How to cool a Radeon HD 7970?

[JasonTD]

Hi folks,

I built a new system a couple of months ago, and I put a Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 into it. It's been giving me great performance, and I'm really happy with it, but I'm concerned with the temperature. Under full load, the Catalyst Control Center is showing that the temperature is going above 80C with the card's fans at full speed. At idle, the GPU is sitting around 38-40C.

My CPU's temperatures look good, so it seems I just have a problem with keeping the graphics card cool. Any suggestions on what I could do to bring the temperature and fan speeds down a bit?

I'm open to tinkering around with Catalyst or even to getting some sort of third party cooling option, but I just don't know where to begin looking at that stuff.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ur6beersaway]

"under full load" doing what? ex.gaming,benchmarking,stress testing,folding,mining,editing? Are you over clocking?

 

[avjguy2362]

Does your card have two fans on it? If it only one fan, Artic Cooler makes great aftermarket GPU coolers. I put the Twin Turbo ( dual 92mm fans ( they also have a triple fan cooler)) on my 6950 and lowered max temps 22C to 54C. 80C is only a little on the high side for a GPU. I have seen quiet a few people with 90C and higher. However, it can't hurt and possibly extent the life of your GPU to cool it as much as possible. Getting more cool air to your GPU, better or more case fans, can also help a lot. Can you side mount a fan? That throws a lot of air right on it, but the side mount fans will usually add noise to your system too.
Here is the triple fan version: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186048
Dual Fan: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186052

 

[ingtar33]

Artic Cooling makes some of the best and most affordable 3rd party GPU coolers. So if you want a 3rd party gpu cooler, that's a great direction to go.

That said, 80C isn't too hot for a 7970... now if you were up over 90C i'd say you might have an issue.

 

[JasonTD]

"under full load" doing what? ex.gaming,benchmarking,stress testing,folding,mining,editing? Are you over clocking?

A little of everything, to be honest... I've been doing gaming and video editing, and recently I started dabbling in mining. Mining really pushes the heat up, but I've had high temps with Crysis 3 and other games as well.

Does your card have two fans on it? If it only one fan, Artic Cooler makes great aftermarket GPU coolers. I put the Twin Turbo ( dual 92mm fans ( they also have a triple fan cooler)) on my 6950 and lowered max temps 22C to 54C. 80C is only a little on the high side for a GPU. I have seen quiet a few people with 90C and higher. However, it can't hurt and possibly extent the life of your GPU to cool it as much as possible. Getting more cool air to your GPU, better or more case fans, can also help a lot. Can you side mount a fan? That throws a lot of air right on it, but the side mount fans will usually add noise to your system too.
Here is the triple fan version: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186048
Dual Fan: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186052

Thanks for the tips! My card has three fans on it by default. It's this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00752QYLK/

I'm not sure whether or how I could modify that setup effectively, but I'd love to hear insight if anybody here has done it with this model.

I do have a fan mounted on the side of the case, but it's set up for exhaust, blowing air out. Is there an optimal configuration I should be using for airflow? I have a Cooler Master case, so it has a crazy number of fans all over it. I could flip some of them around if a particular path would work best.

Artic Cooling makes some of the best and most affordable 3rd party GPU coolers. So if you want a 3rd party gpu cooler, that's a great direction to go.

That said, 80C isn't too hot for a 7970... now if you were up over 90C i'd say you might have an issue.

I'm concerned both about the heat and the noise from that fan running at full speed. I live in Florida, so we're about to head into some super hot months over the summer. If the card is hitting 80+ now, I'm worried that it'll creep higher as we get into July and August. It can get pretty warm here, even with the A/C on. And the fan noise really gets crazy when the GPU is working at capacity. I'd like to figure out a good way to cool it so the fans on the card don't have to work so hard to keep the temperature in check.

Re: the third party cooling option - Does that sort of thing work with a card that already has three fans mounted on it out of the box (my particular card is linked above)?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[JasonTD]

Do you have the card overclocked? Have you tried undervolting the card using MSI Afterburner (or equivalent OC software)? For BTC mining anyways you should always undervolt your card - it will take some time to figure out min. stable volts needed, but it will save you a ton of heat/noise.

This particular card comes overclocked from the factory, but I haven't done any overclocking with it myself. I haven't tried undervolting. I've never really tried messing with that sort of thing for the GPU, but I have overclocked my CPU. Are the concepts similar? Any tips for someone who is afraid of screwing something up as a first time GPU undervolter? Thanks!

 

[ur6beersaway]

Maybe time to think about a waterblock? Suggestion:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186083

 

[JasonTD]

Maybe time to think about a waterblock? Suggestion:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186083

Watching the NewEgg video about this cooler now. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[JasonTD]

Undervolting is easy, you just install Afterburner, check the unlock voltage control box in options, and then decrease your core voltage. It's pretty much a must for BTC mining; it can drastically cut power consumption and it can really help with temps. My cards do not need as much voltage for BTC mining as they do for gaming - my particular cards will run on 1070 mV to do 1070 core for mining, but they need 1120 mV to run that clock for gaming (1170 mV is stock/default voltage on my cards)

You'll just get BSODs/crashes when your voltage is too low, so the goal is to find the point at which if you go any lower you get crashes.

Also, what is your case and what is your fan setup? It's very rare that you want a side fan being an exhaust.

This is my case (Cooler Master HAF XM): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119257&Tpk=haf%20xm&IsVirtualParent=1

The current fan setup is:
1 200mm fan in front (intake)
1 200mm fan on the side (exhaust)
2 200mm fans on top (one intake, one exhaust)
1 140mm fan on back (exhaust)
My CPU (i5-3570K) has a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO on it and is overclocked to 4.3 GHz (pulls air from the front of the case to blow toward the back onto the heatsink)
The GPU (Radeon HD 7970) has three fans on it by default (fans are facing downward, per the card's seating)

If you have ideas about how I could better arrange those case fans, I'd love to hear them. I'm very open to flipping some of them around to get a cooler case.

I'm really intrigued by the undervolting and will give it a try. Am I correct that I would just lock the voltage control box again in Afterburner when I'm not mining and am doing gaming, etc?

 

[JasonTD]

Your top and rear fans should be exhaust, and your front and side fans should be intake. This works with the natural flow of hot air to move to the top of your case and keeps a more even airflow over your components, generally. I would try flipping the top intake fan to an exhaust and the side exhaust fan to an intake and see if that helps.

It may not help, but when I was goofing around with side vent fans in my Storm Trooper, it raised temps by 1-4C on my graphics cards when they were exhaust.

Afterburner has a "reset" button that instantly resets your cards settings back to default, so you don't have to ever leave it off stock settings if you don't want to. Just for reference, it took me a couple weeks to find the minimum volts I could use for BTC mining 24/7 (because it would be fine for a day then crash, then be fine for 3 days and crash on slightly higher volts, etc...)

I'm definitely going to try flipping those fans around tonight after I power down. I'm looking forward to having a proper wind tunnel going through there

I'll also grab Afterburner and play around with that. Hopefully I can get some good results from this combination. If I need to cool it off any more than that, I'll look into the water block that was linked above.

I really appreciate all the help with this from everybody!

 

[ur6beersaway]

There are many other water cooling solutions also:http://www.frozencpu.com/ enter GPU in search. good luck & tks