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R9 290 very hot at idle

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21 Sep 2012
Posts
213
Location
West Yorkshire
Hey guys I just noticed this morning that my 290 reached 96 degrees at 0% load, all I was doing is watching some youtube videos at 1080p so nothing very taxing. Do any of you know how I can help prevent this? Maybe downclocking the card when i'm not using any gpu intensive programs? I always put the fan speed to 55 when gaming anyway and that keeps the card cool. The case I use is the Zalman Z9 Plus, I have 5 case fans so I would have thought they would do a decent job at keeping everything cool. Any replies appreciated.
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Has this issue only just started to happen and temp has been normal before?

That doesn't look normal for idle temp...but your fan is not increasing in speed when temp is hitting that high doesn't look right neither.

May be try another program to see if the report temp is the same first?

Next thing you could check is to make sure the 4 screws on the metal bracket on the back of the PCB is tighten...as it might be the case of the heatsink not properly attached to the GPU.

There's also may be the possibility of the GPU usage is actually at 100% is not being shown properly on AB (something's not right about the graph is showing the GPU usage doesn't start at the same time as the temp and fanspeed in the log), that you may have been fallen victim to the bitcoin virus...
 
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Okay what program do you recommend?

The card has always run kind of hot but this is the first time its hit anything near 90+degrees while idle, I bumped the fans up to cool it down and then let it go back to auto and the fan speed keeps decreasing while the heat is increasing, I think afterburner is messing around with me hahah
 
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Okay what program do you recommend?

The card has always run kind of hot but this is the first time its hit anything near 90+degrees while idle, I bumped the fans up to cool it down and then let it go back to auto and the fan speed keeps decreasing while the heat is increasing, I think afterburner is messing around with me hahah
CPUID HW Monitor should be able to show GPU temp as well.

Also, what driver are you using? It might worth trying a differenct driver.
 
I had the same issue on my 290, uninstalled MSI Afterburner, issue solved... although i used the workaround to get 13.11 9.4 beta drivers working with CCC control.

Had to uninstall 9.4 in Safemode with no network plugged in, install 9.2, reboot then install 9.4 back over the top, i now have 9.4 with CCC Panel. Im running mine on stock right now until i put some aftermarket cooling on it anyhow.
 
I had the same issue on my 290, uninstalled MSI Afterburner, issue solved... although i used the workaround to get 13.11 9.4 beta drivers working with CCC control.

Had to uninstall 9.4 in Safemode with no network plugged in, install 9.2, reboot then install 9.4 back over the top, i now have 9.4 with CCC Panel. Im running mine on stock right now until i put some aftermarket cooling on it anyhow.

Okay i'll try doing that when I get back home
 
Try closing down your browser and see if the temps normalize. Some browser use gpu acceleration for video playback etc
 
Mine was definitely a conflict with MSI Afterburner, i had an old copy of Sapphire Trixx installed though also that i was using with my 7870, so that also could have been an issue, i removed all of them anyhow and just use CCC for now.
 
Mine was definitely a conflict with MSI Afterburner, i had an old copy of Sapphire Trixx installed though also that i was using with my 7870, so that also could have been an issue, i removed all of them anyhow and just use CCC for now.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you have 9.4 with CCC, do you mean Catalyst Control Center? I'm on 9.4 and I have that too, but most of the time when I click it it doesn't show up :S
 
There was a thread similar to this a while back.

Problem is youtube causing your card to kick into 3d mode

Close your browser and see if the temp drops. If it does then its caused by this, you may be able to prevent it by disabling hardware acceleration in your browser settings.
 
There was a thread similar to this a while back.

Problem is youtube causing your card to kick into 3d mode

Close your browser and see if the temp drops. If it does then its caused by this, you may be able to prevent it by disabling hardware acceleration in your browser settings.
Yea but even with youtube cause the card to go into 3D mode, it still doesn't explain why it would reach 94C...
 
Yeah I was going to say the same thing, plus that doesn't explain why even when my card is heating up the fans won't go higher than around 30%, sometimes they just keep on going down until I force them back up again

I do keep getting an error message on afterburner though, i'll screen shot

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It's probably something along the lines of Afterburner taking control of the fan, and preventing it from spinning up. It's possible the card got a weird bios that has set fan control incorrectly. Ultimately it seems like the fan control isn't working right and isn't spinning up to keep temps down at all.

Are the 290x's fan control is now determined by driver rather than by specific bios numbers, though you'd think they would have a fall back bios control feature. Either way I'd install the latest AMD drivers, remove afterburner completely, save no settings, then reinstall the latest beta, monitor temps, if still crazy try setting a custom fan profile in afterburner, see if it kicks in at idle and under load to keep temps semi sane?
 
It's probably something along the lines of Afterburner taking control of the fan, and preventing it from spinning up. It's possible the card got a weird bios that has set fan control incorrectly. Ultimately it seems like the fan control isn't working right and isn't spinning up to keep temps down at all.

Are the 290x's fan control is now determined by driver rather than by specific bios numbers, though you'd think they would have a fall back bios control feature. Either way I'd install the latest AMD drivers, remove afterburner completely, save no settings, then reinstall the latest beta, monitor temps, if still crazy try setting a custom fan profile in afterburner, see if it kicks in at idle and under load to keep temps semi sane?

I've done that now and it keeps asking me to reboot, i've rebooted twice and it still asks me :confused:
 
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