Really hot GPU

chopdok · February 22, 2015

First of all - the if you already tried running it with your case open - then its not a question of case airflow. When you run open case, the air will not stick around your GPU. Anyone who thinks otherwise should freshen up his high-school science. I usually run open case in the summers - because in Israel, summers are friggin hot. The difference between open and closed is about 10 degrees in my case - of course, closed is the hotter. Of course, you need to make sure it stands in the open, and not in some closet or inside furniture. The fans on the Windforce alone are enough to disperse hot air if you run open case. And you still have fans at the front and back of your case, as well as CPU and PSU fans adding their work. The main reason why some people say nonsense like "I ran open case, and had higher temps" - is that you need to clean it every 2 weeks, else the dust will clog the radiators, and within 1 month, your open case will run hotter than closed.

As far as temperatures - 50c at idle is perfectly normal. Its by design - to increase the lifespan of your cooler bearings, they don't overtax the fans at idle. You wont be able to bring it lower, unless you override the default fan profile - default will keep it at 50c idle, and if the temperatures go below, it will just decrease the fan speeds even further till its back at 50c.The only way it will go below 50 is if the fans are already at their minimum RPM, which is set to around 35%. Those reviews you are reading are done on an open test bench. In that situation, your GPU will run at about room temperature + 10c, if its a good cooler design. R9 280x has maximum safe temperatures of 95c - it will throttle if it exceeds it, but according to AMD - the card is perfectly fine at 95c. That is for reference. With good aftermarket cooler, you should be getting around 75-85c depending on your room temperature.

BambiBoy · February 22, 2015

First of all - the if you already tried running it with your case open - then its not a question of case airflow. When you run open case, the air will not stick around your GPU. Anyone who thinks otherwise should freshen up his high-school science. I usually run open case in the summers - because in Israel, summers are friggin hot. The difference between open and closed is about 10 degrees in my case - of course, closed is the hotter. Of course, you need to make sure it stands in the open, and not in some closet or inside furniture. The fans on the Windforce alone are enough to disperse hot air if you run open case. And you still have fans at the front and back of your case, as well as CPU and PSU fans adding their work. The main reason why some people say nonsense like "I ran open case, and had higher temps" - is that you need to clean it every 2 weeks, else the dust will clog the radiators, and within 1 month, your open case will run hotter than closed.

As far as temperatures - 50c at idle is perfectly normal. Its by design - to increase the lifespan of your cooler bearings, they don't overtax the fans at idle. You wont be able to bring it lower, unless you override the default fan profile - default will keep it at 50c idle, and if the temperatures go below, it will just decrease the fan speeds even further till its back at 50c.The only way it will go below 50 is if the fans are already at their minimum RPM, which is set to around 35%. Those reviews you are reading are done on an open test bench. In that situation, your GPU will run at about room temperature + 10c, if its a good cooler design. R9 280x has maximum safe temperatures of 95c - it will throttle if it exceeds it, but according to AMD - the card is perfectly fine at 95c. That is for reference. With good aftermarket cooler, you should be getting around 75-85c depending on your room temperature.

Maybe it is designed to run at 50 degrees idle and maybe it is designed to run at 95 degrees under load. You may feel comfortable with those temps, but I don't. To be honest, I can't see why AMD would design a card to run at 50+ degrees at idle, also, a refrence R9 290 i've seen run 30 degrees idle.

chopdok · February 22, 2015

Maybe it is designed to run at 50 degrees idle and maybe it is designed to run at 95 degrees under load. You may feel comfortable with those temps, but I don't. To be honest, I can't see why AMD would design a card to run at 50+ degrees at idle, also, a refrence R9 290 i've seen run 30 degrees idle.

There is no really such a thing as designing the card to run at specific idle and load temps. Any chip will have 2 temperature limits - 1st one is throttling temperature, at which GPU will start reducing its clock speed and power draw to try to cool off. The 2nd limit is the maximum safe limit - usually is set to 110c - once the chip exceeds it, BIOS will cut power to the chip to prevent physical damage. Other than that, temperature modes and fan profiles are at the discretion of the manufacturer and user. Manufacturer's goal is to make a product that will satisfy the broadest audience - and as such, they are balancing the temperatures against the noise output and longevity of the cooling system. As such, most manufacturers set the fan curve to deliver the least amount of noise, while maintaining the temperatures below the limits at all times when under load, and to conserve the mechanical parts as much as possible whenver possible (i.e at idle).

The reason why 50c is OK at idle is because it doesnt really matter from a technical point of view - as long as temperatures are below 90c, all is fine. So, might as well reduce fan speed to increase fan longevity. For example, many GTX 970 come with fan profile which won't even start spinning until the card reaches 65c. Because it doesnt matter.

Now, for some users it does matter. You can download MSI Afterburner, and override the default fan curve with it. You will get cooler temps, at the expense of more noise. You can even disable the fan curve entirely, and set it to constant RPM.

Again - those tests were done on a test bench - not inside the case, which is even better than having open case.