How much does watercooling a 4870x2 help?

[DashTrash]

Hey all,

I was just wondering how much watercooling a 4870x2 helps if you plan to overclock. I haven't yet done any overclocking with it on the stock cooler because it seems to run pretty hot. What kind of results did you get when you watercooled? People regularly hitting up near 850 cores? I also thought about trying quadfire with these, but it doesn't seem to gain all that much. Appreciate your thoughts.

[affiliate13]

Yes the X2s do run very hot, what ever block you do buy make sure it clamps/bolts down properly over the VRMs. The XSPC ones I have needed help to make good contact with both cards.
The HK and EK ones look better designed.
As to over clocking headroom that will depend on your card, but with a good block you will be less constrained.

[InCredible]

the temps dropped a lot for me..for cores and vrms...overclocking 850core was 24.7 and 870 was highest bench overclock..of course u get rid of the annoyingly loud fan which is the best reason to water cool that gpu..

[zalbard]

It should help a ton, 4870x2 is a hot and loud running card.

[shazza]

..of course u get rid of the annoyingly loud fan which is the best reason to water cool that gpu..

+ 1000

[SpazzAttack]

I was just wondering how much watercooling a 4870x2 helps if you plan to overclock.

It helps a lot!

The 4870 X2s and the 5970's just beg to be water cooled. At 800 MHz, the temperature for the pair of Crossfired 4870 X2s I'm cooling with the Danger Den water blocks never goes above 50ºC while running either Furmark or the OCCT GPU torture test. On air cooling these GPUs would regurlary hit 90º-100ºC easily. And water cooling gets rid of those noisy fans too.

In other words, there is no downside to water cooling these video cards,

[belmontrich]

watercooling will help out a lot specially the noises..

[DashTrash]

Hey, thanks for the responses. I'm really interested in watercooling the card, since it seems to idle around 80c. I think the fan is turning fairly slowly, hence the high idle temp. But it sure doesn't take long to hear the fan spool up. I haven't had much time to play with them yet, but also wondering if 2 of these crossfired really make much of a difference. So far from the limited research I've done, they seem to bench well, but don't necessarily provide much better frame rates in real life situations. I plan to try some games out tomorrow to see if I can see a subjective difference. I'm mostly sensitive to minimum frame rate. Be interesting to see if I notice a difference. But for the money, instead of investing in 2 blocks for these, I'd probably be better off selling them and getting a 5970 (if I can find one in stock).

[H2O]

The 5970s seem to have some driver troubles at the moment, so it might be better to sit on them for a few weeks to see if they shape up (GF100 is also coming in a month, so that's another reason to wait).