After picking up a couple of 5970s from Newegg's recent promotion, I switched my two Sapphire 'Xtreme' 5830s to another case to use as a headless mining rig. While setting up the cards with TRIXX, I steadily ramped the core clock all the way to 1080, with the memory at 360 and voltage at 1.195 using the stock heatsink and fan (although I removed the thermal paste that came with it and replaced it with non-conductive AC MX-2). In the case is a 120mm Scythe 'Ultra Kaze' 133CFM fan directly behind the graphics cards, pointed at the exhaust openings at the back of the case, blowing at max speed over the cards. This keeps the GPU temp at 72C under the full load at 1.195v.
I've always been a fan of Scythe's case fans, especially the high-CFM models, and this reinforces the idea that airflow is key to solid GPU performance. I noticed that they also produce an
aftermarket GPU heatsink fan. I'd be interested in installing these on my 5830s in the headless rig to keep them cool over the long term.
i envy you so much, i got 4 of those sapphire extremes like 2 months ago and i cant get above 260 mhash without crashing. like theyll get up to 300 or maybe even 310 or something, but itll crash like 5 minutes later or maybe instantly or maybe an unknown time later, tried everything in the book, upgraded psu, lowered system resource intensive things, checked for hdd errors, etc, checked fans, improved airflow, checked for overheating,
like it wont let me undervolt them haklf the time, so i just gave up and mine at stock mhash or the max i can get with ATI CC
(win7x64 antec psu 5 case fans on a semi-naked rig.) the same exact model opnes you have
