7870 Tahiti cooling

[Telecaster]

I have one of the VTX3D 7870s and whilst I like it's performance the stock cooling arrangement is crap.

Any ideas on the best way to improve it? the stock fan is simply terrible and massively loud at the speeds required to cool anything.

 

[Drangueos]

How is the airflow inside your case?
do you have any case fans?

 

[Telecaster]

Airflow is good, plenty of case fans. The heat is not a massive concern, system temps barely raise when GPU is under load, it's more that the heat causes the crappy fan to go into the "jet taking off" window of it's operation.

 

[jms198]

Its the boost voltage breaking everything. Maybe dialing it down to 949 will stop it applying the stupid extra boost voltage. I wish AMD would allow you to turn the damn thing off!

Run GPUz and have a gander.

I undervolt to 1050 mV (maybe 1070ish can't remember) at stock speeds and set a more gentle fan profile using trixx; Its pretty much silent now.

 

[sneakysnail]

What kind of Gpu temps to do you get? really with the stock fan it's always going to be noisy but you can always just go with a custom fan profile I have mine setup so it only spins at around 50% when going over 80c. 50% fan speed for me is the limit of whats bareable.

other option is as they say underclock it to reduce temps/fanspeed or go with an aftermarket cooler

 

[Kurisu Makise]

a mate had same problem with that card, with good cable management in a haf x he got 90c in games

so i put some pk3 on it and now its around 81c

 

[Telecaster]

Well I haven't had it as bad as 90c.

For me with the proximity of the PC anything over 40% GPU fan is just unbearable, it hits 40% fan at roughly 70c and whilst gaming it hits between 77-80c, so most of the time it's just too loud.

Anyway, I've removed the stock fan and shroud and bodged on a 120mm gentle typhoon so I'll see how that goes, it's running with no control at 100% full time and already it's virtually silent so I'll try some gaming and see how I get on.

Out of interest what aftermarket coolers are compatible with this chip/card?

 

[sneakysnail]

Arctic do great aftermarket coolers. If you really wanted something to keep the card cool and quiet there's always this
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cooling/34809-arctic-accelero-xtreme-7970-vga-cooler/

the twin turbo 2 model is probably more the one you'd be after though
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-060-AR&tool=3

 

[Telecaster]

Arctic do great aftermarket coolers. If you really wanted something to keep the card cool and quiet there's always this
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cooling/34809-arctic-accelero-xtreme-7970-vga-cooler/

the twin turbo 2 model is probably more the one you'd be after though
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-060-AR&tool=3

The heat sink on the second link looks like a strange fit, looks like it would sit way off to one side and quite high because the chip is in the middle of the card.

 

[sneakysnail]

The heat sink on the second link looks like a strange fit, looks like it would sit way off to one side and quite high because the chip is in the middle of the card.

it does sit a bit off to the side yes but seems to have impressive results.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/4mlp.jpg/
seen 29c at idle and 65c at full load with fans spinning only at 33% on a 7870 xt. Thinking I might have to grab one for my XT

 

[Telecaster]

Thanks, I might give one of those some consideration.

Tried some gaming and my bodged on Gentle Typhoon has not made much of a dent into the temps, I still see high 70s/low 80s but at least it's pretty quiet.