1080 Card Recommendations

[protocol]

Hi Guys,

I am wanting to purchase 2 x GTX 1080 cards for use in a well ventilated full tower case, with a 200mm side panel fan pushing on to the GPUs.  Not yet sure of which of the may GTX 1080s to buy. Any thoughts would be appreciated. 

A review of the threads seems to suggest to go for a reference GTX 1080 Founders Edition card.  In trying to understand the difference between a Founders Edition card and a general after market card, it was noted that the blower fan in the Founders Edition card - to dump heat out the back of the case - is a differentiator from most after market cards.  

Some on various forums seem to dislike cards with blower fans, and suggest that they run hotter & louder than others.  Others in this forum suggest that if the card is running hot, it means that the fan hasn't been tuned, and the second half of the back plate hasn't been removed.

The Founders Edition card can be manually overclocked as required.

There is a midway card such as the MSI GTX 1080 Aero OC, which appears to be like a natively overclocked Founder Edition card as it also uses a blower fan.

Other cards such as the Asus GTX 1080 Strix OC Edition were looked at. These cards are natively overclocked, and use tri-axial fan solution, which doesn't necessarily get the heat put of the case.

So with that all in mind, are there advantages/disadvantages of using a Founders Edition card over or something like a Asus GTX 1080 Strix OC in a large case?

[jodler303]

Tried a MSI GTX 1070 Aero and it blew up my pcie riser within 1 second. - Didn't like the quality either, compared to FE cards. So i returned it within 2 hours after purchase. - No other card that i tested ever blew up my risers! (and that's a few ... 4x ZOTAC GTX 980, 1x TITAN X, 1x ZOTAC GTX 1080, 1x PNY GTX 1080 and another 7 different AMD cards).

The FE fan style allows you to put GPUs directly side-by-side - not possible with axial-fan-style cards. Also compatibility seems better for FE cards. I had to learn it the hard way (see above), i regretted trying the non-ref card (even if it had an radial fan) and went back to FE and now i'm happy again.

About temps: the final GPU temperature depends very much on the cooling system of your case, room ambience temp, even the position and height of the box inside your room (room warms up especially on the roof, stays cooler on the floor. i've once measured 3°C difference in 1,20m height). I can have +/- 20 degrees celsius just by changing the cooling of my case, e.g. no fans => 80+°C gpu temp ..... 3000 rpm Fans => 70-75°C gpu temp ..... 4000 rpm fans => 60-67° GPU temp (overclocked!).

Cooling has to be seen as an "overall concept" (including the room!) so there's much more than just gpu fan-style. Because of this, the reports about certain temperatures and fan-styles are varying so much. Be prepared to try several types of fans for your case. Took me like 7 attempts to get fans that are good enough. ;-)

My vote for Founders Edition.

[hashdawg]

About temps: the final GPU temperature depends very much on the cooling system of your case, room ambience temp, even the position and height of the box inside your room (room warms up especially on the roof, stays cooler on the floor. i've once measured 3°C difference in 1,20m height). I can have +/- 20 degrees celsius just by changing the cooling of my case, e.g. no fans => 80+°C gpu temp ..... 3000 rpm Fans => 70-75°C gpu temp ..... 4000 rpm fans => 60-67° GPU temp (overclocked!).

That's indeed very true. However, keep in mind fans with >4k RPM are very noisy. I'm using myself some SUNON fans in separate small room and I can hear them very much if they are running at the full speed.

Cooling has to be seen as an "overall concept" (including the room!) so there's much more than just gpu fan-style. Because of this, the reports about certain temperatures and fan-styles are varying so much. Be prepared to try several types of fans for your case. Took me like 7 attempts to get fans that are good enough. ;-)

What kind of fans are you using?

My vote for Founders Edition.

I think everyone on this forum votes for FE

[jodler303]

That's indeed very true. However, keep in mind fans with >4k RPM are very noisy. I'm using myself some SUNON fans in separate small room and I can hear them very much if they are running at the full speed. 
What kind of fans are you using?
I think everyone on this forum votes for FE

@Fans:
3000rpm: DFS123812-3000
these are pretty strong while still relatively quiet. not very good build quality though. the rotor is only fixed with a fragile "clip", so the first fan broke within weeks. i might just have been unlucky. can be fixed easily, too. can't compare with ffb1212ehe though.

4000rpm: FFB1212EHE
excellent fan. if you know r9 290x @ 100% fanspeed, this is what you can expect noise-wise. the power is incredible, though.

I still have to try FFB1212EHE with a manual fan control so i can manually adjust them to run a little bit slower. - I hope finding a sweet spot with slightly better cooling than with ultrakaze but still acceptable noise factor. Also, their quality seems to be considerably better than ultra kaze so i expect them to be more durable.

@FE:
hehe yeah, that's pretty much consens. however, some ppl here do have non-FE cards, too.

[kiara]

if u were looking for fans related post here is a good one. https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-5525-po...l#pid29817

[jodler303]

Oh wonderful! ... i wish i had stumbled over such a thread before trying out many fans myself. Glad to see there are even stronger fans than FFB1212EHE as well as similarly strong ones with lower noise level. Thanks for sharing!

[Mem5]

I have a 1080 FE and a 1080 Gaming.
The first one (FE) has an unique and small fan, which is *very* noisy when hashcat runs with -w3 during few time :  this little fan rotates at bottom to try to refresh the card, looks like an airplane takes off.
The Gaming one a two large fans which don't need to rotates so much to refresh the card.
If you are performance driven and don't care about the noise => FE
If you sleep or work next to your server => Gaming Edition.

And if it helps, benchmarks of both :
https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-5762.html
https://hashcat.net/forum/thread-5601.html

[jodler303]

hmm. I think the airplane comparison is quite exaggerated and i'd like to put things into perspective here. Actually i'd consider 1080 FE being pretty quiet compared to many other cards that i've owned before. Too loud for sleeping besides it in the same room, probably yes. Is it louder than your other card? Probably. (Does this apply for 100% fanspeed?) However: If you're sleeping besides a (cracking) server, it's a fail by design IMHO. I really don't want to be offending here, i completely understand that this is the only option for many. I'd rather like to point out the different use cases: some ppl are running their gear in a server hosting location, they wouldn't even notice a 1080 in such an environment.

If you want to hear an airplane taking off, try out r9 290x @100% fan speed or some professional (cracking) servers. Those are loud and the airplane comparison would be appropriate. Comparing a single 1080 FE with an airplane takeoff just sounds wrong to me. It might be louder than that other card, ACK, but i think the comparison is misleading and therefore isn't really helping others. By using your scale the really loud cards would then have to be atomic bombs. ;-) - Can only recommend everyone to listen and check with his/her own ears. - Noise level is something quite subjective.

Something that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet: required cooling and therefore fan noise level also depends much on the type of hash. Some hash types are more demanding (i.e. "hotter"). My statements are all based on heavy use with 100% fan cooling. As such, I only care about noise level at maximum load.

I have seen people who are NOT running their fans at 100% all the time and really wanting to keep things quiet (just like Mem5 does). - So the use cases and relations seem to spread quite a lot, hence the different point of views about what is loud ... As far as I understand for this kind of usage the gamer cards with axial fans seem to be more popular.

[hashdawg]

If you want to hear an airplane taking off, try out r9 290x @100% fan speed or some professional (cracking) servers. Those are loud and the airplane comparison would be appropriate. Comparing a single 1080 FE with an airplane takeoff just sounds wrong to me. It might be louder than that other card, ACK, but i think the comparison is misleading and therefore isn't really helping others.

I agree with you there, 1080 FE is much quiter than my Sunon fans running at maximum 5K RPM speed. In fact I don't hear it at all comparing to other fans.

[protocol]

Thanks all for some very useful feedback & fan specs.

Now I am leaning towards putting (hopefully) 3 x 1080 FEs in the case, spaced apart from each other at the maximum distance that the motherboard allows, with a 200 mm side fan pushing air onto the cards, and if it fits, a 120x38mm blower from near the front of the case pushing air onto the front end of the cards.

The (HAF X) case that I am now looking at has room for 2x200m exhaust fans at the top.  Good points about considering the room that the rig will be put into. 

If I just end up using 2 GPUs, then I should be able to separate them quite a long way apart from each other.  Would this situation, with less heat spilling from its neighbour, be more appropriate for a gaming card?  Or would heat from the lower card rise onto the top card and cause issues?

FEs with quality fans sound like the way to go.