Fanless 5750 Club3D hot as hell, despite good airflow. Help!

Anatorax · Post by **Anatorax** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 3:49 am

Hi, guys! I got tired of the constant whine of 5770, so I got a fanless 5750 from Club3D instead. The first thing I did was the Furmark stability test and was disappointed. I have a Silverstone FT02 case with Air Penetrator fans, which are all known for decent airflow. I had them undervolted with a Xigmatek Monocool controller (about 5-7 Volt).

With the newest drivers 10.9 and latest Furmark 1.8.2 the card hit 99 degrees in about 5 minutes (stability test, 1920x1080, nothing else). I bet it would go even higher, if I had not stopped the test. I read people getting temps from 60 to 90 on the Furmark stress test on an open bench without airflow. HOW? Are such temps normal or I am doing something wrong?

Thanks!

P.S. While gaming (Just Cause 2 for example) the temps get up to about 82 degrees though).

Post by **CA_Steve** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 4:36 am

First, 82C while gaming won't hurt the gpu. They are designed to withstand 100C kind of temps.

Does the gpu temp drop quickly (couple of seconds) when you stop the stress test?
How much does the case temp rise during the stress test? Does the case temp drop quickly (15-20 sec) when you stop it?

I'm not familiar with Club3D's design. I did find one review at Hardware.info. 96C playing Far Cry.

It may be that this card needs a little directed air in order to get to <80C temps.

Anatorax · Post by **Anatorax** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 4:59 am

Actually, I have played JC2 for an hour right now and the max registered temperature was 95 C. I cannot say anything about the general case temperature, but GPU temperature drops by about 10-15 degrees within the first minute after the end of the stress test.

I have a 180-mm fan blowing along the card (FT02 case design), which is however undervolted, so I expected the temps be better. I think I will order a couple of Arctic Cooling fans for the Accelero S1, they should fit. I have read a couple positive reviews about them.

It is just beyond my comprehension, how people can manage to get 84 C (recent SPCR Puget Serenity review) on this card stable in Furmark.

Modo · Post by **Modo** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:38 am

Some basic ideas, maybe you haven't tried one:

Do you have the PSU pulling air from inside the case? If so, try turning it around to pull from outside of the case.

Do you have the covers for slots near the graphics card installed? Maybe removing them would help.

Are you using the fan above the CPU area? Maybe slowing it down or turning it off would help.

Do you have any of the case fans turned off? If so, remove them completely.

Cryoburner · Post by **Cryoburner** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 6:51 am

That case appears to have a rather atypical layout, which might be contributing to the problem. While rotating the video card to the top of the case might work great for cards with fans, many fanless heat sinks rely on the warm air rising out of their fins to keep cool. Directed upward like that, the heat would be rising along the entire length of the fins, reducing their efficiency, unless there was perpendicular air circulation to move it out of the way.

Cooling performance could probably be greatly improved by attaching an undervolted 120+ mm case fan to the heatsink, without adding any significant levels of noise. A case fan would likely be more effective than the Arctic Cooling turbo module fans, but those would likely help as well.

Post by **CA_Steve** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 10:28 am

Anatorax wrote:Actually, I have played JC2 for an hour right now and the max registered temperature was 95 C. I cannot say anything about the general case temperature, but GPU temperature drops by about 10-15 degrees within the first minute after the end of the stress test.

If it takes a minute for your temps to drop 10-15C, my guess is that your heatsink isn't properly attached to the gpu. Even with low airflow, it should suck the heat away from the die quicker than that.

As a comparison, I just ran Furmark with my 5770 (OEM egg cooler).

Fan set to 20%:
Test started: baseline 60C
88sec for the temp to climb to 100C. Test stopped.
10sec temp = 89C
30sec temp = 70C

Fan set to 100%:
Test started: baseline ~60C
~60sec for the temp to climb to 82C (and leveled out). Test stopped.
3 sec temp = 70C
10 sec = 65C

Try cable tying a spare fan directly to your card's cooler. If you still have high temp and a really long thermal tail, then the cooler is definately not attached well.

Anatorax · Post by **Anatorax** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 12:59 pm

Thank everybody for you input:

Cryo, with the standard layout the heatsink would be under the card, so the hot air would rise back to the card, what is even more counter-productive.

Steve, I ran some Furmark tests on it again. To be specific about the airflow first: the card is mounted vertically and I have a 180-mm fan blowing upward located about 5 cm below the card itself. The fan is AP181 ( http://www.directron.com/ap181.html ).

Test start: 49C. It took 6 min 30 sec to get to 99C on low fans. Then I pushed the card to 98C couple more times and watched how it cooled with different fans.

low fans (test stopped at 98C):
30 sec = 93C
1 min = 91C

medium fans (test stopped at 98C):
15 sec = 91C
30 sec = 90C
1 min = 86C

high fans (test stopped at 90C; leveled out):
5 sec = 85C
15 sec = 82C
30 sec = 79C
1 min = 75C

As I said, in the best case scenario with the high fans it takes 1 minute to drop temps by 15C.

Post by **CA_Steve** » Thu Sep 30, 2010 2:26 pm

I really think the problem is a poorly seated/installed cooler on your gpu.
That is a really long thermal decay.

Anatorax · Post by **Anatorax** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 9:30 am

I have taken the heatsink off and cleaned up/replace the thermal paste. The idle temps fell by good ~5C and the Furmark temp by ~3-4C. The thermal decay is still kinda long though, but I am more satisfied with the temps now at least.

Thank you all!

ghettojiggalo · Post by **ghettojiggalo** » Sat Oct 02, 2010 4:28 pm

Is your Club3D card the same as a powercolor card in the Puget review? For example, I tried both fanless powercolor 5750 and gigabyte 5750 silent cell, the gigabyte easily reaches 100 degrees while powercolor maxed in the 80's.

Anatorax · Post by **Anatorax** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:04 am

Yep, it looks the same. I don't know about the circuit board design though.

Parappaman · Post by **Parappaman** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:25 am

That's overpriced if one doesn't put low power consumption extremely high in its priority list. The Club3D should be doing well. Problem is, this case isn't as good as a P183 with passive video cards. As Cryoburner said, hot air doesn't leave the heatsink, but rather follows its entire length by going up. A single slow fan (even a Slipstream SL) strapped on it will solve this issue once and for all.