Gigabyte change the cooling solution on the Radeon R9 290 (X)

[LtMatt]

Gigabyte change the cooling solution on the Radeon R9 290 (X) - PROBLEM SOLVED

GIGABYTES OFFICIAL REPLY ON THIS MATTER IN THE QUOTE

Hi All
The problem that was raised only applied to the initial media review samples – NOT the cards that have been supplied to and sold by OcUK. All products available on market are not affected with this problem. This is an error in translation from Tom’s Hardware, and we are in the process of getting this changed.
However if you experience any issue with these cards, please contact GIGABYTE technical support under below link:
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/technical-support.aspx

We have gigabytes therefore questioned again today and the following, final responses received, so we now also allowed to publish:

"There is a problem on fan sink. The production sample is different from the sample provided by our vendor. The sink for early media samples are not optimized to meet the design requirement. We will improve it immediately and we stop the mass production today ..."

That means in plain language that the sent to the press early patterns do not match with what the contract manufacturer originally submitted for the radiator to the graphics card manufacturer Gigabyte for review. This is something we are already familiar with power supplies and their shrunken features, but now it has apparently caught even gigabytes in the coolers.

Source Via google translate - Toms3D German
Toms

 

[LtMatt]

Someone should direct this to Gibbo. I'm sure OcuK will work with Gigabyte to replace any affected cards.

 

[LtMatt]

Hi All
The problem that was raised only applied to the initial media review samples – NOT the cards that have been supplied to and sold by OcUK. All products available on market are not affected with this problem. This is an error in translation from Tom’s Hardware, and we are in the process of getting this changed.
However if you experience any issue with these cards, please contact GIGABYTE technical support under below link:
http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/technical-support.aspx

Hi there

Response I've just had from Gigabyte via email:-

Hi Andrew,

HQ have confirmed that the only cards that were affected is 30 pcs of production sample. NO cards that were shipped for resale were affected by this. Tom’s Hardware mis-translated some information, and we are in the process of getting them to change their statement as it is misleading to customers.

If you have specific customers who are having problems with the temperatures on the cards you have sold, please put them in touch with our tech guys so that they can work with them to resolve. Also, if you can get full details of temps they are seeing etc, I will get our guys to escalate immediately for them.

Good work guys. Thanks for clearing it up.

Come on now Matt, walk the plank of shame and edit your original post

People are too quick to cut and paste this stuff these days.

You lot could be reading my humble members market post rather than being here. Eve though the mods locked it

Will do. Was just trying to help people at the time.

EDIT

I've added Gigabytes reply to the OP and edited the post accordingly.

 

[LtMatt]

Can't you just set a manual fan profile like the rest of us? Or flash the old bios back.

 

[LtMatt]

That is precisely what I am trying to do at the moment LtMatt.
I just find that hitting the right balance between decent cooling performance and resulting noise is not easy

Furry muff.

This probably won't help you but this is what i use for my reference cards in crossfire and i get no throttling. This is running a 5% overclock from typical 290 stock clocks. I find temps sit around 90c generally playing BF4 online with vsync off. Max fan speed of 55% though it normally sits just under that.

 

[LtMatt]

Thanks LtMatt

What I find interesting in your Afterburner screen is that you have -50 core voltage. Do you think I could easily try to undervolt the card?

Its worth a try. It helps keeps temps lower which in turn means you can keep the fans lower.

Ok I think I have managed to find an acceptable custom fan profile, thanks to a slight undervolting of the card. Fan speed is set to never go above 50% and during my benchmarks/gaming sessions the max load temperature tops up around 80-85°C. And of course that is without experiencing any throttling.

Nice.