I'd take Me 2 months to buy just one with My credit card, I was looking at the Asus GTX970 Strix at most, which is about half as much in cost to buy.

The good thing is there may be price drops across some of the cards.

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Hi,
According to some review sites, there should be a small drop in GTX980's & 70's
but its gonna take a bit of time to work through, most vendors will want to sell existing stock at the present prices..

I'm more interested in the new Zen CPU's & APU's that may well be out next year,
but both will need a new mobo, since Zen uses a new skt..

Maybe the mobo manuf's will actually produce boards that cater for GPU's that are bigger than 2 slots across. My GTX980's are 2slots+ darn near 3 slots:-/

I'm having to save for a thinner GTX980 in order to get two into my HAF-X case along with other existing non graphics cards.

Regards,

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Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!

Hi,
According to some review sites, there should be a small drop in GTX980's & 70's
but its gonna take a bit of time to work through, most vendors will want to sell existing stock at the present prices..

I'm more interested in the new Zen CPU's & APU's that may well be out next year,
but both will need a new mobo, since Zen uses a new skt..

Maybe the mobo manuf's will actually produce boards that cater for GPU's that are bigger than 2 slots across. My GTX980's are 2slots+ darn near 3 slots:-/

I'm having to save for a thinner GTX980 in order to get two into my HAF-X case along with other existing non graphics cards.

Regards,

I saw the GTX980s are going to be $549.00, also here is a motherboard that may work for you: EVGA Z97 Classified (152-HR-E979-KR ), and Zoom here has a similar older model. They appear to utilize better spacing, I would drop in three cards with plenty of space between them.

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I have a z97 classified and you could probably run just two triple width cards in slots 1 and 3 if you were okay with the breathing room.

If you run three cards you're supposed to use plx which usually means slots 1, 2 and 4. I did try slots 1, 4 and 6 to give the first card some breathing room but the second card got hot as it was right up against the third card. I fixed that by putting the third card on a riser. Only running two cards now as I was overloading circuits and I'm too lazy to reroute wire. Now if you look at the board it's easy to ask why wouldn't you try slots 1, 3 and 6, wouldn't that give more breathing room? But slots 2, 4 and 6 are plx only and they might be deactivated if slot 3 is occupied, or at least I wouldn't know how the resulting pcie bandwidth would be allocated. Another way to fix the width problem is to convert to waterblocks, but I would never be one to custom cut water hoses.

Hi,
Ahh, intel kit:-/ Wee bit too expensive for my pocket. I buy AMD mobo & cpu to run NVidia graphics.

As it stands it takes me a few months of saving to afford a GTX980, so ultra expense on intel kit just aint on:-)

Thanks for the response tho..

Regards,

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Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!

Hi Zoom,
Wrong brand M8:-)

Don't do intel kit, its to expensive, rather spend the dosh on video card than an intel mobo and cpu.

Thanks for the info though..

Regards,

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Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!

I have a z97 classified and you could probably run just two triple width cards in slots 1 and 3 if you were okay with the breathing room.

If you run three cards you're supposed to use plx which usually means slots 1, 2 and 4. I did try slots 1, 4 and 6 to give the first card some breathing room but the second card got hot as it was right up against the third card. I fixed that by putting the third card on a riser. Only running two cards now as I was overloading circuits and I'm too lazy to reroute wire. Now if you look at the board it's easy to ask why wouldn't you try slots 1, 3 and 6, wouldn't that give more breathing room? But slots 2, 4 and 6 are plx only and they might be deactivated if slot 3 is occupied, or at least I wouldn't know how the resulting pcie bandwidth would be allocated. Another way to fix the width problem is to convert to waterblocks, but I would never be one to custom cut water hoses.

Did you ever try the 1, 3, 6 slots? I read the manual and it looks like slot three is always x8, and that if its used slot 2 becomes x8. I want to buy this board to utilize the 1,3, 6 slots, but if you tried it and its a no go then I'll find something else.

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I see your doing a custom water cooling setup, I hope that 590 you picked up works. Tomorrow my two 960s are suppose to arrive. I am going to see how they run on my Asus Z97-A, and contemplate a third shorty style card for the bottom slot.

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What CPU cooler do you guys recommend that is good plus quiet. I have a AMD 4170 AM3+ CPU and a stock fan cooler. When not under SETI load. It is reasonably quiet. Loaded and you can hear it 30 feet away. Open to air or water options. My case won't work with a double radiator. Memory is in the way.

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cooler master hyper 212 plus is very popular

cooler master hyper 212 plus is very popular

What are you using Woohoo?

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cooler master hyper 212 plus is very popular

What are you using Woohoo?

It's not exactly fair to compare my stuff to yours because your chip is hotter than mine. For a while I was trying to see how long I could get by with the stock fan. At some point I needed to back off on the overclock on my 4790k. I had some Best Buy money to spend and I got a Corsair H100i just to see what it was like. There's not great air circulation in my cube so the Corsair got a little loud for my taste. I replaced the two stock Corsair fans with expensive Noctua fans that were quieter, but I just didn't have enough airflow so I bought two more of the expensive fans and more screws for the back side of the Corsair. Running over 60C at the moment.

On my 4690k I can't remember if I was running into the same problem on needing to back off on the overclock, but I got a Thermaltake nic c5 because it was in stock at frys and it claimed to dodge memory. I think it works good because my temps are in the 50s and it's in a very hot case with four gpus. In the normal orientation it won't hit my ram but fan shroud always hits my gpu. Now I see why simple fan clips are better. So I rotated it to blow up instead of back but I needed to get shorter ram. It only uses a 3pin connector and a knob to adjust the speed but I have it set to minimum.

Actually the cooler master hyper 212 evo is the newer version of the plus. I think anything that's not stock should significantly outperform the stock cooler. Larger usually spins slower to keep the noise down. 4pin fan allows your motherboard to control the speed. With clips, you can replace/add fans.

Your right Woohoo. My FX 4170 is hotter. 125 watts and 4.2GHz factory with auto boost does pump out a lot of heat. The R7 260X just adds to the case temp.

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[/quote]
Did you ever try the 1, 3, 6 slots? I read the manual and it looks like slot three is always x8, and that if its used slot 2 becomes x8. I want to buy this board to utilize the 1,3, 6 slots, but if you tried it and its a no go then I'll find something else.
[/quote]

I was a bit disappointed in the manual for the z97 classified, if only because page 20 of the manual for my asus maximus vi extreme shows various card configurations. Basically slot 3 is shown as being unused in 3 and 4 card configurations. I had assumed that this also applied to the evga as the feature sets were similar.

So we've had a break in seti action and I already had slots 1 and 3 filled and with a video card ready, an open-air case and a cable that I never bothered to stash, I tried slot 6. It appears to work. I gave up trying to look in bios, siv, gpu-z or catalyst for pci-e speeds and just decided to test on einstein. The speeds were decent and it looked like all the cards were running at the same speed, and I don't need to run a riser. Of course I popped the breaker again so I'm taking down my slowest machine and sticking with the other two.

So we've had a break in seti action and I already had slots 1 and 3 filled and with a video card ready, an open-air case and a cable that I never bothered to stash, I tried slot 6. It appears to work. I gave up trying to look in bios, siv, gpu-z or catalyst for pci-e speeds and just decided to test on einstein. The speeds were decent and it looked like all the cards were running at the same speed, and I don't need to run a riser. Of course I popped the breaker again so I'm taking down my slowest machine and sticking with the other two.

Glad to see it works. Your right about EVGA's manual, not very informative. I'm thinking on loading Einstein and testing the two new MSI 960s that arrived today. Thanks again for that recommendation.

PNY VCGGTX9704XPB GTX 970, this is the card I like.

What do you like about this PNY card? I had some bad luck way back in the day with their products, and have avoided them since.

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evga is known for good customer service. I have a power supply from them that has a ten year warranty, that seems a bit over the top.

my boss hates PNY, he tells me to avoid ordering their memory products. we do order PNY Quadro cards though.

Call me a sucker for looks. I love the look of the Nvidia card from Best Buy, but its $50 more.

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So I got the 960s up and running, what is a safe temp? I've seen 69C on auto on a 90% load at stock fan settings. Turning the fans up to 75% I get around 56C, but they are noisy little things, kinda like a ringing sound. Could I get by with a constant 60 to 65C temp 24/7 or do I need to keep it under 60? thanks.

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I'd love to build a new rig but my plate is full with household repairs from the beating we took this winter.

Living vicariously through the thread though... :)

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So I got the 960s up and running, what is a safe temp? I've seen 69C on auto on a 90% load at stock fan settings. Turning the fans up to 75% I get around 56C, but they are noisy little things, kinda like a ringing sound. Could I get by with a constant 60 to 65C temp 24/7 or do I need to keep it under 60? thanks.

Yours are running warmer than mine, I was managing 43-45C crunching 3 at a time.

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