Bought two Sapphire Radeon 7970s 3GB OC with BOOST --- Running too hot?

A

ArbY

Limp Gawd
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Oct 6, 2007
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So I have two of these nifty "Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC with Boost 3GB DDR5" cards I just bought. To get an idea of what the cooler on these looks like, check the amazon pictures here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009B6Y01Y/

I installed one of them in the lower PCI-E slot, there's about a half inch of clearance between the bottom of the cooler and the bottom of the case. At full load, I've seen the bottom card hit and maintain 93C for extended periods of time. Let me just take a moment here to mention that this is without the other card installed in the top PCI-E slot. I wanted to know what temperatures I'd be getting with the card with such small clearance before I CrossFire'd them. As it turns out the other card is defective anyway, so I'm in the process of getting a replacement. I won't know what how the temps might change with CrossFire until I get the card back.

I've read that up to 105C is still safe, albeit bordering dangerous, territory for a GPU. I want to know if there's any truth to that. The case is an old steel chassis ATX form, so the bottom is obviously reflecting heat back up at the lower card. Not sure how safe these temps are or where to draw the line. Any thoughts?
 
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So no suggestions or solutions yet. I was thinking of drilling a series of holes out of the bottom and just attaching some mesh covering for the dust. Also, raising the case off the ground several more inches. Do you think this will help much at all? Hoping at least -5C to make it worth it.

It'd also be nice to know what the max safe temperature for an AMD card is. NVIDIA advertises 105C, but I can't find anything coming from AMD.
 
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I know it's a pretty awful photo, but the computer is planted in a hard to access place, simply for limited space reasons. You at least get the idea that it's low clearance, and you can tell is ~0.5" if you use the front bracket as a reference (ignoring the shadow).
 
Also would like to note I took off the side panel and the temperature dropped to 77C. Get creative and leave the side panel off with a fitted mesh "side panel" instead? Not sure how safe that is. Drill more holes in the side panel. I'm open to good ideas, or affirmation that some of my ideas are probably going to make at least a -5C difference. I can live with high 80's temps.
 
Suggestion? Try running it on an open bench and see if it still gets that hot. The card itself might be bad, (e.g., defective, too much/little thermal compound) if it's still running that hot in an open environment and in room temperatures. I'd probably suggest a better case with good airflow or more room.

Solutions? You can do a few things like water cool or ghetto water cool with an AIO unit and a fan over the voltage regulators. I'd still considering looking at another case with better airflow. Maybe a flexible crossfire cable and space the cards out further if you have the slots on your motherboard.
 
I have the same card (but only running 1 of them) but I've Oc'd mine to 1.1ghz on the core and mine has never seen above 65C I can sometimes get it into the low 60's. So the only thing I could think of is break out the Dremel and put some slots in the bottom of the case and if you need too place your PC a couple inches off the ground so it can pull outside air up into the bottom for the fans.

My two pennies.
 
ArbY said:
Also would like to note I took off the side panel and the temperature dropped to 77C. Get creative and leave the side panel off with a fitted mesh "side panel" instead? Not sure how safe that is. Drill more holes in the side panel. I'm open to good ideas, or affirmation that some of my ideas are probably going to make at least a -5C difference. I can live with high 80's temps.
Click to expand...

Sound like you need better air flow in case or get a different case. Can you take a picture of the case from the side but zoom out.
 
Install a side fan blowing directly on the GPU.

Check for proper heat sink contact and maybe replace the TIM with something better quality.

Are you getting 93 in game or running Furmark?
 
Ideon said:
I have the same card (but only running 1 of them) but I've Oc'd mine to 1.1ghz on the core and mine has never seen above 65C I can sometimes get it into the low 60's. So the only thing I could think of is break out the Dremel and put some slots in the bottom of the case and if you need too place your PC a couple inches off the ground so it can pull outside air up into the bottom for the fans.

My two pennies.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think I'm going to go to town on the bottom of the case and raise it up a bit as well. I'm leaving the side panel off for now since it's staying around 75 - 77C which is also after an OC up to 1075MHz Core. I'd certainly go higher if not for these temps.

A new case isn't an option unfortunately. I can't get a good picture of the side at the moment, I'd have to shut it off, disconnect all the cables and drag it out of its spot just to do so, call me lazy? It's like a 5 year old standard mid-tower type, steel ATX case. The PSU is mounted at the top, and you can see by my above picture that the mobo reaches nearly to the bottom.There isn't an abundance of room inside.

What I've done to improve airflow is replace the 80 [mm] fan in front of the HDD bay with a higher rated CFM one . I've also mounted two 5.25" hard-drive cooling bays in the front, but with no hard-drives. This is what I'm talking about: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032UUGF4

It's just what little I could think of to improve the air flow in this case.


I was getting 93C with the card's load at 98-99%
 
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My sapphire oc cards never saw any higher than 75 even at 1125 mHz in xfire. Why is a new case not an option?
 
93oC is WAY too hot for long term reliability. You want to shoot for 80oC max.

These 7970s with aftermarket coolers are meant to run cooler than stock (not hotter). I'm running an overclocked asus 7970 dcII and I always keep it under 70oC.

There's a few issues here.

First these coolers need some free space around the face of the card to suck in air. They do very poorly when sandwiched up next to another card or the bottom of the case. The amd stock coolers have vents on the end of the card that allow some airflow even if sandwiched.

Next problem is that all this heat is getting dumped into your case, which obviously has very, very poor airflow. You can see this by the temp drop when you removed your side panel. Adding another 7970 is going to make your problem significantly worse, as you will now have 2x7970s dumping tons of hot air into a poorly vented case. What exactly was your plan to evacuate all this hot air?

You could try rigging a 120mm fan directly in front or on top of the cards and see what difference that makes. Honestly though, if you are seriously considering crossfire, you need a new case, badly! Don't forget, air intake is only 1 part of the equation. You also need to expel that hot air OUT of the case. Else, you'll just be recycling hot air (which is what is happening when the side panel is on)

That hdd cooler likely isn't going to do much at all. You need serious airflow to cool crossfire 7970s that are dumping hot air into your case. Considering your current setup, you would be better off with 7970s that expel air OUTSIDE your case.
 
Adding to the fact that the case is poorly ventilated it sounds like it's not getting any fresh air coming into the case easily either. I know you said you were space confined but keeping the case where it can breath would help as well. Anything you can do to get it from out of the corner/ under the bed/ wherever you're hiding it?
 
Considering the pc listed in your sig, why exactly are you mounting 2x 7970s in a 5yr old case with no ventilation? Shouldn't you be mounting those in your 600T? Considering your lack of airflow, you seriously made the wrong choice in purchasing 7970s that expel hot air into the case. I'm assuming the cpu is also expelling hot air into the case as well? Sounds like an oven in there. Recipe for disaster IMO and the poor planning seriously isn't helping matters. I'm hoping your just helping out a friend with his system, considering someone that owns a pc with the specs in your sig *should* know better..
 
I have an old P183 chassi. I bought 2 7970 Matrix, that are 3 slot - Obviously not good for my chassi, which I realized too late.

I ran 2x6870 dcII earlier, that were 2,5 slots, and that worked well - These 3slot cards did however, overheat quite quickly in heavy games.

So, to solve it, I did the following:
* I removed the plastic wrapping shell that surrounds the card, exposing the heatsink to the airflow of the case.

* I installed 2 120mm fans directly at the graphiccards, by drilling two holes in the chassi door.

* I built a tunnel of heavy duty paper from the front intake 120mm fan, to encapsulate the front end of the cards, forcing the chassi door fans, to suck air past the cards, from the front intake. This kept the rest of my case cool, instead of blowing air into the cards from the door - Blowing cool air directly on the cards kept their temp lower, but the rest of the case temps went up (obviously).

* I connected the door fans to the motherboard, and with Speedfan I use the sensor for the GPU temp, to control the side door fans, which starts spinning when the GPU is 60c or higher (which means they are being used). This way, my computer is incredibly silent during idle and desktop mode, while it naturally ramps up quite a bit during gaming.


Max temp on the top card is now 82 and the bottom card 72. With the air blowing INTO the case from the side door, the top card maxed out at 72c, but the bottom card went up to 90 (I installed the side door fans a tiny bit too high up, 2cm too high) and the CPU and RAM on the motherboard went up with several degrees also.

So, some modding of the case saved me from my poorly planned purchase - I should naturally have gone with reference design cards for CF, but since the old ones worked, and i really really really wanted the 4 DP connectors from the Matrix/DCII cards, I just didn't investigate good enough.
 
Are the GPU fans running 100% when you hit those temps?

Leave the door off.

Mount a 120mm fan behind the cards to circulate air.

Get a better ventilated case.:D
 
At 1100MHz Core, I'm getting 86C and 73C, that's after a further overclock and drilling a lot of holes out of the bottom and raising the case up 1.5-2". I'm going to have to put a 120mm fan on the side of the case or figure something else out since I'd rather the bottom card not run so hot. I guess I'll leave the side off for now.
 
Another option could be to get a reference based 7970 that vents the GPU heat out of the case rather than into the case. The reference based coolers aren't the best for temps, but if you absolutely cannot get another case, I think a reference card would do better in this environment.
 
possible to makw some holes at bottom of case to mount 2 slim 120mm fans?
 
For what it's worth I have 2 of these cards (Sapphire 7970 OC with Boost) running in Crossfire and getting awesome benchmark results. Without voltage adjustments, OC at 1075/1500 and temperatures between 60-65 both cards under full load (2560x1440).

These cards aren't cheap, to get the most out of them it's best to have at least a 3-4 inch clearance between the bottom card and case floor. If not there's going to be a lot of stress on the cooling fans to run at higher RMP than their designed to under that load. I'd say invest on a new case. With an older rig too take care of the power consumption if you haven't change the power supply.

Also take not of which PCIE slots are being used cause usually the lower ones use a lower multiplier
 
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I have a few of them, you can undervolt them fairly effectively and lower temps quite a bit. I run mine from 900/1000/1030mV to 1000/1500/1100mV. Some cards are better than others but lowering the voltage saves about 70W and drops temps ~15 degrees.
 
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