Good afternoon all.

I'm looking for your help in two topics:

The other question is:

I put it in spoilers to be more clear in my questions.

As always, thanks in advance for your help.

Greetings!

If you bother to read some of the threads the last few weeks (and earlier) there is a LOT of these questions being asked regularly and all yours have already been answered.

Try to google or browse backwards in this subforum.

If you bother to read some of the threads the last few weeks (and earlier) there is a LOT of these questions being asked regularly and all yours have already been answered.

 

Try to google or browse backwards in this subforum.

Yes, ty, I read that threads, but I think my questions or even my PC are very differents bc I need help with vídeo recording, overheating issues and a new GPU.

Thanks fir the bump in any case.

Greetings!

Any advice gals & guys? I really appreciate your help with this.

Greetings!

Any advice gals & guys? I really appreciate your help with this.

 

Greetings!

Don't run your graphics cards in Crossfire when playing this game. It is not optimized to run on dual/SLI graphics cards and as such, can lead to poor performance and excessive power usage.

Temps might be high because of air flow.

Do you have any fans blowing at the GPUs from the front of the case, I assume the bottom fan is a radiator fan and exhausts out? And do you have a side panel fan blowing on the GPUs? It's not the space, it's how the airflows. If your tops fan and back fan both exhaust, with the radiator exhausting, those 2 fans on the side aren't going to push enough air to naturally flow out the GPU vents in the back, you'll need a fan in the side panel or from the front blowing air into the GPUs otherwise the airflow going through the GPU coolers to just will just recycle and never truly exhaust the heat outside the case.

I'll have to pass on the game recording part as I don't personally do this option ( though if I were I would use fraps as when I have done so it's always worked nicely for me with little overhead over the years ).

Couple of things though I would think could hinder you would be SSD vs HDD. If recording you want it to be to an SSD for little impact. Also I would assume you don't want to record to the same physical drive that you have the game installed on ( and of course not having the game stored on the same physical drive as your operating system ). I imagine recording to the same physical drive as your operating system wouldn't have too much impact as any performance hit would be to the physical drive of the game.

In saying that if are you running a pagefile then recording to the same physical drive as the pagefile could easily cause slowdown. Debateable you don't need a pagefile with 16gig+ ram - debateably though, best bet would be to try it yourself and see how things perform.

Probably someone with tons more experience in recording swtor videos could help more there anyway but that would be something I would look at first of all ( physical drive setup ) for slowdowns recording.

The crossfire comment is also seemingly correct above, many people report issues in this game trying to run SLI/Crossfire.

Temps going up when recording seems odd and would seem to be more likely an issue with the Raptr software than the cards themselves - maybe trial different recording software and see if the same issues persists?

80 FPS in PVP - not going to happen sorry to say. This game is mainly CPU bound and your CPU at the speed you are running it is more or less the best you're going to get. Really not worth upgrading that CPU at that speed for this game or any game really.

If you are getting average FPs of 40 in PVP then you're doing ok though tweaking could push you a bit higher.

980Ti vs Titan might as well get the 980Ti, no reason for the extra expense of the Titan for little to no performance gains. Either way you're aren't going to see any performance gains in SWToR though it might help with 4K over the 7970 if the 7970 were to see performance drops.

I also assume you don't only play this game? You really don't need to upgrade at all if you do.

Temps might be high because of air flow.

 

Do you have any fans blowing at the GPUs from the front of the case, I assume the bottom fan is a radiator fan and exhausts out? And do you have a side panel fan blowing on the GPUs? It's not the space, it's how the airflows. If your tops fan and back fan both exhaust, with the radiator exhausting, those 2 fans on the side aren't going to push enough air to naturally flow out the GPU vents in the back, you'll need a fan in the side panel or from the front blowing air into the GPUs otherwise the airflow going through the GPU coolers to just will just recycle and never truly exhaust the heat outside the case.

He shouldn't be getting anywhere near those temps just playing SWToR and if you read he states it comes from recording and recording shouldn't be stressing the cards that hard at all ( or at all for that matter ) so it's certainly something else than airflow.

In saying that if the OP gets similarly high temps in all gaming they do then yes airflow could be an issue but that wasn't really implied in the OP.

Another thing to check is if something is over riding your fan control and not pushing your fans as the temp goes up? I.e. temperature is 70 but fan is still blowing 10% or something stupid like that.

I personally use MSI Afterburner for all my AMD related clocking and fan settings. You can leave it running whilst gaming then go back to the detailed graphing to see what everything was doing ( gpu usage, temps, fan speeds etc. etc. ) plus set manual fan profiles.

When your temps hit high do you hear the fans working incredibly hard? You could try set manual control in CCC if you don't want to try Afterburner and just chuck it to 100% and repeat the issue that causes temps to go up to see if they still go up.

Don't run your graphics cards in Crossfire when playing this game. It is not optimized to run on dual/SLI graphics cards and as such, can lead to poor performance and excessive power usage.

So, do you recommend to only use one?

Even if I want to stream or record my game play?

Thanks in advance.

Temps might be high because of air flow.

 

Do you have any fans blowing at the GPUs from the front of the case, I assume the bottom fan is a radiator fan and exhausts out? And do you have a side panel fan blowing on the GPUs? It's not the space, it's how the airflows. If your tops fan and back fan both exhaust, with the radiator exhausting, those 2 fans on the side aren't going to push enough air to naturally flow out the GPU vents in the back, you'll need a fan in the side panel or from the front blowing air into the GPUs otherwise the airflow going through the GPU coolers to just will just recycle and never truly exhaust the heat outside the case.

Hi, yes, the bottom fan is the radiator of my XSPC watercolling system

And I only have one side fan panel, as you can see in my picture.

What do you recommend me?

Thanks in advance.

I'll have to pass on the game recording part as I don't personally do this option ( though if I were I would use fraps as when I have done so it's always worked nicely for me with little overhead over the years ).

 

Couple of things though I would think could hinder you would be SSD vs HDD. If recording you want it to be to an SSD for little impact. Also I would assume you don't want to record to the same physical drive that you have the game installed on ( and of course not having the game stored on the same physical drive as your operating system ). I imagine recording to the same physical drive as your operating system wouldn't have too much impact as any performance hit would be to the physical drive of the game.

 

In saying that if are you running a pagefile then recording to the same physical drive as the pagefile could easily cause slowdown. Debateable you don't need a pagefile with 16gig+ ram - debateably though, best bet would be to try it yourself and see how things perform.

 

Probably someone with tons more experience in recording swtor videos could help more there anyway but that would be something I would look at first of all ( physical drive setup ) for slowdowns recording.

 

The crossfire comment is also seemingly correct above, many people report issues in this game trying to run SLI/Crossfire.

 

Temps going up when recording seems odd and would seem to be more likely an issue with the Raptr software than the cards themselves - maybe trial different recording software and see if the same issues persists?

 

80 FPS in PVP - not going to happen sorry to say. This game is mainly CPU bound and your CPU at the speed you are running it is more or less the best you're going to get. Really not worth upgrading that CPU at that speed for this game or any game really.

If you are getting average FPs of 40 in PVP then you're doing ok though tweaking could push you a bit higher.

 

980Ti vs Titan might as well get the 980Ti, no reason for the extra expense of the Titan for little to no performance gains. Either way you're aren't going to see any performance gains in SWToR though it might help with 4K over the 7970 if the 7970 were to see performance drops.

 

I also assume you don't only play this game? You really don't need to upgrade at all if you do.

I have 2 SSD, 1 for my OS, the other one for my games and a HDD for pics, videos, etc., in this one I save all my videos.

What specs do you recommend me for twiking my system?

In the other hand, do you recommend to uninstall one of my GPU'S and play only woth one?

Thanks in advance.

He shouldn't be getting anywhere near those temps just playing SWToR and if you read he states it comes from recording and recording shouldn't be stressing the cards that hard at all ( or at all for that matter ) so it's certainly something else than airflow.

 

In saying that if the OP gets similarly high temps in all gaming they do then yes airflow could be an issue but that wasn't really implied in the OP.

 

Another thing to check is if something is over riding your fan control and not pushing your fans as the temp goes up? I.e. temperature is 70 but fan is still blowing 10% or something stupid like that.

 

I personally use MSI Afterburner for all my AMD related clocking and fan settings. You can leave it running whilst gaming then go back to the detailed graphing to see what everything was doing ( gpu usage, temps, fan speeds etc. etc. ) plus set manual fan profiles.

 

When your temps hit high do you hear the fans working incredibly hard? You could try set manual control in CCC if you don't want to try Afterburner and just chuck it to 100% and repeat the issue that causes temps to go up to see if they still go up.

When I play SWTOR, my temp goes from 40° to between 70° and 90° only when I play, when I minimize the game the tem goes to 40 or 50 again.

The GPU Tweak, a program who came with my GPU'S said the fans are working at 100%.

I can send you a screen if you want.

Thanks in advance.

Btw, thanks to all the ppl who are helping me to solve this issue.

When I play SWTOR, my temp goes from 40° to between 70° and 90° only when I play, when I minimize the game the tem goes to 40 or 50 again.

 

The GPU Tweak, a program who came with my GPU'S said the fans are working at 100%.

 

I can send you a screen if you want.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Btw, thanks to all the ppl who are helping me to solve this issue.

Right so you are getting this issue over both cards when only playing the game - nothing to do with recording ( it helps to eliminate things like that from the process ).

First thing I would personally do is disable any 3rd party software like Raptr etc. and use the standard CCC to set everything to be running at stock.

This way you can sort of eliminate 3rd party apps from the process ( assuming they are disabled properly, some can be quite tricky on how they still reside in the background controlling things so check your processes to ensure everything seems ok ).

From that point test it again and see if anything changes.

Next try only running 1 card if the above doesn't help and again see if anything changes.

After the report back how you go on and look at maybe opening this topic after you've tried all the above in the customer service area because I know of a few really good "helpers" in there who don't read the general section so you could be missing out on some good advice.

Right so you are getting this issue over both cards when only playing the game - nothing to do with recording ( it helps to eliminate things like that from the process ).

 

First thing I would personally do is disable any 3rd party software like Raptr etc. and use the standard CCC to set everything to be running at stock.

 

This way you can sort of eliminate 3rd party apps from the process ( assuming they are disabled properly, some can be quite tricky on how they still reside in the background controlling things so check your processes to ensure everything seems ok ).

 

From that point test it again and see if anything changes.

 

Next try only running 1 card if the above doesn't help and again see if anything changes.

 

After the report back how you go on and look at maybe opening this topic after you've tried all the above in the customer service area because I know of a few really good "helpers" in there who don't read the general section so you could be missing out on some good advice.

Thanks m8, I'll do that tomorrow and I'll keep you posted, thanks in advance for your help!

Greetings!

Those expensive NVidia reference coolers are good about blowing hot air out of your case. Your card will hit its thermal limit with a serious game, but the rest of your system will stay cooler.

A Fury X will probably end up faster than the 980Ti once they get the drivers right, but it will positively devour power. It's so hot, the reference cooler is water.

Most of those custom vendor coolers range from bad (Asus usually runs forward/back fins, which gets at least a little bit of the hot air out the back of your case) to really bad (everything with vertical fins, which most vendor-custom cards have) about doing that.

The other thing which will give you heat issues is that CPU overclock. Some things which could go wrong:

1: Your thermal compound. Some of these age badly. Some people don't get the stuff on quite right, which means bubbles and extra-hot spots.

2: Dust. Since you're a builder, you probably know this one.

3: Needs shinier cooler. If you want to go crazy, get water blocks and build yourself a custom loop.

4: Voltage regulation circuitry. They wear out, and faster if you run more current through them (which you did with the overclock).

5: Electromigration. If you drive a silicon chip hard enough, the nanoscale wires on them will move around over time because of induced currents and the forces that creates on these wires.

Hi, yes, the bottom fan is the radiator of my XSPC watercolling system

 

And I only have one side fan panel, as you can see in my picture.

 

What do you recommend me?

 

Thanks in advance.

Ok, you need either more air moving through your case or to slow down any overclock on the GPUs, you have a thermal problem. If there is no overclock on your GPUs, then it's definitely an airflow problem, or bad thermal paste installation on the GPU coolers. Either way, it's a cooling problem (which I consider too high of an overclock a cooling problem).

I'd say your GPUs are starved for air because you have the bottom radiator, top fan and back fan all competing with the GPUs for the side intake fans. Ideally you only need the radiator fans to exhaust and everything else you want as intake, but you need clearance around the case for that especially the top fan which needs about a foot of clearance to avoid recycling air.

PS. Ok, I figure your case is the CM Storm Stryker? If it is, mount the HDD cages so the fans intake from the front. Those cages only pass air through in one direction, they largely block airflow to the side so the air going through those 2 fans is going from one side out the other. You want them mounted like this: http://www.pcgameware.co.uk/images/CM-Storm-Stryker-PSU&MB-Assembly.jpg. Do that first, then if that doesn't work, try reverse mounting the top fan to intake. If THAT doesn't work, turn back your overclock or check the thermal paste.

Those expensive NVidia reference coolers are good about blowing hot air out of your case. Your card will hit its thermal limit with a serious game, but the rest of your system will stay cooler.

That's only true if you have enough air coming in. He has more exhaust fans than intake fans neglecting the GPUs, those GPU fans are fighting the case air pressure to exhaust air. When that happens they start recycling air, exhaust is immediately pulled back into the case and into the GPU again.

Im running an i3 3.5ghz, 16gb ram, sapphire 7870 2gb 240gb ssd 750w psu

My game is super smooth and has no lag anywhere. Seems like people are spending a whole lot to run this game.

In reality you only need a 2 core or more at or above 3.5Ghz for CPU Seems like actual core speed being higher is very beneficial for this game

and a GPU that rates 4000 or higher on passmark.

Im just saying this to maybe save ya some money. Tho if you are recording you probably want more specs than mine.

That's only true if you have enough air coming in. He has more exhaust fans than intake fans neglecting the GPUs, those GPU fans are fighting the case air pressure to exhaust air. When that happens they start recycling air, exhaust is immediately pulled back into the case and into the GPU again.

From my experience intake fans are a myth, if you are properly exhausting you don't really need intake fans since the air will be coming in from any front/top vents anyway ( depending on how the case is designed ) - it's not like we are talking air tight boxes here that vent air to run at negative pressure.

In cases of really extreme overclocks they can be useful for directing air to set areas and actually moving the air over parts ( though often they aren't setup this way at all in the majority of cases ) but in terms of pure intake ... not needed imo.

I've overclocked for years and never had issues with heating due to case temps, my cpu/gpu cooling has always been up to the task which means you are more likely on the correct path with possibly the paste being done wrong ( unlikely unless the OP put in aftermarket cooling on both cards and totally stuffed it up ) or he is indeed overclocking far too high and manually boosted voltages ( this is why we stress test our overclocks - too many people bump them up and if a game seems stable they assume it must be stable ).

Those expensive NVidia reference coolers are good about blowing hot air out of your case. Your card will hit its thermal limit with a serious game, but the rest of your system will stay cooler.

I've got an R9 290 that is like this, massive blowers fan vent awesome temps straight out the rear of the case ( actually helps keep my room warm in the winter ). Interestingly they are designed ( supposedly? AMD tell us anyway ) to run at high temps up to about 90 degrees and I've managed to get about a modest 10% stable over clock on mine and the fan only really runs at about 65% at about a 80-85 degrees - hooray for headphones though because damn it's loud.

Run just under 25% overclock on my CPU with an old Xigmatek Achilles cooler that is still more than up to the task, fan directed to my rear exhaust fan. Keeps temps at around 70 in the summer under stress test load.

all in all I am fairly happy with simple overclocks I've put in place considering the simple cooling I've got in place. I always laugh at some of the cooling propaganda put around the web for modest overclocks. Yes sure you could spend tons more money and time to run another 10 degree cooler but if you are well within the realms of safety is it really that important? Most people will upgrade the concerned components well before any issues arise from safe operating temperatures.

I'm still running a 2600K on a modest overclock on my lounge media/older gaming pc and a q6600 on my office pc ( though admittedly not overclocked anymore since the cooler is back to stock ). All are still going strong and I had a good 35% overclock on that q6600 when it was used for gaming.

From my experience intake fans are a myth, if you are properly exhausting you don't really need intake fans since the air will be coming in from any front/top vents anyway ( depending on how the case is designed ) - it's not like we are talking air tight boxes here that vent air to run at negative pressure.

Ok, just stop now, and read this: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/02/10/the-big-cooling-investigation/1.

First on the list, for some reason, was orienting all six of the attached fans so they were acting as intakes. Obviously this is slightly ridiculous set up and it proved to be utterly useless at cooling too (who’d have thought?). This was largely because the rear and roof (B) intakes were both pushing against the fan on the CPU cooler. We remedied this by flipping the CPU cooler round so it was now pushing and this had an immediate effect on the results, dropping the CPU delta T down to an actually rather good 43oC.

 

Unfortunately the GPU spoilt the party as it didn’t like this setup very much at all as the hot air from the CPU cooler was now being blown back at it by the two front intake fans. Back to the drawing board we guess.

 

Next up we flipped all the fans over so that we were running with six exhausts. This may sound mad, but we’ve already established that, all other things being equal, you’re better off getting heat out of the case than pushing cool air in - surely having all the fans as exhausts must be awesome then? Well…no.

In fact the delta temperatures we saw with this arrangement were, if anything, worse than those we saw with all the fans acting as intakes. The GPU in particular got very toasty as it was being completely starved of air by the side and floor fans.

Last on our list of cooling adventures was seeing if we could turn the world of air cooling on its head by - wait for it - in taking air from the rear and exhausting it out the front. To do this we reversed all the fans in the case from what would be their traditional role. Dramatic we know, but not ridiculous - the CPU is located near the rear of the case after all, surely it’d like this arrangement.

 

Sure enough it did (we reversed the fan on it again so it was pulling air from the rear of the case) and we saw our lowest CPU delta T with this arrangement - a full 36oC less than our first reading taken with nothing but the CPU cooler and all the fan mounts blanked up. Again though the GPU kicked up a fuss with the fans arranged in this way - not a massive one mind - but it clearly wasn’t suited to being cooled in this way as it had no dedicated intake fan.

The OP has 2 exhaust fans on top, with a radiator exhaust on the bottom, plus the GPU exhausts, while for intakes he has the 2 fans mounted on the HDD cages, cages which have virtually solid sides, mounted sideways in a case that has vent holes on the sides for pass through airflow. In other words his only 2 intake fans DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO CASE AIRFLOW.

I know you like to argue with me but jeesh, he could throw whatever you recommend in there and if he doesn't rearrange his HDD cages or fans, he'll have problems with temperature.

Ok, just stop now, and read this: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/02/10/the-big-cooling-investigation/1.

 

 

The OP has 2 exhaust fans on top, with a radiator exhaust on the bottom, plus the GPU exhausts, while for intakes he has the 2 fans mounted on the HDD cages, cages which have virtually solid sides, mounted sideways in a case that has vent holes on the sides for pass through airflow. In other words his only 2 intake fans DO NOT CONTRIBUTE TO CASE AIRFLOW.

 

I know you like to argue with me but jeesh, he could throw whatever you recommend in there and if he doesn't rearrange his HDD cages or fans, he'll have problems with temperature.

Think about it this way ... CPU temps are regulated via water cooling, exhausted out the bottom. This would arguably contribute little if any to the case temp and thus have little impact upon the GPU temps.

Those blower fans should more than be capable of dissipating most heat out the rear of the the case to keep the cards stable, even at a mild overclock.

Add to the the exhaust at the rear and on top exhausting any residual hot air from that section of the case and thus the cold air will be coming in from the front section. Yes it's not blowing air directly on to the cards but it doesn't have to and that is my point.

If he ensures the cards are running at stock he shouldn't be getting anywhere near the temperatures he is getting at 100% fan speed, it's ridiculous to think case air flow in that set up would be giving those temperatures.

So either he's in a room that is like 40+ degrees to begin with ( air intake isn't going to help a lot with that ), he's pushed the overclock far too far or there is something dodgy going on with the aftermarket software being used.

That or you start getting into actual hardware issues which seems unlikely to get the same exact issues on both cards.

Maybe stop going by what you read and try applying practical experience.

As to always arguing with you well I would only do that if I disagreed with you. Whilst I'm not saying cooling won't drop temperatures ( of course it will ) I am saying it's quite mythical in how much case cooling you actually NEED and in the ops case highly unlikely to be the reason he is getting those temps.

As to those other arguments you speak of ... still waiting for that video of your 50+ WZ FPS effort that you couldn't do because you couldn't link raptr accounts or something? Or that full profile of your userbenchmark you had talked about a couple of times?

*snip*

Try using some common sense here yourself.

First, every fan in his case that is affecting airflow by his GPU and motherboard is set for exhaust. The two fans on the HDD cages do not blow much air into the case when set sideways on that particular case. The sides of the cages are nearly solid, which funnels the air through them and the case has vents on both sides corresponding to the fans. Any air intake from those fans is just passed from one side straight out the other side without passing any components except the HDDs.

With all of the other fans set for exhaust, his only 2 intake areas that are unrestricted are the front of the case, and the slot covers. The VAST majority of that air coming in is going to be DIVERTED immediately in the direction of the exhausting fans, out the top and bottom of the case. His whole setup is directing airflow in the case from the front and then out the top and bottom. Without forcing the air into the GPUs or going with a more traditional front to back arrangement, the air going through the GPUs is cycling in the pocket between them and the power supply with very little exchange with outside air.

Really, I know what I'm talking about, my GPU is OC'd almost 20% (1150 core from 950 core), my octacoreCPU is OC'd 20% on all cores (4.8 GHz from 4.0GHz). The GPU never hits over 70C with the fans only at 40% (and still nice and quiet), the cpu never gets over 60C on the package although the socket will push over 80C under small FFTs but that's expected. I can run a full system stress test overnight and sleep through it, because it stays under spec and quiet. And my entire system is on air, CM Hyper EVO 212 with Gelid fans in push-pull, Phanteks Enthoo Primo with 9, 140mm fans, 6 intake and 3 exhaust. I know a bit about keeping an OC'd system cooled on air.

PS. oh and my computer is in a room on the south side of my house, it's 80-85 F during the day even with the central air on full blast.

My 2 cents worth.. Coming from someone who builds OC PCs for a living and has been involved in competitive liquid nitrogen over clocking

There are a lot of good points in the thread... But also a lot of ones that are misleading and maybe causing confusion... Especially with the back and forth arguing about simple points...

The biggest contributing factors to over heating in a closed case are -

1. Air flow, not just how many fans you have, but the thermal dynamics in the case... Each case is different and requires its own customisation... Generic advice is a good starting point... But it still needs to be tested each time... Including positive pressure and negative pressure

2. Components and their operating temps under load as well as placement

3. The quality of the components

4. Dust... One of the biggest reasons for overheating

5. Cable management

6. The amount of hardware in the system and it's rated heat generation

7... there are others too

Edit:

Quick answer to the the second of the OPs question is that currently the GTX980ti is the best performing single GPU for 4K... But you won't be able to use Raptr, so picking your recording program will be important... Personally I would wait... Your HD7970 setup should theoretically be able to do it... Even though the Amd FuryX was a bit of a let down after the hype... I expect you will see improvements in drivers... But also the FuryX2 isn't far off... I would Atleast wait till then to see how the dust settles

Edit :

I too run a gaming system nearly identical to the OP... Including the evolve/Raptr software till I updated to Win10...

I also only pvp...

i7 4970k @ 4.8ghz

Asus Formula vii

2 x sapphire vaporx HD7970 ghz 6GB in crossfire (3x 24" monitor setup)

4 x SSDs

16GB G.skill trident ram

I use closed loop CPU cooling

Corsair 600T case

With 2 HD7970s in close proximity, they will produce a lot of heat being so close to each other... Getting cool air directly on them is extremely important... Having air that comes into the case that is impeded by HDD cages and cables will cause mini vortexes and dirty air in the case, which restricts cool air from reaching the crucial areas...

Air cooling over Water cooling your CPU also introduces its own challenges to thermal dynamics and air circulation in a case... I recommend to people building or upgrading to use closed loop water cooling these days as it is the same or better performance than Air cooling... But back on topic

As most ATX systems have their graphics cards at the bottom and HDDs at the front, it is important to choose a case that allows you to remove and reposition your HDD cages so that unrestricted air from your front intake fan/s can reach your GPUs... This is vital in a dual card set up... Making sure your cable management is also done properly so it doesn't impede this air is just as important

As I said each case has its own challenges to get the thermal dynamics optimised... Just by upgrading fans that are pulling or pushing too much air will cause problems, no matter the quality of the fan...

I saw someone mentioning exhausting air out the bottom of the case... Great idea in theory, but also has its challenges... If you don't have enough clearance under the case, the air doesn't exhaust properly and causes a pressure bubble outside which means you may as well be blowing it against a solid surface... Not all cases are designed to do this even though a lot of manufacturers say they are... Also having carpet under the case is bad for this setup, unless it's that really short pile, hard stuff... The best surface is a hard floor... If you don't fulfill those requirements, then it isn the most efficient way to exhaust the air...

Noise is another issue... How much is acceptable to one person isn't the same for everyone...

A good start for the OP would be to customise his GPU fans to run at max speed as default just to see if it affects the temps and so he can gauge how loud that actually is (usually very loud)... But temps should be undercontrol...

If they aren't, then there is a flaw in the system, cards, Airflow or the ambient temp is very high..

First thing to note is the game is more CPU intensive than GPU...

Also running those settings to play competitive pvp isn't advised... You want to give yourself every advantage.... So lower them a bit... My FPS rarely drops below 60FPS and averages around 80FPS unless in close quarters battle where it might drop to 40FPS... this is not your system, but the game

You don't need your grass or trees at 100%... Lower to 30%...

Turn off bloom... It's not needed...

Turn Shadows off... They are the biggest drain on performance

I turn down anisotropy to a medium setting

Turn off vertical sync in the game

I also don't let evolve/Raptr optimise your settings...

You can increase some graphics bling by going into catalyst controller and add a swtor profile... I run -

Have catalyst override the games settings,

anti aliasing at 8x,

Anisotropy between 4-8...

(Higher of these 2 can cause a drop in FPS)

Turn on vertical sync to always

I don't use the crossfire default setting... Sorry, but I can't remember off the top of my head which one I use... Just play around with it to make sure you don't get screen tearing or flicker...

Doing all this takes some of the graphics strain off your CPU and puts it back on your GPUs, where it belongs... This should improve your FPS average in game...

If you require any further help, let me know...

Don't run your graphics cards in Crossfire when playing this game. It is not optimized to run on dual/SLI graphics cards and as such, can lead to poor performance and excessive power usage.

You are right and wrong at the same time... Yes the game isn't optimised for dual cards... But you can get much better performance from them if you know what you are doing and also running multiple monitors or higher resolution... It is also helpful if you want to record too