What were your temps under load conditions?

Put them on water and you will be fine 

Just Like my previous EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified Kingpins and Also the upcoming EVGA GTX 980 Classifieds, They also use an ACX type cooling arrangement, So When doing 3-Way or 4-Way SLI, You have to use water cooling if you're going to maintain low temps.
 
I had my Four KPE's running in 4-Way SLI fitted with EK-FC780 Classy water blocks and used My Chilled Water Cooling System to keep the Cards at 20C to 30C even under Extreme Overclocking/Benching conditions.
 
I plan on using the same Water Cooling setup when I receive my four GTX 980 ACX 2.0 Cards so they can run at their fastest OC's without coming anywhere near their Maximum Thermal Limits.

BruteSangheili
I have to say that I'm a little surprised that EVGA doesn't offer a custom blower cooling solution as well the ACX (for their more enthusiast models that is). Especially considering that EVGA is an enthusiast brand and therefore customers are likely to run SLI configurations.

Same here. Maybe they're just concentrated on those running on water?

I'll have a block for sale in about a week. :)

All I can say is WOW!! But as stated above put them on water. Here is a pic of an old build with a dual loop set up.

dustinr26

koshelkov
Hi everyone, I finally received my cards today. They look awesome and performance is bad apps but, they are super hot and loud under stress. Im really thinking to return them and get reference cooler. I have Cosmos 2 case packed with Fans and it's not really helping. I smell burning plastic when cards under stress, hardware itself extremely hot. So, I dont recomend ACX 2.0 for SLI, my bottom card much cooler than first two that are closed by other cards. 
 
 
 

 
So you returned the ACX 2.0 and the Reference are giving issue per your other thread. I currently have Tri Sli 680s FTW cards and they never break over 60 degrees full load on just regular air cooling. I am currently waiting to upgrade to the 980FTW probably trisli but now after reading this thread maybe I will do the SC blower style cards when they come back in stock. May I ask did you just try running sli with 2 cards and taking out middle card to see if how temps were on full load? It is interesting how OP stated they there higher end cards are ACX 2.0 now and so many people sli, tri, and quad.

If you give them some air, they're doing well, with 2SLI you probobly will be fine. With 3 SLI they just extremely loud, fan goes up to 90%+ and temps at around 90s too. With space between them temps are pretty good:
 

You start noticing fan noise at around 50% fan speed.