Please actually stick to this, it's getting a little absurd reading this argument in nearly every thread you post in.


In the words of the late George Carlin,

"We had to put m3sSh3aD away in the home today. He was, well... more than happy"

And here I was hoping for an OP telling me what the improvements are

I double-dog-dare you to do a sodium/water combo

You seem intent on starting one...  but you're not going to find a lot of nVidia fans around here.


The card manufacturers lease their designs from the designer (aka nVidia) - nVidia has partnered with several vendors for some of their odd technology like 3D Vision in the past, but generally nVidia isn't paying anyone to produce cards using their chipsets - it's quite heartily the other way around, as this is how they make their big money.

It would be like the farmer bringing his milk to the shop and paying the shop owner to stock it.  

I don't think there's anything to derive from this ridiculous card other than ASUS 'Colorful' being ridiculous.

[edit] Misunderstood and thought this was an ASUS card, it's made by a company I've never heard of, 'Colorful' - it'd be extremely odd for nVidia to pair or subsidize such a creation with an unknown company even more so than the big-guns like ASUS or EVGA.

The only 'why' is 'because they can'

Might be a little tough - the pins holding the header in place are pretty beefy, and the header is flush with the board.  I suppose if I were an expert with a dremel/rotary tool I could hack it off.  Desoldering seems like the best bet still assuming i can melt the joint without melting the PCB

Desolder fail.

I attempted to pull the DVI header off an old nVidia 7800 - while I had success wicking up all the DVI pins, the larger through-hole pins that hold the header in place would not budge.

Doesn't look like I'll be squeezing these into a single slot unless I can figure out a better way to remove the DVI block.

/sigh

[edit] After doing a bit of research, it seems my iron was just turned down too low for ROHS/lead-free solder, so I'm going to give this another shot on the nVidia card.  Also going to pick up one of those desoldering vac pumps to try to simplify things, solder wick just wasn't cutting it for me. 

I'll try to post some pics if I manage to get it detached without completely botching things

If you find a real Radeon HD 5990, I'll buy it off you

No such thing exists.  Radeon HD 5970 is the high-end dual-GPU card in the 5xxx model range.  It is that particular line's 6990.

[edit] I see you edited your post already, sorry for calling you out

[edit] Furthermore, just for clarification.  The 5970 is two Cypress cores - the stream processor count would indicate that the GPUs are infact 5870 chips (1600 x 2) and not 5850 cores ( 1440 ).

Also the 6870 is the equivalent upgrade of a 5830, not a 5770 - it has an identical stream processor count, and improved performance in all other respects.  In regards to mining, the 5830 performs better due only to better overclocking ability.

They're also particularly well suited to high-density 3U/4U rackmount servers where noise isn't a real concern - a couple of these will keep a server full of high-load HDDs nice and frosty.

At 65dB+ they're not exactly meant to be in the rig under your desk.

The Deltas are no joke - I'm not surprised to see 24W at all.

Most normal high-flow case fans pull between 5-10W - for example I have a bunch of these 110CFM Scythe slipstreams that are about 6.3W each:  http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/sc12slsy110c.html

[edit] Indeed, you need to be careful to balance power for the Deltas - most fan controllers will allow about 20W per channel - a single one of those Deltas at full-speed/12V can burn out your controller

[edit] bad math - the scythes are 6.3W, not 8.6W - which makes the Delta's draw even more crazy

Funny, every single card I bought ~4 mo ago came with single molex to 6-pin adapters.  I was using probably 8 of these amongst my various rigs and never had an issue - the wires and connectors were never even warm.  The build quality seems superior to the one P4man posted, but still - why would they supply only single-molex connectors if this was a such a major risk?

I honestly don't expect it to make much of a difference - if MadHacker's got 6 blocks in parallel and he's getting good temps, my eventual 4 cards should be more than fine.  As for the semantics..

Consider the specific heat of water -  about 4 joules/gram °C - or how much energy is required to raise the temp of 1 gram of water by 1C.  We'll take an example of 4 cards where each card is able to transfer exactly that 4 joules to a gram of water flowing through at 1gpm:

- In series, flow at 1gpm through all 4 cards, 30C water exits the loop at 34C, as each card has provided 4 joules or 1C.

- In parallel, with flow at 1/4gpm through each card, each raises the temp 4C (by providing 16 joules) - still the 30C water exits the loop at 34C.

So with the same overall flow rate through the loop, the water is raised by the same total temperature regardless of whether it's series or parallel.  

However, in the series example, the the last card gets warmer water - consistently 3C higher than the first card.  In parallel, each card gets the same incoming 30C water, so temperatures should be the same across all cards.

Additionally, in series each water block drops the overall pressure, meaning the pump must work harder to maintain 1gpm.  In parallel, the pressure drop should be roughly the same as just one block, perhaps even less if the total channel width through the blocks is more than the width of the tubing.  The pump doesn't need to work as hard.

So all together, parallel seems like the better plan - more even temps on each card, and a smaller overall pressure drop.

[edit] And I realize now I've just reiterated DeathAndTaxes' last post.. lmao.  Anyway as long as the flow decrease through the cards in parallel isn't so great that the water simply can't absorb any more heat, the cards should not 'run hotter' in parallel.

lmao.. it shouldn't need a sticky..  it's the second result on google for "which cards are better for bitcoin mining", right under the profitibility calculator..

it'd be better to sticky an 'interwebs training course'

I did a *lot* of reading and research last night, the consensus seems to be that it doesn't matter too much, but parallel flow through the gpu array improves overall flow rates through any other blocks in your system,  usually the CPU.

Just ordered all the parts to start this up, thanks for all the tips guys

Am I correct that I only need 6 fittings for 4 blocks then?



IN - 
     ----------- (gpu1)
       |      |
     ----------- (gpu2)
       |      |
     ----------- (gpu3)
       |      |
     ----------- (gpu4)
                 - OUT     
             

Where each | is an SLI fitting?

Mad, are you doing serial (in one card, out to the next) or parallel (in all, out all)?

He doesn't - 6970 is a single-GPU card.

Dear god man.. do you have pics of that?

It's true, and if this rig were strictly for mining I'd be going with the 5970 hands-down.  From the benchmarks I've seen however, a pair of 6950s in CF handily outperforms it in most games - albeit at a higher total TDP and complexity, and of course I have the 1GB models instead of the 2GB used in most of the benches..  but since I've got them already, that's what I'm working with

Thanks D&T, those are about what I was coming up with too, I wasn't sure if the '1-slot' they were referring to actually meant 'blocks in adjacent slots', guess it doesn't.  It looks like the Feser ones could work.  I was looking at some similar fittings from DangerDen but they only came in a pack with one set of fittings and three tubes of differing length - for $12... and I'd need 3.. 

All the fittings and connectors and odd and ends are adding up to be almost 1/4 of the total cost, it's insane!

I'm kind of thinking that I'll just go with tubing and compression fittings for now - I've read that it's a total pain in the ass to get the tubing length just right, but it should work just fine and won't impact flow rates much.  The XSPC compression fittings I'm looking at are pretty low-profile, so I think I can squeeze two of them and a small chunk of tube between the blocks. 

Of course I've thought lots of things lately and been totally wrong