SLI and power management

Hi. I have 2 470 GTX in SLI. I was thinking that when I don't play games (am browsing the net and stuff), or when I play games that don't need both cards to max, I can just disable the SLI mode. It will probably save me some electricity (=money) and make the life expectancy of the card longer (at least for the second one), also my system will be less hot. Is that the right way to go? Or will switching SLI on and off each time I want to play a game will actually be bad for the card and the system. Thanks!

It wouldn't be bad, but you not save anything in terms of electricity costs/life of your ahrdware.

When you disable SLI you are telling the driver not to use the other card for rendering, but that doesn't turn off your second card. It will idle normaly, just as if you had left SLI enabled.

Modern GPU's like yours will automatically scale in terms of heat, power draw and peformance on their own. No need to worry about it.

The only way you would save money is if you gamed without SLI turning on. You'd have 1 card being maxed, while the other continues to idle... but of course that would defeat the purpose of your setup.