MSI R9 290x running a lot hotter than normal

[Ronaldspiers]

Hi everyone,

So I know these R9 290x cards run hot. But in heavy gaming sessions in graphically intense games like BF4 multiplayer, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3 the temperature was never above 80. 74-75 Celsius was about the norm.

However, just this evening I was playing Archeage and noticed some black flickering on some textures. Super quick, impossible to screenshot. This does not happen in any other game I own but at any rate i played archeage with MSI Afterburner on to check the temperatures and sure enough the temperature was up at 94 celsius. This is way out of character for the card. I played BF4, Sleeping Dogs and far Cry 3 again and the temps while playing those is now up to 90 as well. I don't know if the temperature is responsible for the flickering in Archeage or not though but I'm glad I seen it.

The inside of the case isn't THAT dusty (but will clean it tomorrow).
The card is not overclocked and all the case fans are still working
Latest drivers are installed.
[Edit:] Oh and the Idle temperature is 40ish celsius which is normal

I am a little worried, last thing I need coming up to Christmas is to have to buy a new GPU.

Any ideas what could be wrong?

 

[Undying89]

Nothing, its how hot get reference 290's. Card will be fine. Make sure you have good airflow in your case.

 

[clutchc]

Is this your card? http://us.msi.com/product/vga/R9_290X_GAMING_4G.html#hero-overview
The cooler on that card should be much better than the reference model. How is the air flow in your case? My Asus Direct CU II stays well below that temp even when the card maxes out at 100% usage. If it only happens in one game, check what the GPU usage is at the time the temps spike or the artifacts occur.

 

[Ronaldspiers]

Is this your card? http://us.msi.com/product/vga/R9_290X_GAMING_4G.html#hero-overview
The cooler on that card should be much better than the reference model. How is the air flow in your case? My Asus Direct CU II stays well below that temp even when the card maxes out at 100% usage. If it only happens in one game, check what the GPU usage is at the time the temps spike or the artifacts occur.

The airflow is the same as it was when i got the card in march. 2 fans on the front of the case intake, a huge intake fan on the side and an exhaust fan at the back. My case is the Corsair 500r so there is a lot of room inside it.

As for the usage. the GPU usage is 100% pretty much solidly in the games when its up at 90. An yeah the MSI cooler is good, as I say 74 celsius was the norm during long sessions in the height of summer here. So there is definitely something wrong especially considering it is now winter lol.

 

[clutchc]

I went back to my records and I found I did get in the upper 80Cs... running the Furmark burn-in. It would hit about 88C, then it would throttle to around 85%, drop temp, stutter, and come back. This happened at around the 4:30 minute mark and would repeat continuously every few seconds. I think the throttle must be set for around that point.
I just ran Furmark again to verify. If you want, run the Furmark burn-in and see if you get the same results around 4 minutes.

 

[Ronaldspiers]

It took about 1 minute to get to 90 degrees from idle. Its then stopped at 94, never got any hotter.

 

[bishopi5]

Very common to see the r9 series running in high 80's, card will be fine, up the fan speed abit if u want it cooler

 

[Ronaldspiers]

I know that 94 is ok for these cards but its just such a massive change from what was the norm when I got the card.

And the fan speed goes up to 100% when the card gets to 80.

One thing I just noticed this morning thiugh is that on MSI afterburner the core voldage and shader clock are blank. Doesnt say anything. Any other way to check the voltage of the card?

 

[clutchc]

94C is not fine. That is way to hot to be at continuously. Mine never gets any hotter than 88C because it begins to throttle at that point.
You might try uninstalling and re-installing the driver just in case there is a software issue causing the problem. Use this from safe mode to uninstall the current driver: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/550192/geforce-drivers/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-v12-9-3-4-released-06-09-14-(don't worry about it being on an Nvidia site. It is a universal uninstaller)

 

[Ronaldspiers]

94C is not fine. That is way to hot to be at continuously. Mine never gets any hotter than 88C because it begins to throttle at that point.
You might try uninstalling and re-installing the driver just in case there is a software issue causing the problem. Use this from safe mode to uninstall the current driver: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/550192/geforce-drivers/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-v12-9-3-4-released-06-09-14-(don't worry about it being on an Nvidia site. It is a universal uninstaller)

Ok so I just finished doing that, played Sleeping dogs and Metro last light and its still getting up to 88-94 degrees quite quick. I dusted the machine out as well so its clean inside and airflow shouldn't be a problem. All the fans in the case and GPU seem to be running fine as well. It's very strange.

 

[clutchc]

If the card wasn't so new, I'd suspect the thermal paste finally dried out. I suppose it's possible that the TIM was poorly applied and needs replacing anyway, but I'm just grasping at straws here. Are the screws on the back of the card that hold the cooler to the GPU still tight?

 

[Ronaldspiers]

Yeah the screws are still tight.

 

[clutchc]

Since the temps were always OK in the past and just recently increased rapidly, I would have to remove the shroud/heat sink and check the thermal paste if it were mine. Clean the old off and replace with new.
http://www.amazon.com/ArctiClean-60ml-Kit-30ml/dp/B0007TOR08
http://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-MX-4-Carbon-Based-Thermal-Compound/dp/B0045JCFLY
http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Care-Coffee-Baskets/dp/B000E8SVR2/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1417384488&sr=8-8&keywords=coffee+filters

 

[Ronaldspiers]

I might look into doing that. However I managed to get MSI afterburner to show the core voltage and it was at +13 not the default +0. So i put it back to +0 and the temperature in games is now 86-88 max. Which is still hotter than I was getting, but the weird thing is since I'm new to the whole PC gaming thing I refused to do any overclocking on the GPU, so I dont know how it ended up at +13 on the voltage.

The temperatures in Battlefield 4 is actually back to the usual 77ish temps. In Sleeping Dogs, Witcher 2, Metro Last light and Archeage it goes to about 86-88 within a few minutes and stays there now (so far). Hotter than when i got it but I am glad its under 90 for now.

 

[clutchc]

Ah. You may have found the problem. The card was OC'd w/o your knowledge. Why not disable or uninstall MSI Afterburner since you don't OC. There may be a bug in the pgm. Or maybe you have a virus messing with your PC settings. Why not update your virus pgm and run a FULL scan just to be on the safe side.

 

[bishopi5]

yup upping that power slider would make the head rise quite a bit

 

[Ronaldspiers]

So I've ran a virus scan or 2 and all is well, but everytime I restart the PC MSI afterburner shows that the voltage is back to +13. It's annoying. Should I put it to +0 and then immediately uninstall afterburner? Would that keep the voltage at the default?

 

[clutchc]

Have you got Afterburner in your System Config/Startup? If so, just uncheck the box, reboot and see if the temp issue is still there. But yeah, if you don't OC, there's really no need for having AB running in the back ground.

 

[Ronaldspiers]

Thanks for all your help, i uninstalled MSi afterburner as it even crashed the PC a couple times last night and now the temperatures are OK again. I only used it to monitor the GPU temps and stuff but i already have HWmonitor for that anyway so it's not a big deal. Seriously thanks again for your help. I'd never have guessed it being a software issue.

 

[clutchc]

You should be thanking yourself. You're the one that figured out that MSIAB was OC'ing the GPU. I never heard of that happening before. But glad all is back to normal now. Enjoy.