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Anyone with NZXT G10 and 290 crossfire?

Soldato
Joined
8 Nov 2006
Posts
9,237
Having this odd problem currently.

I have two powercolor PCS+ 290's, and decided to put off building a custom loop for a while, but wanted to noise down a bit, so figured I'd get a G10 and a Corsair H110.

Now, card A used to be on top, as it ran a bit cooler than card B. So I figured it would be better slapping the G10 on card B, and move it to the top.

Temps are absolutely fine, both on GPU and on VRM's (probably due to the PCS+ having sinks installed on the VRM's).

The problem: if I adjust voltage up or push the clocks up, and not even very much, I start getting black screens. This is only with Card B on top. If I swap them around, I don't have issues. But having the G10 on the bottom is pointless.

Out of curiosity, I put the stock cooler back on card B, and put it on top, and it was fine. I could up volts and clocks.

Put the G10 back on and back to black screens when ever I try upping anything.

Temps are absolutely fine. Though of course, I have no way of measuring temps on RAM, but I even tried clocking that down with no luck, and struggle to think that would be the cause.

Part of me is thinking (and I know how bizarre this will be) that it doesn't like not having a fan attached to the card. I will find a way to test this theory shortly.

I don't want to remove the cooler from card A and stick the G10 on that just yet. Leaving that test as last resort as don't like removing things unnecessarily...

But anyone got any ideas? Or better yet, experience of this kind of setup?
 
And stranger still. With the cards still as they were, I simply plugged the displayport cable into the bottom card, and running fine at 1185 core, +100mv, 1500 memory.

Really bizarre. I would just leave things as is, but with displayport in bottom gpu I don't get display for bios...
 
Ok, in my ongoing quest to figure this out a bit more, it appears that when I try to run things OCed, or with volts upped, everything is still "running as normal" in the background.

What I mean by that is, if I am running Unigine Valley, it's still rendering. Once I hit ALT+F4, I am back on my desktop, and I can see the GPU usage in Afterburner, temps go up, etc, etc.

And it does intermittently display an image on one/some of the three screens.

Could this be a problem with the displayport output? It's absolutely fine though if am not putting it under load. Doesn't even matter if I leave all stock clocks and just up the voltage a bit, it does the same thing.

I can't even test if this card does it as a single card due to powerplay bugs in the drivers.

May end up having no choice but to move the G10 to the other card, but I don't like ignoring problems like this. If I know there's a fault, I'd like to decide what to do about it, or if there is a solution, I'd like to figure it out.
 
There is with a single card. At least, I am sure I had 14.4 installed when I tried it single.

I have tried this with all various though, from 13.12 up.

Won't be able to do much more during the day today, but at least hoping someone might come up with suggestions.

Maybe just going to get an NZXT X60 + G10 and stick it on the other card on top so this one can go back on bottom...
 
There is with a single card. At least, I am sure I had 14.4 installed when I tried it single.

I have tried this with all various though, from 13.12 up.

Won't be able to do much more during the day today, but at least hoping someone might come up with suggestions.

Maybe just going to get an NZXT X60 + G10 and stick it on the other card on top so this one can go back on bottom...

How did you get it to throttle on 14.4? Tell me so i can try to recreate it and if so ill report it. I've tested some large overclocks on a couple of games, single card on 14.4 and no throttling so far.
 
I'll try again later. maybe I was on a different driver - I've been trying so many things, I may have gotten them mixed up.

Oh, and I discovered, it does this at stock clocks/volts too, just not as bad. Just under load. Desktop is fine.

I also made another change to ssytem on Saturday, which was to install a Superflower 1200W PSU. Though I struggle to see how that would effect this in this particular way.
 
Sigh.... now what?

I wanted to be sure that the card did not exhibit these issues when it had the standard cooler on, and sure enough, it does not. Even as the primary card. This makes little to no sense to me, but so be it.

But.... seems I know have an issue with the fans on that cards cooler. Fans are spinning, but are staying at 1000 RPM, no matter what. Other cards fan spin up or down as I set fan speed, but the problem card just won't budge.

Getting little tired of this now.
 
It sounds to me as if the problem is with your fitting of the NZXT to the card. If it works fine with the stock cooler as you say then there is nothing wrong with the card. Perhaps there is some sort of short, or a problem like that when you apply the NZXT card to the cooler.
 
Interesting.

Am pretty sure nothing on the gpu side of the card was making contact anywhere that could have caused that... however, you've made me question something to do with back plate and how I mounted things.

Now I don't know whether to investigate that line of thought, or try and figure out why the hell the fans on the stock cooler are no longer spinning up.
 
Interesting.

Am pretty sure nothing on the gpu side of the card was making contact anywhere that could have caused that... however, you've made me question something to do with back plate and how I mounted things.

Now I don't know whether to investigate that line of thought, or try and figure out why the hell the fans on the stock cooler are no longer spinning up.

I've had a bit of experience with these coolers and AMD cards. Did the cooler come with any insulation tape to stop shorts? What about plastic or rubber grommets/spacers? It sounds as though something is missing or not setup correctly.
 
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Robert make sure you keep an eye on your cpu temps while using Intel Burn Test using core temp or such. If you see temps at 90c or over stop the test otherwise your cpu may start to throttle.
 
Well, think I figured out why fan is a problem.... looks like I must have knocked a tiny (and I mean TINY - grain of sand size) off. Surprised I even noticed it. It's located right in the fan connector area, so pretty sure that's what the prob with fan is.

Not sure if I can even fix that.

And I still had no luck with the G10. I have looked for any means by which it could be shorting somewhere and seen nothing. Have tried different pressures for fastening down the cooler, but no luck. HAve one more thing to try, but not sure I have time for it now.

Looks like I may have turned the card into a paperweight :(
 
It's looking like the problem with the G10 is the amount of pressure.

Loosened up enough so that it at least keeps the GPU under 90C, I don't get the blank screen issue even when OCed

Have been slowly fastening the cooler more and reached a point just now, where it was in low 60's after not very long, and the blank screen started happening.

So I can't apply enough pressure to cool as well as it should.

If going custom water is going to be more painful than this, I think I'm out.
 
I give up with this thing.

Have ordered a hot air solder thing and some tweezers and will try and sort out that resistor - hopefully that will work.

But this card HATES having this G10 on and I am tired of trying to figure it out. And I am not even sticking it on the other card to see if I get the same results. At least the other card it still fine (i..e cooler hasn't been removed and I haven't knocked any bits off)

The H110 can just go on to my CPU. At least that will make things look a bit neater.

Now I just don't know if I am going to have exactly the same problems if I went custom water with these cards, so it has really put me off that idea.

Of course.... I have not stuck my previous PSU on to make sure it's not this Superflower that's the root of all my problems. Guess I better do that at least. Not that that would make any sense to me. Sigh.
 
Maybe you should use a shim? Sounds like when you are tightening its touching other bits - Im sure some AMD cards you are meant to use a shim on the GPU to raise it a bit.
 
Maybe you should use a shim? Sounds like when you are tightening its touching other bits - Im sure some AMD cards you are meant to use a shim on the GPU to raise it a bit.

Don't think it need a shim. It will make good contact, and can keep the GPU around 50C when oced and overvolted.

I do think the 79XX series needed a shim though.

It just for some reason keeps cutting out the display when it is primary card with G10 on. Everything keeps running in background, but display keeps going blank.

I have used rubber washers and insulation tape over and around anything that could possibly cause a short, no matter how unlikely, but still the same thing.

If it's set up as second card with the G10 cooled card running secondary, all is good. It's just absolutely pointless having it in that config.
 
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