Vapor X crossfire 4890s BIIIG temps!

Got a 4890 vapor X card and idle temps were about 60c. Added a second Sapphire 4890 (850mxh not 870 as the vapor-x is) and that one idles about 55 c but the vapor0x (which is not basically unable to ventilate thanks to it's crossfire buddy blocking its' fan is now idling at 81C!!!!

Is this normal and acceptable? i don't see how crossfire is supposed to work when one card is going to get starved for air!

C-mon guys. Searches don't answer my question here but I'm worried I'm gonna toast my cards.

Vapor X seems to work cause the heatsink is way too hot to touch. Those temps above are with the case off too!

Went back to one card in the mean time. Getting 60 idle and up to 85 load. Add 20 to that when crossfired. What gives?!

81°C idle sounds critical. Try swapping the cards and see if that makes a difference.

Also you might want to rethink your case ventilation, crossfire does of course need a very good ventilation concept.

I had made the mistake of ordering a Vapor X 4890 back when I built this system. It too idled much higher than I expected, and because it doesn't exhaust heat out the back of the case like the stock cooler does.. it dumps all the heat right into the case and ended up raising case and CPU temps several degrees more than they previously ran. I didn't use it for long, ended up RMA'ing it and swapping it out for the current XFX 4890 in my sig.. and everything is nice and cool now.

These cards will run hot and don't have too much of a problem with it, but I definitely wouldn't like seeing it higher than 80*C. 90*C might be the absolute limit on these things.. I know the 4850s ran very hot before the fan fix was added.

Try swapping card locations and maybe use CCC to set a manual fan speed and see what kind of temps you can get with reasonable fan speed/volume.

I dont think you searched hard enough:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=637394

I have the same cards in cross fire and have the same problem, under full load card #1 goes to 75C while #2 is at 55C. And thats with the fans turned all the way up. 75C is toleerable but if it were to creep any higher I'd do something about it as mentioned in my above thread.

Edit: Taking your case off actually prevents air from being 'channeled' across the hot components and vented out of the case. An open case will just heat up the air around it and wont cool off unless you have a big fan blowing on it or something.