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Aftermarket 6950 Cooling

Hmm. Good question. I've tried 11.3 and 11.4 on Win 7. If memory serves me correctly, the cards do clock down when idle but I'll need to re-check that tonight.

For some weird reason, whenever I reboot, CCC tells me that the GPU fans are set to manual control and are running at 50%. I have explicitly set "auto" fan control in Afterburner so not sure what's going on there.
 
I would seriously consider water, I've just built a water-cooled setup and will be adding my graphics cards as soon as money allows :) check out the build by clicking my sig, it's so easy to do :)
 
Water would sort it but shouldnt have to do that just to get normal idle/loads temps.

75c idle and 95c load at 50% fan just isnt right.
 
So after a weekend of testing and mucking about, I've made some progress.

Airflow

Have tried blowing cool air over the GPU's, I did see a 10 to 15 degree drop in idle temps. I fitted a bunch of additional fans in the case (1x120mm intake (front), 1x140mm intake (base) and 2x140mm exhausts (1 on the side adjacent to the GPUs and 1 in the roof of the case).

This brought my idle temps down from ~75 degrees to ~65 degrees.

TIM

I bought some mx-4 compound to replace the factory fitted stuff. Have to say that the factory stuff was atrocious. Looks like it was applied with a trowel. Had fun removing every trace of the gunk (not) before applying the mx-4. Net effect was an additional reduction in idle to ~60 degrees.

Dual Monitors

What I did realise over the weekend was that as I'm using two monitors, the idle clock speeds are actually a hell of a lot higher than when using just a single monitor. I stupidly forgot to bring the numbers to work so I can't recount them here but in a nutshell, once a second monitor is active, the idle clock speeds shoot up - not to full load levels but much higher than single monitor idle. This I think accounts for at least some of the disparity in my idle temps compared with the much lower temps reported earlier in this thread.

So, thanks to the excellent help provided here, I've had some success but am still hitting 85+ degrees under load so there's probably room for some additional improvement.

Thanks everyone for your help so far. Very much appreciated :)
 
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Yep HD6950s jump to 450/1250 at dual monitor idle. Quite why this is needed beyond me as I used to run dual monitors on my HD4890 with a 240/250 clock speed, although video was a touch on the choppy side when playing HD content. This change in clock speed adds a good 40W to the power draw of the card and quite a few degrees in extra heat.

Since installing my 6950 I've started using Ultramon scripts to switch my display from Monitor to HDTV as I seldom need two screens running at once. 40 Watts is just ridiculous if you ask me and is way too much just to display 2D on another screen.
 
Very frustrating. I tend to use the second monitor constantly. I'll do some research to see if there's a reason for this and if it can be prevented.
 
I tried flashing my 4890 BIOS with lower values but this caused flickering so in the end used ATI Tray Tools to set profiles. Unfortunately ATT causes a BSOD every time I booted with it after installing the 6950.

It should be simple enough (and safe with the switch) to edit your card BIOS to replace the 450/1250 with a more sensible clock speed. You might get away with 250/150 just to display desktops but may need more if you run videos that are not registering as hardware accelerated. I haven't tried it yet as I don't actually need two displays at the same time as while one monitor is in front of me the other is directly behind me.

Let me know how you get on though and what settings and method you settled on.
 
tommybhoy said:
Don't think the AC Twin Turbo's would be up to the task imo, the AC Extreme is what you need.
Even if you only fitted 1 cooler onto the top gpu, then you would also see a huge difference in temps and noise, this is what I was doing until I got hold of another Extreme.

Just posted this last night about fitting AC extremes onto a 6950>70 xfire setup:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19041495&posted=1#post19041495
Click to expand...

Sorry but your wrong i have a Ac twin turbo on my flashed 6950 :p
 
skotish| said:
Sorry but your wrong i have a Ac twin turbo on my flashed 6950 :p
Click to expand...

I did say imo, for two reasons:

First being that I wouldn't take the chance myself as it won't cover the whole card, too expensive to replace 1 card never mind 2 if it cooks especially for my xfire setup:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=19090661#post19090661

The second reason for me is the extreme is quieter than the twin turbo as three slower turning fans are quieter than two faster fans and three fans cool better than two.

I used to have a twin turbo myself on a 4870 and tried it on my 5870 but the vrms were cooking even with good heatsinks, although this shouldn't cause as much a problem with the 6950 as the vrms run much cooler. I changed to an extreme which cooled the vrms better and was quieter. The Twin turbo could be heard on auto over my case fans at their lowest setting(my case fans have since been replaced and are now even quieter than when I was using the Twin turbo!).
The twin turbo had an annoying hum over my case fans which at the time were louder than what I use now. Both coolers were used in the same rig except for the gpus obviously.

The main thing is if it works and your happy then all's good;).
 
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Hi deanpm got a few things you can try, I have a 6950(70) and these are my afterburner settings. I also am running dual monitors so and have brought the idle clocks down a little, run fine for me :).

Profile 1 3d Clocks



Profile 2 2d Clocks


Bring the memory clock down helps bring the Core mhz down more at idle :confused:

then set this


and maybe take the time for a custom fan profile, here is mine :)


My idle temp is 60-62C but very quiet, game load temps around 75C. Hope this helps!
 
simbady said:
Hi deanpm got a few things you can try, I have a 6950(70) and these are my afterburner settings. I also am running dual monitors so and have brought the idle clocks down a little, run fine for me :).
Click to expand...
Thanks man. Will try this tonight and let you know how I get on.
 
skotish| said:
Sorry but your wrong i have a Ac twin turbo on my flashed 6950 :p
Click to expand...

I would like to see how you have done this as well! I have a Ac twin turbo in a dying HD4850 so I can fix this to my HD695(7)0 if it is possible. But have some second thoughts as for the vrm and ram cooling. So any help in how you did this will be much obliged.
 
I have the Zalman VF3000A for 5870 attached to my bog standard original release Sapphire 6970, i presume that would be fine on a reference 6950 as well ?

Previously used it on my 5870. Bear in mind it takes up at least 2 slots if not 3

Works fine, only adjustment i had to make was cut a very small lump @ 45 degrees out of the large heatsink that goes across the vrms at the back as theres now a capacitor in the way of the sticky out bit

Still runs a bit hotter than the 5870 which never topped 60 degrees but still < 65 on the lowest fan setting whilst running i.e bfbc2, pretty much inaudible.

<40 at idle
 
neil473 said:
I have the Zalman VF3000A for 5870 attached to my bog standard original release Sapphire 6970, i presume that would be fine on a reference 6950 as well ?

Previously used it on my 5870. Bear in mind it takes up at least 2 slots if not 3

Works fine, only adjustment i had to make was cut a very small lump @ 45 degrees out of the large heatsink that goes across the vrms at the back as theres now a capacitor in the way of the sticky out bit

Still runs a bit hotter than the 5870 which never topped 60 degrees but still < 65 on the lowest fan setting whilst running i.e bfbc2, pretty much inaudible.

<40 at idle
Click to expand...

What are you doing to cool VRM's and Ram?
 
Used the original heatsinks that came with the VF3000 ( just a bit of new thermal tape needed ) , they all pretty much fit fine, just the ram one needed a small hacksaw to take a small piece off.

Think there was just one small chip ended up not covered as they spaced out slightly longer on the 6970, so bought a small pack vrm sinks and hacked one in half to go over it.

The fans direct air straight over them as they did on the 5870, so no further mods needed .. well its not blown up yet :)
 
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