My X99 rig currently has:
two
EVGA GTX980 04G-P4-3988-KR cards (GM204-400-A1 GPU @1291MHz/1393MHz, 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 @7010MHz, 263W)
one
NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU Accelerator card (dual GK210 GPUs @560MHz/865MHz, 24GB 384-bit GDDR5 @5000MHz, 300W)
This rig is primarily intended for (and is actually used for) constant engineering work - I run tons of CAD/CAE softwares, AutoDesk, Altair, ANSYS, JMAG, Keysight, some SPICEs and MATLABs, some 3D sim and visualization stuff. I don't actually own the Tesla card (it costs over $6k and my employer leases it from NVidia) but I don't just let it sit idle while gaming! It's a mighty beast but it doesn't have any display outputs, so when I'm gaming it gets to be a dedicated overkill PhysX card while my x16/x16 GTX980s do all the heavy lifting.
I currently have the GTX980 SLI installed in the (first) PCIE_X16_1 and (third) PCIE_X16_2 slots, Tesla card installed between them in the (second) PCIE_X8_2 slot, my employer's
Comay E28 BladeDrive (a PCIe 2.0x8 device) below in the (fourth) PCIE_X8_4 slot. My
E5-1680-3 processor is basically a Xeon-binned i7-5960X and supports 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes. I have no M.2 or SATAe or USB3 devices installed which could cause PCIe conflicts on this motherboard. My 1250W Platinum PSU is quite capable of sustaining the entire system (including all three GPU cards) at peak load, no issues. Win7x64SP1 (6.1) with DirectX 11 (6.01.7601.17514), NVIDIA's
GeForce Game Ready Driver (WHQL361.43), NVIDIA
PhysX System Software (9.15.0428) with a GK2xx GPU emulation hack to run x8 dedicated PhysX on a Tesla.
The PhysX works great, my raw fps hasn't increased but it never (never) dips or wavers when things get crunchy.
The Tesla card actually runs cool all the time, that Enterprise-grade passive cooler never exceeds ~55C under maximal GPU load. The EVGA cards run hot, those fancy EVGA ACX2.0 coolers (plus backplates) struggle to keep temps below 65C when working hard. The top GTX980 is the harder worker but has proximity to the chassis rear exhaust fan, the bottom GTX980 consistently runs about 10C hotter because the slots are crowded. The BladeDrive never breaks a sweat, the heatsink is rather plain (not as exciting for gamers as the one G.Skill put on their
rebranded Comay G24 BladeDrives) but impressively cool and efficient. My chassis has six 140mm fans (2 front intake, 1 side intake, 1 rear exhaust, 2 top exhaust), it could accommodate more fans and lots of rad.
Any recommendations about how to better configure or optimize this hardware and PhysX setup? Mostly looking for ways to bring GPU temps down without throttling performance, without installing custom liquid cooling, and without doing anything at all which could void warranty on the Enterprise hardware (which I don't own). Any sort of decent AIO/CLC coolers for GTX980 cards?
(Please don't advise upgrading the SLI to a pair of GTX980Ti or TitanX GPUs, they won't help much for work and I simply can't afford to dump such money into games right now, lol. And AMD cards do not support all the software I run, the proprietary NVIDIA tech is too deeply entrenched.)
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