Video Card Cooling Help - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Nehkara · 10-24-2011, 02:35 AM

Hey CP!

I have an AMD Radeon HD 6950 which I have unlocked using the BIOS trick to 6970.

It runs great except it gets too hot. The automatic controls on the stock fan, for whatever reason, don't seem to respond to rising temperature of the GPU and it overheats unless I manually set the fan to around 55% speed (it usually stays around 24% on auto). The issue is that it is quite loud at 55% speed and I have an open case (Antec Skeleton).

I was wondering:

A) Is there a way to get the stock fan's automatic controls to behave properly?

B) If there is no way to get the above to work: What do you recommend as an effective and quiet custom cooling solution?

Thanks CP!

Hack&Lube · 10-24-2011, 03:59 AM

You'll need to actually edit the fan profiles with a custom BIOS file. Depending on what BIOS you used, it might have increased voltages as well causing the extra heat.

If you don't want to edit the BIOS, you can rely on software like MSI Afterburner and create your own custom fan profile.

If 55% is too loud for you however, then the stock cooling won't do anything for you and you may have to look for an aftermarket solution. Many people swear by the Arctic Cooling models but I had some bad experiences with them myself (fried fans, heatsinks that fell off, etc.) and decided not to touch 3rd party cooling again (they often won't work properly on non-reference design cards) unless it's watercooling since most aftermarket fans don't exhaust the air out the back of the case but blow it back inside.

Since you have a skeleton though, it sounds like you have a reference design 6950 and you have a blower fan (hence the noise) and it doesn't matter if air is blown out the back or not. You might want to check out reviews of aftermarket coolers for the 6950 with axial fans.

SoulOfTheFlame · 10-24-2011, 04:11 AM

I use a program called EVGA Precision. Lets me change my fan speed on the fly. I just turn it up when I'm playing games, leave it stock speed for anything else. Works fine with my Geforce card..

Hanni · 10-24-2011, 07:35 AM

I've used both EVGA Precision and MSI Afterburner and prefer Afterburner. Afterburner lets you set a fan profile graph that turns up the fan speed based on temperature.

However like Hack said if 55% is to loud this won't help with that issue.

Nehkara · 10-24-2011, 11:39 AM

Thing is, I don't think it always NEEDS to be at 55% in games, its just what I feel safe setting it to so that it won't overheat. I think if it was auto-controlled it wouldn't need to be quite so fast.

Thanks for the replies guys!

I will try MSI Afterburner.

Nehkara · 10-24-2011, 12:20 PM

Thanks guys!

MSI Afterburner was exactly what I was looking for and works great. It is able to maintain a proper temperature on my card at a lower fan speed than I was using.

Ashasx · 10-24-2011, 01:11 PM

If you also don't have a good pair of headphones, I suggest you get some.

Drowns out some of the background noise so you can turn up the fan speeds to levels which would annoy you without them.

Nehkara · 10-24-2011, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashasx

If you also don't have a good pair of headphones, I suggest you get some.

Drowns out some of the background noise so you can turn up the fan speeds to levels which would annoy you without them.

Great idea, thanks Ash!

SoulOfTheFlame · 10-25-2011, 12:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanni

I've used both EVGA Precision and MSI Afterburner and prefer Afterburner. Afterburner lets you set a fan profile graph that turns up the fan speed based on temperature.

However like Hack said if 55% is to loud this won't help with that issue.

Wow. Awesome. Might have to jump on this

Nage Waza · 10-25-2011, 05:50 AM

Open cases are also tougher to cool which is counter intuitive.