First SLI Rig

Oreo

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Well, here it is, finally built after 3 hours of moaning and swearing. I like building PCs but I am no good at all the finicky little cables and that stuff.

I always said I didn't like SLI. But I did my research and it seems like the driver issues and microstuttering are not as bad as I had feared, plus you really can't game at 4K with anything other than 780Ti/Titan SLI or AMD equivalent. Maybe Maxwell will solve the need for SLI to game at 4K, but I doubt it.

Specs are in signature. Pics uploaded to imgur album.

Last pic was taken before I remembered to put the SLI bridge on ;)
And no.. that stock Intel cooler is not staying for long.

Will try and update with performance stats later.

Ma New PC - Imgur
 
Appreciate any tips / stuff I need to know about SLI. Never done it before, other than installing SLI onto the motherboard and I don't really know anything about it with regards to making games work well with it, perhaps special settings or something ? and so on.
 
There are no special things you need to do. Just if you come across a game that only uses one GPU you can sometimes rename the directory .exe to a game with a proper SLI profile and it can sometimes work.

As to 4k gaming, a single 780 can handle most all games easily at 4k. You just can't have all the bells and whistles cranked. Just the usual trade off. My buddy still even has some issues with Surround and his 780ti SLI setup with games like Crysis 3. No different than before when 1080p was becoming a thing and most people still had mid grade 7000 series cards or X800s. My 7950GT SLI had issues with 1440x900 and 4xAA.

In a few months you should post another pic. Want to see if the new Windforce 450w setup will cause uber PCB sag.
 
Looks good, but Jeez.... Stock heatsink?!? :p

As for the settings... Mvidia Control Panal/Manage 3d Settings/Program Settings; You can add a program/game if you want to select settings. Gives you "some" tweak capability if you want it.
I've had to do it with Skyrim when I went SLi with my 670's.

Edit: Dunno if you did it intentionally, but your sig has some spaces in it, you might want to check it out if you didn't mean to do it.
 
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Looks good, but Jeez.... Stock heatsink?!? :p

As for the settings... Mvidia Control Panal/Manage 3d Settings/Program Settings; You can add a program/game if you want to select settings. Gives you "some" tweak capability if you want it.
I've had to do it with Skyrim when I went SLi with my 670's.

Edit: Dunno if you did it intentionally, but your sig has some spaces in it, you might want to check it out if you didn't mean to do it.
Nothing wrong with stock heatsink. Wish my 3960x had a stock heatsink :annoyed:

You recently have to tweak in Skyrim? I had no troubles running the 580s on Skyrim. Have you tried renaming the .exe to bf3.exe? I had less stutter that way even though the engines are completely different.
 
There are no special things you need to do. Just if you come across a game that only uses one GPU you can sometimes rename the directory .exe to a game with a proper SLI profile and it can sometimes work.

As to 4k gaming, a single 780 can handle most all games easily at 4k. You just can't have all the bells and whistles cranked. Just the usual trade off. My buddy still even has some issues with Surround and his 780ti SLI setup with games like Crysis 3. No different than before when 1080p was becoming a thing and most people still had mid grade 7000 series cards or X800s. My 7950GT SLI had issues with 1440x900 and 4xAA.

In a few months you should post another pic. Want to see if the new Windforce 450w setup will cause uber PCB sag.

Thanks for the renaming trick.. thats pretty cool.

I had some issues with not achieving the right kind of 3DMark score. My graphics score was coming in at 16,000ish on Fire Strike, and I couldn't work out why (I saw in some reviews of SLI 780Ti they were getting 20,000) so I decided to install all some of the drivers off the CD that came with the Mobo, restarted my PC and redid the test, this time I got 23,900 - much more comparable to other rigs :)

25ea85210017d0e54630e3ba94cef7c5.png


As for the PCB sag, are you referring to the PCB of the GPU or Mobo ? Either way, they both have metal backplates, so I don't think it will be too much of a problem.



Looks good, but Jeez.... Stock heatsink?!? :p

As for the settings... Mvidia Control Panal/Manage 3d Settings/Program Settings; You can add a program/game if you want to select settings. Gives you "some" tweak capability if you want it.
I've had to do it with Skyrim when I went SLi with my 670's.

I totally forgot about the heatsink when I ordered. Man this thing sucks. It's having to run at like 1700RPM, which is fairly audible, to keep it under 60c @ idle.
 
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Thanks for the renaming trick.. thats pretty cool.

I had some issues with not achieving the right kind of 3DMark score. My graphics score was coming in at 16,000ish on Fire Strike, and I couldn't work out why (I saw in some reviews of SLI 780Ti they were getting 20,000) so I decided to install all some of the drivers off the CD that came with the Mobo, restarted my PC and redid the test, this time I got 23,900 - much more comparable to other rigs :)





I totally forgot about the heatsink when I ordered. Man this thing sucks. It's having to run at like 1700RPM, which is fairly audible, to keep it under 60c @ idle.
Interesting. Are you OCd? Buddys 780ti setup got 15k. 4770k and SLI 780ti and I think he put his CPU at 4.4 too.

Did you repaste the stock HSF before putting it on?
 
Nothing wrong with stock heatsink. Wish my 3960x had a stock heatsink :annoyed:

You recently have to tweak in Skyrim? I had no troubles running the 580s on Skyrim. Have you tried renaming the .exe to bf3.exe? I had less stutter that way even though the engines are completely different.

Really? I might have to try that, but the only time I get a some stutter now is if I'm in a big battle scene. (stormcloak battle for Solitude type) Even then , it's minimal.

I can send you my HS if you want. I have 3 that I'm not going to ever use...
 
Really? I might have to try that, but the only time I get a some stutter now is if I'm in a big battle scene. (stormcloak battle for Solitude type) Even then , it's minimal.

I can send you my HS if you want. I have 3 that I'm not going to ever use...
Are you running a modded copy? If so that'll be VRAM stutter, not SLI issues.

Thanks for the offer but unfortunately no stock heatsink will fit on the 2011 socket. They never made one for it because the mounting system is different. My H50 is fine, I just don't have anymore room for HDDs where it's mounted.
 
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