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4870X2 Heat...!

Gashman

Gashman

Gashman

Soldato
Joined
28 Mar 2006
Posts
4,379
Location
Jarrow, Tyne And Wear
right i need a solution to this problem, these cards throw out an insane amount of heat. crysis makes the temperatures go insane, running at a constant 45% fan speed (which is pretty audible considering the rest of my system is very quiet) seems unable to keep up and during the game i get annoying bursts of 100% fan speed, which is really really really loud..! barring an arctic cooling one (can't remember their names) since they are almost impossible to get hold of, is there anything else that can cool these cards? was toying with using two zalman VF-900 coolers, they should fit but i don't think they'll be upto it, not to mention the VRM temperatures..! my thoughts are either a) find a way to shut the stock cooler up, don't get me wrong its very very good at what it does but its far too noisy b) use two single GPU coolers like VF-900 or thermalright V2 with some decent CFM fans or c) find an arctic cooler...does the 5890 one fit does anyone know? :eek:
 
was in a similar position to you not long ago.. did stumble across some forums where people would attached a fan to a funnel and then onto fan of the card itself (something like a 120mm fan to 80mm fan adaptor thingy).

also, a couple of fans blowing directly onto the car itself (one on top and one on the back metal plate).
 
why the hell do they get so hot..? know how many W each 4870 core throws out..? personally think two V2s with decent fans, with original heatsink for VRM/RAM could do the trick but im not sure if the V2s are tall enough to clear those black 'columns' on the heatsink or not. still seem like very fast cards, also pretty effective kettles as far as i can imagine too! :D
 
Home-made crazy custom cooling is always a bit of fun, I had a mate who used bluetac instead of thermal paste!!
 
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I got rid of mine for a 6950 and flahed it to 6970. Not a massive gain in performance but much cooler and quieter, idles at 42 as opposed to 72 and you get the extar features such as dx11.

Also most games seem a lot smoother and as it's a single GPU card you don't need to worry about what games will need xfire application profiles. A lot of games don't take advantage of the 2nd 1GB of memory on the 4870x2 anyway.

Not as cheap as cooling your current one though! :)
 
Be careful with the screws, but remove the cowling and heatsinks and reapply the paste. Be careful with the thermal pads on the vrms etc.

Crysis does make the cards run hot and i found noise too much as well. Cleaning the heatsinks of dust and new paste should help a lot though.

You could always sell it and get a similar performing single card... 5850 for example.

Auto profile sucks on the fan, use afterburner to make a custom profile after cleaning heatsink.
 
Scougar said:
Be careful with the screws, but remove the cowling and heatsinks and reapply the paste. Be careful with the thermal pads on the vrms etc.

Crysis does make the cards run hot and i found noise too much as well. Cleaning the heatsinks of dust and new paste should help a lot though.

You could always sell it and get a similar performing single card... 5850 for example.

Auto profile sucks on the fan, use afterburner to make a custom profile after cleaning heatsink.
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got it to replace a 8800GTS G92, was only around half the price of a HD 5850 and offered similar performance so was a no brainer at the time. :p

also i reapplied paste, etc. not too long ago, there was almost no dust but still it runs really hot. could drivers be causing this at all, since ATI drivers are flakey at the best of times..?
 
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Did you put the x brackets on the back properly? I found that made a massive difference, as I was previously not using them, and it dropped 30 degrees off the temps! Even in reviews they reported 90C when running Crysis.

Oh, and use 10.4a (aka 10.4 hotfix) drivers :-)
 
Scougar said:
Did you put the x brackets on the back properly? I found that made a massive difference, as I was previously not using them, and it dropped 30 degrees off the temps! Even in reviews they reported 90C when running Crysis.

Oh, and use 10.4a (aka 10.4 hotfix) drivers :-)
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yeah the cooler was reassembled the way it originally was, the stock cooler is pretty good at cooling the thing, the only problem personally is the noise, since my case fans are enermax fans an even at max speeds they are only something like 19Db, so almost silent, the leaf blower cooler on the X2 sorta ruins that! :D on another note, friend of mine e-mailed me saying he has a spare 'swiftech caldera heatsink' for the 4870X2, he says i can have it since his X2 died a long while ago and hes back with single GPU cards. think one of them plus two thermalright V2s would be viable? know somewhere thats got V2s on clearance, plus i hear they are decent coolers, four heatpipe all copper with at least ~80 fins. :)
 
You could always water cool it. That's how I'm cooling mine. Idles at about 38C and 34C. Running Heaven a couple of times (once to buffer things so as not to get a low min fps and then a benchmark run) didn't get it over 50C. Also there's practically no noise coming from the card. Well, not that I can tell, but the case and radiator fans currently drown out a lot...:)
 
pretty sure, by analysing pictures and dimensions that two V2 side by side should JUST squeeze onto the X2, if not the only part that could possible clash would be the very edge of the fins, which could be modded to fit. think of any high CFM fans with low noise, like ~30Db?
 
If it wasn't for headphones / earphones when I am in 3d mode then I would have had to have got an alternative cooler long ago! :D

I don't find mine idles hot, never has, where as some people find theirs hits well into the 80's.
 
maximusmi2 said:
A lot of games don't take advantage of the 2nd 1GB of memory on the 4870x2 anyway.
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I thought the 2GB was split so each GPU got 1GB and so it's only effectively a 1GB card because of the whole crossfire thing?

Gashman said:
pretty sure, by analysing pictures and dimensions that two V2 side by side should JUST squeeze onto the X2, if not the only part that could possible clash would be the very edge of the fins, which could be modded to fit. think of any high CFM fans with low noise, like ~30Db?
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If they're blowing on a heatsink you'll want fans with decent static pressure as well as CFM wont you? Or is that just for radiators (seems logical it would apply to heatsinks too)?
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
I thought the 2GB was split so each GPU got 1GB and so it's only effectively a 1GB card because of the whole crossfire thing?
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Yep, that's right, you only get 1gb of memory usage at any one time. It's the other things like shaders, rops, texture units etc that are doubled, which then give added frames.
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
I thought the 2GB was split so each GPU got 1GB and so it's only effectively a 1GB card because of the whole crossfire thing?



If they're blowing on a heatsink you'll want fans with decent static pressure as well as CFM wont you? Or is that just for radiators (seems logical it would apply to heatsinks too)?
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yeah, would need decent pressure, is there such a thing as high output, low noise fan?
 
arc@css said:
If it wasn't for headphones / earphones when I am in 3d mode then I would have had to have got an alternative cooler long ago! :D

I don't find mine idles hot, never has, where as some people find theirs hits well into the 80's.
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mine used to idle really hot, like 80*C and for some reason ATI thought its a great idea to leave the card baking at that temperature, but i manually changed fan speed ages ago in CCC, run at pretty much 30% when its doing nothing and 45% doing stuff (anything higher and it starts get a lot loud!)
 
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