Card cooling options

Scythe · 12 Apr 2012 at 23:53

Hi,

My card is getting pretty noisy and I want to cool it a bit. I was just playing BF3, looked on AMD overdrive and the card was hitting 97C. This is with a stock cooler, and is causing my case temps to jump up.

Is there any decent cooling options available? The standard cooler is awful - it's a VTX 6870 1GB.

Jarrod · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:04

It shouldn't be getting that hot anyway... maybe clean the cooler it already has or re-apply some thermal paste. That's what I'd do anyway buddy

.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:06

Jarrod said:
It shouldn't be getting that hot anyway... maybe clean the cooler it already has or re-apply some thermal paste. That's what I'd do anyway buddy .

I think it's always been a bit on the toasty side anyway but I'll give it a clean out and give it a go.

Never looked into aftermarket coolers but I think it's a time to, I looked at the Gelid Icy Vision but I don't have any spare fan ports on my motherboard though

shadow_boxer · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:12

The gelid is a great cooler. Bit of a pain to fit but I've been massively impressed by it. My overclocked GTX470 happy idles at around 30C and during BF3 rarely tops 70C. Remember though, its not a rear exhausting cooler so all the heat is dumped in the case. You won't need a spare fan header on your motherboard, the fans are plugged into your video cards fan header socket.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:19

shadow_boxer said:
The gelid is a great cooler. Bit of a pain to fit but I've been massively impressed by it. My overclocked GTX470 happy idles at around 30C and during BF3 rarely tops 70C. Remember though, its not a rear exhausting cooler so all the heat is dumped in the case. You won't need a spare fan header on your motherboard, the fans are plugged into your video cards fan header socket.

This cooler pretty much dumps all the heat the in the case anyway. My PSU points out of the case, I have a front intake, a rear intake which is for my radiator for my CPU cooler, and a top exhaust, so plenty of airflow inside the case.

Is the Gelid noisy? It's the noise and lack of cooling that's annoying me about this cooler, it sounds like a jet just watching a youtube video.

drunkenmaster · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:22

OCUK 1gb 6970 doesn't help much as they sell as their own brand whatever they can get cheapest, IE the current OCUK 6850 is actually an Asus 6850, but could just as easily be an MSI, reference, sapphire, whatever.

In terms of temps, something is wrong, DO NOT stick an after market cooler on a card that you should RMA. It's really that simple, put on a new heatsink, if its dying and has a problem with heat/overvolting some error, you might find it hard to replace if it actually finally dies. Get a new one that is basically working fine, almost no card in as sold state(stock clocks/volts/cooler) should run at 97C, a 6850 certainly shouldn't as its relatively low power and pretty easy to cool. That suggests either a real problem, card is faulty and maybe overvolting to throw out that kind of heat, or the heatsink isn't making contact with the core properly/bad thermal paste, whatever.

That is as you've said its been toasty since you got it, if "toasty when I got it" means 70C when I got it and its gone up almost 30C, could be faulty, could be dust clogging up the heatsink. Either way generally before doing anything the first thing to do with any cooling issues is give the heatsink a good blast with compressed air.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:28

drunkenmaster said:
OCUK 1gb 6970 doesn't help much as they sell as their own brand whatever they can get cheapest, IE the current OCUK 6850 is actually an Asus 6850, but could just as easily be an MSI, reference, sapphire, whatever.

In terms of temps, something is wrong, DO NOT stick an after market cooler on a card that you should RMA. It's really that simple, put on a new heatsink, if its dying and has a problem with heat/overvolting some error, you might find it hard to replace if it actually finally dies. Get a new one that is basically working fine, almost no card in as sold state(stock clocks/volts/cooler) should run at 97C, a 6850 certainly shouldn't as its relatively low power and pretty easy to cool. That suggests either a real problem, card is faulty and maybe overvolting to throw out that kind of heat, or the heatsink isn't making contact with the core properly/bad thermal paste, whatever.

That is as you've said its been toasty since you got it, if "toasty when I got it" means 70C when I got it and its gone up almost 30C, could be faulty, could be dust clogging up the heatsink. Either way generally before doing anything the first thing to do with any cooling issues is give the heatsink a good blast with compressed air.

Will give it a go. For reference, it's a VTX card, how are they usually?

It's a bit annoying considering the rest of my system runs really quiet and cool, the graphics card just lets it down.

I'll get some screenshots now for someone a bit more experienced to look at. Graphics cards are my weak spot.

shadow_boxer · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:47

No the Gelid is very very quiet. I run a custom fan profile through msi afterburner, sits at 40% when idling the ramps upto about 70% (1:1 ratio with temp) and even at full load when gaming it can't be heard over the case fans or cpu fans (and that's in a fractal design r3). As above though it'd be worth reseating the cooler first.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 00:54

Ok something is very wrong. Just noticed some choppy-ness in playing BF3, alt-tabbed to CCC to check temps and it was very juddery, temp was 103C. I'm guessing it was getting throttled?

Just cleaned out the card, temps in BF3 are down to 90C now, Tolerable?

gurusan · 13 Apr 2012 at 02:13

tolerable but not ideal. Sounds like the HSF may not be sitting correctly on the GPU.

arc@css · 13 Apr 2012 at 02:32

As above, it's tolerable but not desirable, so something's not right. I'd say the temp (in respect of the picture shown above) for idle should be about the maximum for when watching a video, e.g. youtube - but without the high fan speed.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 10:20

I've set a custom fan profile to lower the fan speeds. Idle is about 45C at the minute, watching a youtube vid is 60C.

I will reseat the cooler tonight if I find my tube of arctic silver

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 18:57

Temperatures are back to 103C

looks like the cooler is faulty.

Cleeecooo · 13 Apr 2012 at 19:08

Scythe said:
Temperatures are back to 103C looks like the cooler is faulty.

Just RMA it before voiding your warranty

Tonester0011 · 13 Apr 2012 at 19:13

Sheesh...i needed something like that during the winter lol.
Did you reseat the cooler? Surprised it hasn't shut itself down (no idea how hot it needs to get to shutdown tbh)

V F · 13 Apr 2012 at 19:55

Scythe said:
For reference, it's a VTX card, how are they usually?

Pretty good. My VTX 5870 in idle is usually 27 - 29c. An extra 5 - 7c for video and it's lucky it even hits 55c when gaming. Even the fan rarely kicks up, 20% when idle. I think the most I've seen it when gaming was 30 - 35%. I wish the XFX was as good as the VTX. It idles 35 - 39c at 30% fan speed. 40 - 43c when watching video and anything from 55 to 75c dependent on the action in BF3 with 50% fan speed.

It seems all the open fins below the fan on the VTX really helps compared to the solid aluminium base of the XFX that diverses the air to the side fins of the fan.

Then upon more looking, I keep getting lost on all the variant coolers. Some never seem to be the same design.

Thats a bit similar just with two fans.

Scythe · 13 Apr 2012 at 20:08

V F said:
Pretty good. My VTX 5870 in idle is usually 27 - 29c. An extra 5 - 7c for video and it's lucky it even hits 55c when gaming. Even the fan rarely kicks up, 20% when idle. I think the most I've seen it when gaming was 30 - 35%. I wish the XFX was as good as the VTX. It idles 35 - 39c at 30% fan speed. 40 - 43c when watching video and anything from 55 to 75c dependent on the action in BF3 with 50% fan speed.

It seems all the open fins below the fan on the VTX really helps compared to the solid aluminium base of the XFX that diverses the air to the side fins of the fan.

Then upon more looking, I keep getting lost on all the variant coolers. Some never seem to be the same design.

Thats a bit similar just with two fans.

Yes that's the one, but with a single fan. Mine must have a bad cooler then, it's a shame reseating the cooler will void the warranty :mad:

V F · 13 Apr 2012 at 20:26

After looking at so many models, I don't get why they don't stick to one that really works. Everytime a new card comes out they change the layout. Then the lower models get their own look. You never seem to get the same design for each card. It's like they change it for the sake of it.

Cleeecooo · 13 Apr 2012 at 20:30

Scythe said:
Yes that's the one, but with a single fan. Mine must have a bad cooler then, it's a shame reseating the cooler will void the warranty

Well you can call OcUK as they said to me they'll accept the RMA even if the cooler has been taken off as long as there is no physical damae whatsoever

Obviosly, double scheck this with them first