Question Radeon r9 390 overheating

[Zarrick]

I recently got an issue with my R9 390 Sapphire Nitro. It would get to 111 degrees fahrenheit and shut down. Since it was way past warranty, I took it apart, cleaned it, and applied new thermal paste (Thermaltake TG-7).
The card ran alot cooler after I did the above but the temp slowly crawled up too 111f (the case fans push alot of air over the card but not enough to keep it cool) and shut down.
Restarted the comp with the side off and checked the fans on the card.. They spun up a few seconds then shut down and stayed off.
Any help would be appreciated since the fans "can" spin (all 3). I imagine there's a solution other than dropping money on a new card.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Are you sure you mean 111f and not 111c?

111f is 43 celcius. Your GPU should not be overheating at 43c.

 

[Zarrick]

Are you sure you mean 111f and not 111c?

111f is 43 celcius. Your GPU should not be overheating at 43c.

I meant 111 degrees fahrenheit or 43 degrees celsius. I was running it to 109-110 fahrenheit then shut the system down. I wanted to download drivers last-ditch but the temps on the card wouldn't stay low enough.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

The temperatures you are seeing are perfectly safe and normal. Do not worry untill your temperatures for the GPU start exceeding 85c.

 

[Zarrick]

I figured. But the system shuts down when the card hits 41-degrees celsius. And the fans just do not turn at 40c +/-. Is this a driver issue perhaps? The system won't stay on even if these temperatures are in an acceptable range. Still black-screens and restarts.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Most programs to ramp up fan speed do not work when drivers are not installed.

What is the make and model of your power supply

 

[Jmi20]

40c is perfectly normal at idle…

I’ve had such an issue before. ULPS (ultra low power saving mode) was the cause.

Would you happen to have more than one gpu installed?

 

[Zarrick]

@Jmi20 It's an ASUS TUF (not sure on model) and doubt it has integrated video. I checked Device Manager (Win-8.1, 64 bit) and see no conflicts.

@NightHawkRMX Rosewill 850watt modular 80+ Gold.

UPDATE; System updated, updated the Crimson drivers and still black screens and restarts at 41 degrees celcius. Rest of the system is cold, and there is alot of air over and under the R9. But. When I booted up the system with the side off, I checked the R9 fans. They spin for about 10 seconds and don't spin again. Even when the GPU approaches 41 degrees celcius, the fans are not spinning. The screen goes black and the system restarts.

 

[Jmi20]

So you only have one gpu installed in the system? Ok.

this happened only after you replaced the thermal paste of the gpu? If so, you may have damaged the card or did not install something correctly. Are all the heat sink screws present and tightened?

does the problem occur in safe mode? Do you have any overclocking software such as afterburner? If you do, have you tried resetting the settings? Have you also tried disabling ULPS?

have you tried a clean driver reinstall?
did you mess with the gpu bios? that probably has a bios switch, did you try switching to a different one?

did you mess with the gpu bios? that probably has a bios switch, did you try switching to a different one?

why do i get a feeling that ive already said this a couple times. I digress… hahah
i think somebody should make a graphics card troubleshooting sticky…

 

[Zarrick]

So you only have one gpu installed in the system? Ok.

this happened only after you replaced the thermal paste of the gpu? If so, you may have damaged the card or did not install something correctly. Are all the heat sink screws present and tightened?

Before I re-pasted the GPU, the comp would only stay on a minute or two, then black-screen. The difference now is the comp stays active and when it black-screens, the system reboots.

does the problem occur in safe mode? Do you have any overclocking software such as afterburner? If you do, have you tried resetting the settings? Have you also tried disabling ULPS?

Didn't try a reboot in safe-mode. Nothing in my system is overstocked. And ULPS? Lost me there.

have you tried a clean driver reinstall?
did you mess with the gpu bios? that probably has a bios switch, did you try switching to a different one?

I updated the driver but I didn't uninstall / reinstall. I'll make sure to try that too.
And bios. Funny you mentioned it. In one of the reboots, the system stalled at bios and asked for a reconfig. I bypassed it though and rebooted through it. Basically because I am unaware of bioswitching.

did you mess with the gpu bios? that probably has a bios switch, did you try switching to a different one?

why do i get a feeling that ive already said this a couple times. I digress… hahah
i think somebody should make a graphics card troubleshooting sticky…

With video-cards requiring a second mortgage, that's where I'm at. I wish to exaust all options before I throw more money away or just ditch computers altogether and stick with game-consoles.
When I finally was able to tweak the game-graphics in 90% of my games to 3840x2160, I was stunned. It's almost divine.
I have had video-cards (and the systems themselves) last for years and I feel this hiccup can be fixed.

I appreciate your efforts here guys, I really do!

 

[Jmi20]

Alright, lets try to sort all of this out.

the way i understand you is the pc would crash even before you touched the gpu. First, run the system without the gpu or a different one. Is there any crash? If no:

Try booting the pc in safe mode with problem gpu installed. Does the pc crash in safe mode? If no then:

Do a clean install of your gpu drivers. Was any other gpu installed before the r9 390? An nvidia one? If yes, uninstall nvidia drivers too.

If you have any overclocking software, revert all settings back to default or uninstall. (Disable ulps can be done through afterburner) if still crashing:

im assuming you did not mess with the gpu bios, like modify or flash a different bios. But there is always a chance that the gpu bios has been corrupted, somehow…
this gpu should have a small switch somewhere, try flipping that switch while the system is off and see if the problem disappears. If not, gpu is dead.

if pc is crashing without gpu, then your problem is something else…

 

[Zarrick]

I haven't found the ULPS setting on Afterburner, and there is no switch on the R9 that I can see. I dumped and reinstalled the Crimson drivers and reset several times.
I found a process running at startup that I didn't recognize and disabled it. Turns out it was a "Defender" icon and I ran Malware Bytes after deleting it and restarting. No viruses.
System ran fine for over 1/2 an hour but when I went to run a video file, bottom right of the monitor flashed a few multi-color vertical lines and went black. I've been staring at a black screen the whole while typing this.
The system is still purring away but the screen is dark. From what I feel from the exaust fan and power supply fan, the system is still cold.
One more note, since this started, I noticed a blue light show up on the card when the screen first turns black. It lights up and stays on. I never saw this light on for the 4+ years I had the machine. If it's a troubleshooting light, then I am stumped as to why it is not only blue, has and "s" on it, and it doesn't blink a code or otherwise. In some of the machinery I worked on over the years, a trouble light that stays on (similar to the CHECK ENGINE light in your car) it meant a failure somewhere.
I'll locate the manual for this thing and see if that means anything.
For all this effort ("dread" has been a popular word in my life) I am leaning towards this card just flat out dying. If so (and I really don't want to shell out several grand for a video card) I'll just buy a new card altogether and see where it takes me.

 

[Jmi20]

S? I think that is the bios switch i am talking about. It may be a push button switch rather than a toggle switch.

Ulps should be in afterburner settings, click on the settings icon, its under amd compatibility properties.

 

[Zarrick]

I carefully poked at the "s" button and turned off the light (OFF-Legacy bios, ON-UEFI bios). I also had enough time to disable ULPS. No change and still being recalcitrant.
You guys have lives. I'll just have to wait until I can spring for a new card. If these Crypto nut-jobs keep up this insane buy-out behavior, I may quit the computer hobby altogether.
It took me 2 years (on and off) to make a machine that not only could last awhile but would also run 4k. Once together, it lasted 5 years and the video went wonky. The desktop had a good run I say.

 

[Jmi20]

Did you make sure that you pushed the button while the pc was off? And you used ddu before reinstalling amd drivers to ensure a clean install? Plus reverted all overclocking settings if any to defaults?

If so, then you have exhausted all other options, i guess we could conclude that the card is dead…

 

[Zarrick]

Made sure the system was off (it's a micro switch so it 'clicked') before I switched bios configurations.
Ran the system in safe-mode (I had the system running close to an hour this way and the system stayed up). Cleaned the drivers using DDU, rebooted, and re-installed Crimson 17.1. It installed, resized my desktop to 3840x2160, and when I tried to close the dialog box...it black-screened and restarted. Now it's back to blackscreen/restart/blackscreen/lockup.