ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC High Temps

[MG42Maniac]

Hi Guys,

I purchased the 290 off of the MM and it functions as expected but I find it getting too hot for my liking. This picture below was taken after playing Company of Heroes 2 for about 30 minutes:

The PC is in a room where the Air Conditioning is set to 20c. Idle temps are high 20s. The case is a Corsair 540 Air and there are 2 x 140mm intakes and 1 x 140mm exhaust. Please see picture below:

The temps seem high for a cooler that is supposed to be decent. Also, the noise is rather intrusive, seems louder than my XFX 290 DD. Note how the fan speed is never higher than 53% and it is still very audible. It's on the default fan profile.

Is it worth reapplying thermal paste or just accept it's going to be hot and noisy!?

 

[tommybhoy]

That's actually quite cool for a DCuII 290 so doubt changing the tim is going to net much benefit-if any.

You can flick the bios switch and the fan can run slower but temps will increase, cores ratedto run up to 90-95c before throttling iirc.

 

[ci_newman]

That is pretty warm, but as long as it isn't throttling you should be fine

I notice it's running overclocked though? Standard clock speed is 1000Mhz, you have it at 1050Mhz, what settings did you change to get that?

 

[Nexus18]

Those aren't too bad temps, if you can.... undervolt it, I have got my MSI 290 GE running at -31mV

 

[Scurburg]

Unfortunately the cooler on the DirectCU II card was never decent for the 290/x, its adequate at best and really only better than the inadequate stock cooler. ASUS just re-used the cooler from previous generation I believe.

Anyway your temps are actual not that bad considering. As other has said though, you maybe able to drop the temps a bit further by undervolting which seems like the best opinion at this point IMO, that or you may need to look for alternative cooling solutions.

 

[Gilbert89]

Undervolt + Change TIM and you should notice a significant temperature drop as it certainly helped with my 290X.

 

[fs123]

Read reviews of the Asus card and you'll find the temps are about right since it's not the best cooler for the 290 series. Sapphire Tri-x are the best.

 

[Relentless81]

Do you know what your case temps are like?

You could shave a few degrees if the exhaust is running at a higher RPM than the CPU cooler and equal to intakes, either that or put another exhaust fan at the top rear of the case

In my current build and previous build (540 Air) having a roof mounted rear exhaust helped loads in getting the build up of hot air out of the case resulting in lower component temps

 

[Aretak]

As others have noted, Asus' 290(X) was **** poor, as they just slapped their cooler designed for the much larger Kepler GK110 GPU on them. As a result, they run very hot compared to the other third party options.

 

[KompuKare]

Definetly try undervolting before replacing the TIM.

Your 3D load voltage is 1.242V is which almost the max for GCN. If you can get it down to 1.1V or lower you will not only run cooler but you'll save a lot of power too. Obviously this depends on where your chip is in the silicon lottery. You could use GpuZ to read your ASIC quality but I think you are as well off just to try it. Undervolting is pretty save: too low a voltage just causes a hang.

I have run Tahiti as low as 0.975V even at 1100MHz, although this was mining so possible not gaming stable. Hawaii should be similar.

But in your case, I would try going down by 0.05V at a time. Set it to 1.2V using MSI Afterburner or similar, run some stress program (Uniqune Valley worked for me) and see. If all's well at 1.2V try 1.15V etc. Repeat until you've found your lowest stable voltage and then maybe add an extra 0.025V.

Also, I see from your screenshot that your 2D clocks are 300/1259 which even if you are runnign multiple monitors seems a bit high for the memory. Also, your min voltage was 0.977V which again seems high.

 

[pestt]

I have crossfire MSI 290's and one regularly run's at high 80's on BF4, ultra. They are renowned for it apparently.

 

[MG42Maniac]

That is pretty warm, but as long as it isn't throttling you should be fine

I notice it's running overclocked though? Standard clock speed is 1000Mhz, you have it at 1050Mhz, what settings did you change to get that?

I just added a cheeky 50Mhz to see if the card kicked up a stink. It was fine, also I did not add extra juice.

Read reviews of the Asus card and you'll find the temps are about right since it's not the best cooler for the 290 series. Sapphire Tri-x are the best.

The thing is that if you read some reviews they really rate the cooler and other ones do not, it's a real mixed bag. Gibbo did a review on the 290x cooler and really rated it.

Do you know what your case temps are like?

You could shave a few degrees if the exhaust is running at a higher RPM than the CPU cooler and equal to intakes, either that or put another exhaust fan at the top rear of the case

In my current build and previous build (540 Air) having a roof mounted rear exhaust helped loads in getting the build up of hot air out of the case resulting in lower component temps

I think case temps are okay, the other components are not getting too hot. The only temps that are warmer than I would like are the Evo SSDs, probably because they sit under the 290.

Those aren't too bad temps, if you can.... undervolt it, I have got my MSI 290 GE running at -31mV

Undervolt + Change TIM and you should notice a significant temperature drop as it certainly helped with my 290X.

Definetly try undervolting before replacing the TIM.

Your 3D load voltage is 1.242V is which almost the max for GCN. If you can get it down to 1.1V or lower you will not only run cooler but you'll save a lot of power too. Obviously this depends on where your chip is in the silicon lottery. You could use GpuZ to read your ASIC quality but I think you are as well off just to try it. Undervolting is pretty save: too low a voltage just causes a hang.

I have run Tahiti as low as 0.975V even at 1100MHz, although this was mining so possible not gaming stable. Hawaii should be similar.

But in your case, I would try going down by 0.05V at a time. Set it to 1.2V using MSI Afterburner or similar, run some stress program (Uniqune Valley worked for me) and see. If all's well at 1.2V try 1.15V etc. Repeat until you've found your lowest stable voltage and then maybe add an extra 0.025V.

Also, I see from your screenshot that your 2D clocks are 300/1259 which even if you are runnign multiple monitors seems a bit high for the memory. Also, your min voltage was 0.977V which again seems high.

How much difference will under volting make to the Temps? Are we talking a couple of degrees or a decent saving? I am happy to give it a go but never tried it before, I've only added volts

 

[D1craig]

you will probably find mate that most poeple are in bed with Asus. they are probably the most used brand, everyone loves them just like they love nvidia and apple. the reviews are slightly tainted by brand bias i would have thought.

 

[KompuKare]

How much difference will under volting make to the Temps? Are we talking a couple of degrees or a decent saving? I am happy to give it a go but never tried it before, I've only added volts

Well, I was more concerned with power usage. But even on Tahiti it's possible go come down from 250W to 200W or so. Roughly, I'd say that 10-15°C or so but it does depent on the cooler. Might just mean a quieter fan.
Also, undervolting is very dependent on the silicon lottery. There is a reason that AMD and the OEMs put such a high default as even the worst chip out of the lottery can cope with that. I think the maths is something like the square: so 1.25v ^2 = 1.5625 vs 1.0v ^2 = 1 so in theory that's 0.66% of the energy usage? Although that sounds too good...
Still the reviews do show some of that. If you look at Techpowerup or similar where W1zzard lists the voltages, the ones at 1.25V vs one at 1.15V etc. do show a big power difference. And W1zzard measures the power going into the card so if your PSU is 85% efficient that's even more at the wall.
Anyway, undervolting is pretty save it just takes a bit of time to find out how low you can go. And for peace of mind once you've found that, I would add another 0.05v back.

 

[ViRuS2k]

Those cards and like using the worse coolers ever, when i had a card ages ago with direct CU on it used up 3 slots and was terrible.
i would use a higher fan speed curve and keep it under 80c and dont overclock those cards either cause the fan on them sucks.

note to self : also what i hated about those coolers was the fact they blow all that hot air over all your internal components and heat up the case like no other.

 

[Nexus18]

How much difference will under volting make to the Temps? Are we talking a couple of degrees or a decent saving? I am happy to give it a go but never tried it before, I've only added volts

Back when I first changed the voltage, iirc before UV, I was hitting 80+ on average and fan speed was about 70/80%

After undervolting it, average temps dropped to 66-70 and fan speed didn't go above 50%

With the warmer weather and more demanding games i.e. division, my temps and fan speed are a bit higher currently, about 75 and fan speed of 55-60% iirc

 

[MG42Maniac]

I gave this a go last night with my XFX 290 DD. Before the temps were 94c on the core and 101c on the VRAM. I dropped 25mv, forced the fan to run at a constant 60% and I was getting 85c on the core and 89c on the VRAM. At 60% fan speed it's not actually that loud and I cannot hear it over the sound of games. The PC is my HTPC as well which is in a GD07 so the airflow is nowhere near as good as the Corsair 540. I know the XFX cooler got bad press but I actually prefer it to the ASUS DCUII.