Maximum PC

Since I have started playing Star Wars The Old Republic at 2560/1600 my 2 6970's have been very noisy and crashing a lot. I tried changing the fan profiles with Msi Afterburner but I'm am not satisfied with the noise. I'm not sure if I'm ready to build my first water cooling setup so my plan is to get new case - the new Corsair 550D, 2 prolimatech Mk-13's, and connect the fan control on the video cards to fans mounted in the side panel. The side panel on the new Corsair 550 can take two 120mm, or 2 140mm, or 1 200mm fan. My plan for the side panel fans is to connect them to the fan control on the video cards and control them with msi afterburner. Much has been said about the Noctua and Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm ap-15 fans but can someone recommend some quiet 140mm or a 200mm fan with good air flow?

Are these overclocked? Do they use the stock cooler, or an aftermarket solution? How big is the case?
I have heard about the same things about the Scythes. Could a fan expert please come?

well first off, what 6970's do you have? Not all are the same, but most do use similar blower type coolers which can get frighteningly loud. What case do you have now? What power supply? What temps do you get right now? And any OC involved on either the CPU or GPU's? What motherboard do you have?

The biggest two issues with using the prolimatech mk13's is that its pretty big and heavy. Throw some fans on there and it can easily take 2 or 3 slots (on top of the 1 slot for the gpu) so running crossfire might have issues if you don't have the room for it. Plus, the weight of it can become an issue when mounting this in a normal horizontal case since the only mounting points is by the gpu; no where else on the card. You can expect some card bending from the weight unless you have some sort of card support.

Honestly, $60 per vga cooler is kinda of pricey as it doesn't include any fans. The passive heatsink seems to work fairly well as long as you have sufficient airflow in the case, but the biggest problem with running these setups is that there isn't a way to remove the heat from the system; at least the blower will remove it from the case.

If you really want to do a water cooling setup, save up for it. You'd be better off and really its not too difficult to do. Stick with Koolance, DangerDen and HeatKiller blocks.

The case I have now is the Coolermaster ATCS 840. Power supply is a corsair ax1200. CPU is core i7 with a slight bump to 3.8. The 6970s are reference boards with the stock cooler. I have not overclocked them. When I am play swtor I get low to mid 80c's on my hotter card with my fans set at 80% at 80, curving to 100% at 90c. Until they hit 60c i have the fans running at 50%.

Besides the Mk-13 I have also been looking at coolers by arctic cooling and thermalright.

For the money I would spend on a watercooling solution, would it be better just to wait for the next nvidia card?

If I do go the watercooling route, could I put together a solution for less than $500? What is the best combination of radiator and fans for a quiet/silent setup? I appear to have room for a triple 120mm radiator in the top of my case.

Here's what I'd do.

Radiator: Black Ice SR1 360 3x120mm fan with 3/8" fitting $112.95
Fans: 6x Rosewill 120x25mm 74CFM 30dBA case fan $2.72 each = $16.32
GPU block: 2x Watercool HeatKiller GPU X3 69x0 with 3/8" ID barbs $99.95 each = $199.90
Pump: Sidewinder Custom Swiftech MCP655 with Tach Sensor & 2x 3/8" ID barbs $82.99
xFire link: Bitspower G1/4" Multi-link adapter set $9.99
xFire link tube: Bitspower Crystal link tube set - 2 slot spacing $4.99
Tubing: 5ftx Tygon Clear 3/8" ID 1/2" OD tubing $1.39 per foot = $6.95
Hose clamps: 6x Koolance Reusable Hose Clamp 1/2" OD $0.99 each = $5.94

Total: $440.03

What you could also add is a fan controller for the radiator fans and use a Temperature Sensor.

Fan Controller: NZXT Sentry LX aluminum Dual Bay Fan Controller $49.99
Temp sensor: Bitspower G 1/4" Silver Temp Sensorp $7.99
T-Block: Bitspower Crystal T-Block (acrylic) $3.99
Hose Clamps: 2x Koolance Reusable Hose Clamp 1/2" OD $0.99 each = $1.98

Total: $63.95

Whole thing comes out to be $503.98. The only thing that is missing is the hardware to mount the pump, but that's easy to figure out yourself and save a few bucks. Also with this kit, I omitted a reservoir since honestly, you really don't need it since you'd be running a pretty big radiator and a simple loop. Although, if you add the cpu to the loop, you'd probably would need to add a reservoir just so the water has another location for the water to pool and cool.

You can swap out the hose clamp for the cheaper variant for $.39 each (link), which is the same clamps used for industrial purposes so you could see how much they are at your local hardware store.