Overheating du to RX480

G

Galmok

Active member
I just changed from my trusty HD 5870 to the Rx480 and even though the thermal output should be somewhat lower, it heats up my case a lot; to the point where it overheats memory, chipset, cpu etc. Obviously, I have bought a RX480 that dumps most of the heat inside the cabinet, but I honestly thought 3 fans pushing air in and 2 (plus 2 in PSU) pulling air out of the case would be sufficient. Obviously not.

So what do other RX480 owners do (those with coolers that dump heat inside the case)? Put a 30cm fan on the side panel of the case?

Well, at least I can remove the side panel and that seems to keep the heat in check. But it is still a poor cooling solution dumping so much heat inside the case. Maybe I can build an air ducts for the card, protecting the rest of the stuff in my case.

The card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 480 NITRO+ 4GB. Also, it is noisy, even at idle.
 
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What case is that? I would always build case that has better air output than input.. Is there some reason you want positive pressure inside?
 
atomBomb said:
What case is that? I would always build case that has better air output than input.. Is there some reason you want positive pressure inside?
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I was just venting about a poor cooler design. The ATI HD 5870 expelled all hot air and thus the case did not require large airflow. This has obviously changed. :-/
 
atomBomb said:
What case is that? I would always build case that has better air output than input.. Is there some reason you want positive pressure inside?
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Dust seeping in everywhere is a huge reason, also is you lower pressure inside the case, there is less air to cool components...

What are the reasons you want negative pressure inside your case?
 
MasterGoa said:
Dust seeping in everywhere is a huge reason, also is you lower pressure inside the case, there is less air to cool components...

What are the reasons you want negative pressure inside your case?
Click to expand...

Better cooling?

I think I would want the hot-air out from the case and not create hot-pockets. Its something of a matter of opinion but I feel the OP is creating such hot-pockets and suffering from it. And that is why also asked what is the case as the first question, some cases are build for positive air pressure inside the case but for example almost all the servers/enterprise grade boxes are sucking the air out from the back.
 
atomBomb said:
Better cooling?

I think I would want the hot-air out from the case and not create hot-pockets. Its something of a matter of opinion but I feel the OP is creating such hot-pockets and suffering from it. And that is why also asked what is the case as the first question, some cases are build for positive air pressure inside the case but for example almost all the servers/enterprise grade boxes are sucking the air out from the back.
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True but a huge advantage of server rooms is that there are standard in terms of dust, temps and humidity...

This is totally opposite in homes, especially if you have carpets or pets :(
 
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can try to undervolt the card a bit.
to hit the best volt/power for the card.
many been able to do so and increase fps and oc.
 
flopper said:
can try to undervolt the card a bit.
to hit the best volt/power for the card.
many been able to do so and increase fps and oc.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your suggestions. The card is factory overclocked which probably adds to the heat. So far, I have just upped the speed of some of the fans (those I can control directly) and thise seems to be just enough, but I am reading up to 79 degrees C on the card. The card itself I think is stable, but the rest of my PC cannot handle the temperature. I already have 3 BSOD, all with different (and GPU unrelated) errors. Even checked the memory.dmp file with windbg.exe.

But my case fans are getting old and noisy so I guess I have to buy new ones. But damn they are expensive (the quiet ones)!
 
Just clean up the case. All that I take from this is you have poor airflow. Clean up cables, make sure you have proper intake and outtake.

What case is this? Post a pic? It couldn't be any worse then the mess KAC calls a PC.
 
It sounds like you have bad airflow, but at the same time you have a ton of fans. What are the CFMs on your fans? It doesn't make sense to me you're overheating with 5 fans running. Are they all like 20 CFM? With adequate air flow the heat from a graphics card should be no problem.

Are you sure there's not something else going on? Like maybe before your GPU was a bottleneck, and now it's not, so your CPU is running at higher load and overheating?
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I do believe I do not have sufficient air flow (obviously). My fans are old, but still working, and no, dust is not the issue here. But I think my fans are to weak to make decent air flow. They are all ultra low noise and as such, have limited air flow (also why I have so many fans).

It is easy to by cheap noisy fans, but I prefer low noise fans. Are there any such fans that aren't too expensive?
 
I run 5x Corsair ML140's and 3x ML120's in PWM so I can control my fan speed via a panel I have at the top of my chassis. 4 on my Radiator, 3 for front intake and one on the back for outtake. My radiator is mounted up top as intake, my fronts of course are outtake and my rear is exhaust. Have zero issues with cooling. But then again I have all custom Bitfenix cables all routed so you can't see anything.

All fans are run on their lowest. You need to check and see if they are running its so quiet.

Again, I'd like to know what case this is?
 
I was recently testing out a lot of fans for my systems, and I found that the Scythe Glidestream fans can move quite a bit of air at a decent noise level. Getting a fan controller is definitely the way to go, because then you can adjust your fans as necessary.

Another option is to buy a fan hub, and have your fans controlled by the PWM signal on your motherboards CPU fan header. If you buy a Phanteks fan hub you can run fans off the PWM header even if they're not PWM fans. The nice thing about this is it allows your computer to be quiet when you're not doing anything demanding, and then ramp up the airflow when necessary. It allows my VR/HTPC computer to be very quiet for playing DVDs, but then still able to remain cool when playing in VR.
 
Hey I read the http://www.legitreviews.com/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-480-4gb-video-card-review_184553/11 and they seemed to have problems with the Sapphire fan-profile conflicting with the driver profile, so maybe there is a firmware update for the Nitro? Seems the Nitro also uses the zero-fan feature, disabled that ?

Sapphire support needs registering, so I dont want to do that.

If your changing fan's.. I would use the Noctua fan's for longevity, airflow and silence..
 
Thank you all for the suggestions. :)

I looked at Noctua fans, but damn, they are expensive! Good specs, though.

So far I have not experienced any conflicts, driver wise. I am not sure what the zero-fan feature is. If it is the feature where the fans on the card stop, well, they do, but they will start up again at around 53-54 degrees celcius. And with my air flow, this is a non-feature for me as the fans usually run (and make noise). But even in the review they had this problem and that was with an open setup (no case). They had to use a external fan just to move enough air to make the gpu fan stop. Idea was good, but AMDs GPUs use too much power for that.

I'll see which fans I can find where I live. Noctua will not be my main choice due to cost (replacing my fans with Noctua fans will cost approx the same 50% of the Rx480 cost).
 
I tried some Noctua fans as part of my testing, and I wouldn't recommend them for your purposes. They were quiet, but moved barely any air. Except the NF-F12-3000 which moved a ton of air but sounded like a turbine at full blast. Also the NF-3000 was louder at a given amount of airflow than the Scythe GlideStream when used as a case fan. The thing about Noctua fans is they have decent static pressure, so I wouldn't say to never get them-- for a radiator or heatsink they might make sense-- but what you really want for case fans are airflow optimized fans. Even if you're pulling through a filter, you still want high airflow fans (provided the filter is on the intake side-- static pressure does nothing for a fan's intake).

You can recognize airflow optimized fans because they have more, skinnier blades, with larger gaps between them. Like this. Because there are larger gaps, they don't work as well when pushing into something that offers a lot of resistance (like a heatsink), because the air can deflect back out where the blades aren't. Static pressure fans, in comparison, will have very small gaps, to force the air in, but they can't move air as efficiently when there's no resistance.

I verified all of this myself by testing different fans. For case fans you always want high air flow. Some people say if you're blowing through a hard drive cage to get static pressure, but even then unless the fan is literally crammed right up against the cage and there's absolutely no open pockets for air to flow through, I think you're still better off with high airflow.

Also, the best strategy is not to buy quiet fans. You want to get efficient fans that are relatively quiet for the amount of air they move, but you want fans that move a decent amount of air at max (at least 50+ CFM), coupled with a fan controller or fan hub. That way you can get a lot of airflow if/when it's needed, but then dial them back to a lower level when you're just working on the desktop or doing something not demanding.
 
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I thought my 290 use to run too hot it would regularly get into the 90c and above range. I then bought a new case from this decade and not 2003 and the temps dropped by over well over 10c. If your case is old and your fans are weak and old as well do yourself a favor and buy a modern case. I spent way too much for a pc case in my opinion but 100 bucks should get you something great and that should alleviate your problems.

I never bought into it I said but I have 4 fans all setup nicely yet my case was just TOO small for the heat output that 290 was blasting. Now I have a monster case with a 1070 and temps are a non issue. I am sure I could run two or three in it now without problems.
 
Galmok said:
The card is a Sapphire Radeon RX 480 NITRO+ 4GB. Also, it is noisy, even at idle.
Click to expand...

I'm currently working with one of these (non-Nitro however I assume). The fans don't even spin at idle. I'm guessing this behavior doesn't carry over with the Nitro?

I would troubleshooting this machine thinking heat was an issue as well.

Its a Zalman Z1 something or another.

2 x 140 intake and 1 x 120 exhaust + PSU.

All weekend ran Folding@Home at full tilt, side panel on, CPU touched 72c and GPU just under 80c. Nothing downclocked, and machine didn't crash.

You're getting worse temps than this I guess?
 
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