7 replies to this topic

[Ocilfa]

I'm on the lookout for an aftermarket 7970-compatible cooler. This is my card: http://www.newegg.co...#scrollFullInfo

I love the card, but its loud and hot(75C at 100% load). Primarily, I just want something quieter but also cooler. One important detail is that I only have 11" for gpu room(Antec 300 case).

Thanks for anything you find!

Edited by Ocilfa, 01 July 2013 - 01:27 PM.

[Chiyeko Kuramochi]

With that card your cooler should be more than fine on the themp side, have you cleaned it out recently?

Also custom fan profiles can help with noise a bit.

As for the aftermarket cooler sorry don't know

[Henchman 24]

Ok, I'd have to agree, take a very close look at the sink beneath the fans...any matting of hair/dust can render those fans nearly useless. Those are probably sleeve bearing/fluid dynamic bearing fans, and may have run dry of the oil needed to stabilize them.(just a thought) If none of this is your problem, I would contact MSI for RMA on the fans.

All that said, 7970s run really hot, period. I can imagine that the GHz editions run even hotter than older stock dies. I doubt a custom fan profile will help, as normally the Twin Frozr cards tend to not be too loud at idle.

The card is throttling the fans up for a reason, like the fans aren't spinning correctly and not effcient, or they are and it's doing no good due to a dirty sink, or there's too much heat trapped in the case, or it's really hot in your house and your game is now thrashing the GPU adding to the hotbox.

I don't want to sound too nasty, but you also might consider replacing those Antec fans with some that might do something to cool the case with such a hot card in there. The 300 comes with bargain basement fans.

Finding the cause of the heat issue will help more than just slapping a new sink on the card, the one it has is a good one, not great, but good and should handle the job fine without sounding like the baggage loading area in an airport.

[Ocilfa]

Haha, I got rid of the antec fans quite a bit ago.... BTW, I don't run 75C at IDLE. That's full load at 100% gpu utilization. At idle i run at about 49C. I realize now that the wording in my original post was off.

[Henchman 24]

no that's cool, I got it, 75c at idle would mean thermal shutdown during game, and you didn't mention that.

I can't remember if that case has filters, you might want to vacuum and wash them if it applies. I'd look to MSI first if it's a new card though to see if they think the numbers are out of intended range. If not, Artic Cooling has a few coolers that might work. Although, if you decide to go the 'break warranty by removing stock cooler' route...then just try removing, cleaning and reattaching the old sink/fan assembly with some good thermal paste. I've seen improper factory mountings go wrong...too much or too little paste, poor paste quality(the big boys buy this stuff in batches) could also be a cause. That's a cheaper and safer route to try first, rather than dropping 40-80 bucks on a new cooler, more in some cases.

This all said, I recently replaced the stock cooler on my HD6870 because for the THIRD time, XFX FAILED to send me a quality one as a replacement. All with fans dying within a month or two...twice with shipping the card back, third time they got lazy and just sent the whole damn cooler+plastic shroud off the line. So much money wasted when they just could have bought good ones in the first place. Anyway, I bought the AC Accelero Mono for 40 bucks on the egg, and it dropped my temps 5-10c below even a brand new stock cooler.

*** If you get an Artic Cooling brand cooler, take this tip to heart***
DO NOT use the two part epoxy junk they provide for the memory sinks, 3 of these I've installed over 2 years, and not once did that crap work properly. Grab some Artic Silver thermal epoxy for this task, it's permanent and doesn't need too much, so don't go crazy on application!

Here, this looks like the shortest one capable of cooling that card, same number of heatpipes though, so I'm not sure what effect it will have. Honestly, I'd mount it without mem coolers to test the GPU temps first. If it doesn't beat the MSI cooler...then there's no need to glue the mem sinks down.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835186052

Edited by Henchman 24, 01 July 2013 - 02:01 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

If MWO is maxing out your GPU at 100%, that will happen when running the combat part of the game in Full Screen mode, which is also maxing out the FPS. Instead, select Full Windowed mode. MWO will run at a steady 60FPS with GPU at about 30%-40% load with max settings, and run a lot cooler due to that.

The other option is to set the FPS in the user.cfg in the MWO folder to something less than 150FPS.

[Ocilfa]

Replacing the thermal paste sounds the easiest and cheapest to me. I've got some arctic silver sitting around so I'll give that a try soon. Also, I'll play around with full windowed mode. I've never heard about that, but I'll try it. Thanks everyone!

[Sen]

Quote

select Full Windowed mode. MWO will run at a steady 60FPS with GPU at about 30%-40% load with max settings

I didn't know this either, I'll have to give it a shot. There is NO REASON IN HECK for my GPU to running full out in MwO when nothing else I run even touches it.

. . which, granted, is only MwO these days. . but Blizzard's programs barely make it kick over >.>

not even SC2