GPU overheating when WiFi is on

[WRzine]

I got a new PC last month and I've got the PCS R9 380.
A week or so ago it started behaving strangely. The temperature is constantly at 75 degrees (according to CPUID HWMonitor, the software that I use for monitoring my components temperature and voltage) and the actual GPU is under pressure, the clock is always working on the max, regardless if the PC is idle or I'm playing a recent hi-end graphics game.

I started looking online and I found out that AMD had a glitch in a recent Crimson driver of theirs where the GPU fans would be set to 20% only, but apparently they had fixed it in their new driver. I went to the AMD site and I downloaded the OverDrive software that had the latest driver 16.1 It didn't solve the problem but at least I had a good tool to measure stuff with.

I started connecting and disconnecting components on my computer as well as turning processes off, to see if anything would make a difference and I found something very interesting. When I disconnected my USB WifI adapter, the GPU started behaving normally. As soon as I'd put the Wifi back on, it'd start behaving bazar again. I've got a couple of screenshots for you.

Wifi OFF and WIFI ON

You can see the massive difference and that's the only thing I've changed in between screenshots. I've even put the task manager on to show that nothing else is really running. The USB I was using when I made this was Realtek rtl8192eu. I thought there was a glitch in it's driver, so I decided to try with the other USB Wifi that I have got. D-Link DWA-111 - completely different brand and wifi stick. I installed it's driver, updated the driver and 15 minutes after I started using it, the same problem occurred. So it's clearly not the USB.

At this point, I started suspecting the motherboard. I'm using ASUS M5A99FX R2.0

I downloaded a pack with software and fixes for my motherboard called ASUS AI Suite II V2.04
It installed updates for motherboard components and software and after that the machine worked fine for a day.

I thought about running a Linux Live CD to see if it'll behave better under a different environment, but my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS live disk didn't start. Couldn't recognise my chipset (AMDFX 8350).
I'm using Win7 Sp1 x64 for my every day uses.

And now it's bad again, the GPU is hot as I'm writing this threat and I'm running out of ideas. I welcome any suggestions, opinions and thoughts.

 

[Kari]

Have you scanned for malware/viruses/worms?
There are bitcoin miners that will use your GPU and the process doesn't use much cpu if at all, so it doesn't really pop out in the task manager. The miner goes dormant when it doesn't have internet access, as it won't be able to report back or get more work.

 

[WRzine]

Have you scanned for malware/viruses/worms?
There are bitcoin miners that will use your GPU and the process doesn't use much cpu if at all, so it doesn't really pop out in the task manager. The miner goes dormant when it doesn't have internet access, as it won't be able to report back or get more work.

Hello Keri and thanks for the quick reply, friend. I hadn't thought of that since I use NoScript on my firefox which keep (or should keep) most stuff at bay. I do however have some cracked software on my machine and something might have slipped in. I ran scans with my Spybot Search and Destroy and my Avira Antivirus. The Avira came clean, Spybot removed some cookies. I restarted the machine and the 15 mins later, the gpu started hearting. Any other suggestions?

 

[Kari]

take a look at this, it might be of use
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsvUTO0bwzA

How to diagnose and remove a bitcoin miner trojan
How to manually remove these little performance ruining bastards.

These things are becoming the new epidemic. Most anti viruses don't detect them because they're technically not a virus. They can be referred to as "slaveware". They use your machine's resources to mine bitcoins and send the mined data to someone else's pool which then puts money in their wallet at your expense.

He might have a point about anti virus softwares not detecting them...


edit i noticed in those pics you posted that the cpu usage goes up like 8% when your wifi is enabled. That would be a usefull way to identify the miner process itself. Good luck!

 

[WRzine]

Thank you for the video. I decided I was done playing with it though and nuked (formatted) the C: partition. Just finished putting my essential software back. So far PC has been running for about an hour and a half and temp hasn't gone above 45. Thank you for reminding me that little bugs do stuff like that, it would have taken me ages to think of it myself.

 

[Kari]

heh that's done and dusted then 😀