Well, I've successfully implemented Nvidia SLI in a reasonably quiet gaming computer setup using just all-aircooling. I had a guy tell me before that you can't SLI some Fermis on air and expect decent noise and heat levels and that I would need to use watercooling or my cards would self-immolate. Well, I'm here to say that he was full of shit. With careful choices of components, you can absolutely have an all-aircooled machine and not have it sound like a jet engine. This completes a build I started in late September of last year. Adding the second GTX 470 for SLI was the final step to completion.
Core i7-950 "Bloomfield" @4.01ghz
Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
6GB G.Skill "Ripjaws" series DDR3-1600
2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 SLI @760/1520/1850
card 1: eVGA GTX 470 SC with Thermalright Shaman
card 2: MSI GTX 470 Twin Frozr II
2x WD Raptors 74GB in RAID0 (boot drives)
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB in RAID0 (games drives)
Corsair CMPSU-950TX 950W PSU
Cooler Master HAF 932
CPU cooler: Noctua NH-D14
2x bottom fans: Noctua NF-P12
1x top fan: Noctua NF-S12
front and rear fans: included with case
And here's what I accomplished:
56C on the top card and 59C on the bottom card is pretty good for aircooling. :3
A special shout out goes to gaffer evil solrac v3.0, who mailed me the special extra-long SLI bridge connector I needed to make this build a reality! Thank you very much!!