50C and is 80C under load. The secondary idles as low as 38C and is never over 60C at load. Both cards have had their stock TIM replaced with AS5. In fact, after seeing the temps, I reapplied the AS5 to the primary, assuming I had done a poor job the first time. No change, however.
I plan to replace the stock coolers with duoorbs at some point in the future.

Click to expand...

Mine are very close. I idle at 30* and is about 50* under load with fans at 50%

With the fans at the default (25% I think) it would get up to 90*