Crazy temps for AMD GPU

[Pasgui9]

I have a Powercolor PCS+ R9 390 and at max load it gets very intense. It can reach 79C, which might not seem like a lot but considering that the card has 3 80mm fans, new thermal paste and the heatsink has been dissasembled and cleaned thoroughly by me, it still seems very insane. I usually let the driver decide the fan speed, and so it usually sits around 3100rpm, which is very, very loud. At night I cannot hear my own thoughts. The room isn't very hot, although it ironically gets warmed up by the card itself. The ambient temperature doesn't go over 25C. The computer is sitting in the corner of the room, with the intake clear and sitting outwards, and the exhaust towards the wall. Although my case only has two fans, intake and exhaust, removing the side panel doesn't help almost at all.

 

I know that 79C isn't a big deal for this specific architecture, but given the circumstances, I find it odd that it gets so hot.

 

P.S: It was always this hot, even before taking it apart, and I am sure that I put more than enough thermal paste, and seated the heatsink properly. Also I have no overclock, so the card is actually at it's very unremarkable factory clock of 1010Mhz core, and 1500Mhz MEM.

 

Any suggestions?

[VeganJoy]

you can put too much paste on there, though gpus usually have enough mounting pressure that it doesnt matter. what paste did you use?

 

in any case high power amd cards have generally run hot as fuck for a while now, the r9s are no exception. maybe try and undervolt it? bad case airflow wont help your situation, taking off the side panel doesnt direct air to your card

[Pasgui9]

5 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

you can put too much paste on there, though gpus usually have enough mounting pressure that it doesnt matter. what paste did you use?

 

in any case high power amd cards have generally run hot as fuck for a while now, the r9s are no exception. maybe try and undervolt it? bad case airflow wont help your situation, taking off the side panel doesnt direct air to your card

MX-2

 

Not sure about undervolting, though. I don't have any experience with it. I did at one point have a small, 3rd fan. I placed it in many positions on many mounts inside the case and it still didn't really help.

[Mateyyy]

79C for a 275-300W GPU is really not that hot. Keep in mind that reference cards ran at 95C constantly while sounding like blow dryers.

[VeganJoy]

4 minutes ago, Pasgui9 said:

MX-2

 

Not sure about undervolting, though. I don't have any experience with it. I did at one point have a small, 3rd fan. I placed it in many positions on many mounts inside the case and it still didn't really help.

tg kryonaut would probably get you a few degrees lower, and if you were desperate (and careful!) you could use liquid metal for maximum heat transfer. regardless, itll still produce a lot of heat that needs to be dissipated in some way. you need to either improve the cooling solution (deshroud and put two noctuas on it? maybe an accelero/morpheus/kraken?) or decrease the power draw by undervolting/downclocking. as mateyyy said, the temps arent really that bad. maybe just use a custom fan curve and let it run hotter, theyre designed to handle higher temps without a hitch.

 

4 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

79C for a 275-300W GPU is really not that hot. Keep in mind that reference cards ran at 95C constantly while sounding like blow dryers.

how come amd cards usually run hotter than nvidia cards with similar power draw? my 1080ti pulls 300-320w in furmark and doesnt go over 65C with fans at half speed

[Mateyyy]

26 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

how come amd cards usually run hotter than nvidia cards with similar power draw? my 1080ti pulls 300-320w in furmark and doesnt go over 65C with fans at half speed

The 1080Ti is a larger GPU, and your card probably has a better cooler on it? There's other factors too like ambient temperatures, case airflow, TIM quality and application, etc.

[Master Disaster]

18 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

how come amd cards usually run hotter than nvidia cards with similar power draw? my 1080ti pulls 300-320w in furmark and doesnt go over 65C with fans at half speed

Different architectures. It's the same reason as to why AMDs excavator CPUs ran VERY hot next to Intel's equivalents and then AMD released Ryzen which now run cooler than Intel's equivalent.

 

Different chips made using different tech with varying densities and produced at different fabs.

 

79c is not hot for a 390, there is nothing for you to worry about. Remember, if it's not broke then don't try to fix it, the chances are you'll just make it worse.

[Pasgui9]

Very late, but for anyone that sees this in the future, what I did that helped was to strap a laptop heat sink to the back of the card. The card has a back plate, and I found a very thick thermal pad that I put on the back of the GPU PCB, right over where the dye is, then I took an old laptop heat sink fan assembly (save for the fan, that i didn't have anything to cenect it to) and strapped it over the back of the GPU, and over the thick thermal pad. Sounds very ghetto, and it is, but thanks to the laptop heat pipe and the metal back plate, the GPU now also dissipates heat from the back. Crazy is that is helped a lot. It now doesn't go over 67 degrees even when under 3000RPM. Will post pics if anyone wants.