[SOLVED] My AMD Radeon HD 7970 overheats only at 70C

[Hunter8j]

Hello! Sorry for my English.

Well, the title says It. It never happened before and starts happening constantly, giving me artifacts. The card is about 7 years old. Drivers are new (I tried different ones). No overclocking.

I guess I can try to apply new thermal paste or rise a fan spin up which would make annoying loud noise in my room but maybe someone know what could cause a graphics card overheats even at low temperature?

 

[jojesa]

A GPU could overheat if the fans are failing or they have stop spinning.

 

[Phaaze88]

The gpu core isn't overheating, but another component is, around the time the core hits 70C.

 

[Hunter8j]

Do you know how can I check which component exactly?

 

[Phaaze88]

Special equipment, like thermocouples. Software is going to have limited support for an old card like that; the most you'd be able to see is the core temperature.

 

[Phaaze88]

Aside from that, give the gpu a deeper clean - if you haven't already.
Take it apart, and clean the fan, the fan shroud, the PCB, the heatsink...
Careful with the paste choice - use thicker pastes, like NT-H2 and Cooler Master Mastergel Maker Nano.

 

[Hunter8j]

Yes I should do all of this, thanks for the advice! It doesn't overheat when I set fan spin at 100%, but this noise from the fans is annoing.

 

[Phaaze88]

It doesn't overheat when I set fan spin at 100%, but this noise from the fans is annoing.

It's a turbo/blower model, right?
The design isn't very efficient. The radial fan needs to have enough 'umph' to move air across the length of the gpu and exit.
This can't really be done unless the fan rpm is high, otherwise the air kinda loses its strength before it gets to the exit(the rear).

 

[Hunter8j]

I don't really know which model is it, AIDA says AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Tahiti). I think this one https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-radeon-hd-7970-100351sr/p/N82E16814202008 (looks and specs very similar at least).

The second fan doesn't spin until I set fan speed at 82%+ (was that way since I bought it). And thats enough to prevent overheating (don't actually need to set all the way 100%).

The thing is some time ago I remember the temperature goes 80C+ and It works just fine even during a hot summer but now it didn't hold even 70C+. I guess the design is poor when the second fan doesn't spin even when the card is about to overheats but It worked before.

 

[Phaaze88]

Oh, so it's not a blower/turbo.

Something else that could happen, is high thermals causing certain components on the PCB to become loose - hot and cold cycles cause things to expand and contract - but then you'd likely see crashing and video signal dropping.
So that's why I figure it's just some dust; it does act as an insulator.

 

[Hunter8j]

Well, actually, some times It's just some artifacts and graphics glitches, another is artifacts that freazes the whole OS and only reset on system block helps and one time after such a freaze I couldn't start my OS because the signal on a monitor wasn't there.

The graphics card doesn't seem too dusty though but I defenetly
wipe all the dust away and see what happened.

 

[jojesa]

What's the fans RPM at 100% speed?
I had the Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 XT and I had to replace then fans.
The control panel could show the fans are running at 100% but the RPM could be half or less than when new.

 

[Hunter8j]

The fans RPM is about 3300 at 100% what AMD Radeon Software says.
I'm not sure if I can trust this though, becouse It doesn't matter ether I set to 100% or 82% It's only 100 RPM difference and when I set It below 82% (doesn't matter 81% or 25%) the RPM always the same 150ish.
AIDA also shows the same RPM as AMD Radeon Software.

But when I increasing fan speed, say from 25% to 81% I can clearly hear the noise from the fans getting louder and temperature on the card is dropping a litle bit, though It shows the same 150ish RPM. It's kinda weird.

 

[jojesa]

The fans RPM is about 3300 at 100% what AMD Radeon Software says.

That sounds about right

I'm not sure if I can trust this though, becouse It doesn't matter ether I set to 100% or 82% It's only 100 RPM difference and when I set It below 82% (doesn't matter 81% or 25%) the RPM always the same 150ish.
AIDA also shows the same RPM as AMD Radeon Software.

If I remember correctly going from 100% down to 80%, should drop the speed by around 500 rpm

But when I increasing fan speed, say from 25% to 81% I can clearly hear the noise from the fans getting louder and temperature on the card is dropping a litle bit, though It shows the same 150ish RPM. It's kinda weird.

On my card one fan was spinning just fine but the other was very slow.
It was only reporting the fan has the fastest speed.

 

[Hunter8j]

On my card one fan was spinning just fine but the other was very slow.
It was only reporting the fan has the fastest speed.

In my case the second fan doesn't even spin before 82%. So the software has to show RPM of the only fan that works, the first one.
And It shows 150 RPM no matter which spining speed I set (25% or 81).

Anyways I have cleaned the graphics card from a dust and applied new termal paste. The temperature on the core droped about 10C to 60C.
I hope this would be enogh to prevent that other component from overheating. Thank you!

 

[goyalmanik22]

I'm not sure if I can trust this though, becouse It doesn't matter ether I set to 100% or 82% It's only 100 RPM difference and when I set It below 82% (doesn't matter 81% or 25%) the RPM always the same 150ish. mx player