Proud owner of 6 x 5970 cards as the start of my 2 Proof Off Concept litecoin rigs
I also have 2 x MSI 890 FX G70 mobo & AX1200 PSU
Pardon my ignorance....
I have radeon XFX Black ops & Diamond Brands
Couple of questions
1) Whats the Max safe temps you can run the GPU's (without killing them)
2) Whats the max is it VRM speed of the internal fan
3) Just using cgiminer what is the M/Hash or K/Hash I can get out of these cards using s/w
4) How do u overclock & what are the things to look out for (i.e heat & vrm speed anything else ??)
5) Can you run 3 5970 on a AX 1200 pSU or is it too close to max rating ??
6) Can u just use the standard AMD drivers in win 7 x64 & not go for the branded stuff ?
7) I am putting it all into a 19 inch rack ... have people been able to use risers in 4U rackmount cases or will i need to build out myself
Thanks in advance
1) i'm not positive what the GPUs are rated at. I believe 100oC... because I had a fan go out once in the summer and one of my 5970's was hashing away at 50mhash/150mhash, with temps of like 106oC and 103oC. you're fine running it 24/7 at 80-85oC or lower, I'd say (although right now @ 9pm, i'm sure all of mine are at or below 60oC). sometimes you have a crappy thermal paste job and one GPU sensor will be a lot hotter than another. in summer, i was mostly limited by GPU temps, now in winter, it's usually the VRM temps. those are rated for 120oC. I try to keep mine under 100o, but it doesnt bother me if they get up to 110o (if it isn't 24/7). i mean, like today, it got to 78o, some near record high, so im sure some of my VRMs were running 110 or so. they're in a sealed off room, so the ambient temperature is controlled entirely by what it's like outside (essentially, outside temperature +10 or 15o, so around 120oF in summer). i don't tinker with the clock settings every day, sometimes I don't go in there for days at a time, so... what they're set at now, if the temperature was what it should be (like 50-60o in the day and 35-45o at night) the VRMs on my "worst" card would be running around 95'ish max
2) well, i guess that's RPM. i've had a few fans that went up to 5300, they tend to gradually slow down with all the dust buildup. i run them at 100% 24/7. at the moment I have one fan that runs at 5000 and the rest are all around 4600-4750.. I guess if they dropped to 4500 or below, you'd want to clean out all the dust, spiders, insects, etc. i have this sweet case fan (it's positioned strategically on the windowsill) that glows neon that draws most of the bugs away from my other stuff, that pile gets vacuumed every few weeks
i've had to replace half a dozen fans in about 20 months of mining. so dont believe the BS about them burning out in 6 months at 100%
3) it hasnt been very cold this summer, but there was like a one week cold snap where I spent some time tinkering with the clock settings. i was limited by the VRM temps. i have one weak GPU, but the rest can do 950 core at 1.1375v. around 900mhash each card. right now most are set at 1.05v, with one weak GPU at 1.0375 and a super weak one at 1.025. i could probably set them higher, but i'm sick of resetting cards. i have a 5870 that can do 1080 core at 1.200v, that's like 505mhash (not worth doing though, as that bumps it to like 100 amps)
4) umm, i use barelyclocked, msi afterburner, and trixx.
5) yes, quite easily (unless maybe it's a really crappy 1200W PSU)
6) i dunno what branded drivers are. i dont update my drivers, since i havent played any games in like a year or two. i think to run 5 GPUs or more, you have to go back to some really old drivers. or maybe they fixed that now. i dunno. sdk 2.1 is best. 2.5 isnt much worse
7) unknown, my computers are placed equidistant on wood blocks or cardboard
