Overheating issue with XFX R9 280x cards

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Jacob227

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I am having issues with overheating vrm in my GPU, I currently have two XFX Radeon Black R9 280X 3GB cards and what happens is the main card reaches 85 degrees while at max load and then the vrm temp continues to increase unitll it hits between 108 and 114 and then at some point there the cards shut off and I have to reset my computer.
My specs are:
Nanoxia Deep Silent Dark Black Case
Intel 1150 i5 4440
ASRock Z87 Extreme3 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX 2x4GB 1600mhz
Silverstone Strider 850W PSU
2 times XFX Radeon Black R9 280X 3GB

(I am using a three screen eyefinity setup)

I was having this same issue when I only had one card but only occasionally and I didn't know what was causing it at the time. Now I have done some research and testing while monitoring with GPU Z and figured out it was the VRM overheating. In my case I have 6 fans and I set them all to max to try and get the most airflow over the cards as I could and it helped a little bit as it lasted slightly longer before overheating.

The last test I did I put BF4 on ultra at 5760x1080 and I was getting between 50-80 fps and played for nearly an hour before it shut down, the GPU temp only got to 86 at the highest according to the GPU-Z log but the VRM maxed at 112 when it shut down.
The other game I tested with was tomb raider and that was even worse then BF4 for some reason, on ultimate I was getting about 75 fps avg with a range of 60-80 and it seemed to be running that a lot better than BF4 but the vrm overheated and caused shutdown after only 20 mins or so of gameplay and when I tried putting the settings a bit lower (high) I still got vrm overheating even though the cards were running at about 70 degrees and I was getting 100-150 fps.

Any suggestions for finding a way to deal with this? I thought about getting one of those nzxt converter brackets so I can use the cheap method of water cooling with a closed system cpu cooler for each card but even then that is about $250 in Australia and it would void the card warranty by removing the heatsink so I wouldprefer not to do that.
 
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Jacob227

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No I haven't done any overclocking and sorry but I am a bit of a noob, what do you mean by "anti aliasing settings for the cards in catalyst"
I will try swapping the cards and see how that goes when I have time to do that.
Also I mentioned I have 6 fans in the case, two on the front, two on the top and one on the side and then one exhaust at the back but still overheating. Also I said the gpu temp was recorded at 86 which on full load is apparantly acceptable but the vrm was just continuing to heat to 112 or so and that caused the shutdown.
 
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Jacob227

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Yeah just in case you didn't see my reply posts (because I didn't actually post them as replies) I have one side fan blowing onto them but that is only onto the front half of the card. I was thinking about sticking another fan right in front of the cards to blow towards the back of the case. Here is the settings page from CCC http://imgur.com/np3KVlS
 
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coolcole01

coolcole01

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Ok first if you have a 60 hz monitor if you cap the fps at 60 it will save you a lot of heat. I have found on my xfx cards that the fan is most effective blowing in from the side pulling in cold air i use two on the side basically pointed at whete the chip is on each card.
 
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Jacob227

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I only have space for one fan on the side, turning on vsync puts extra strain on the cards so I don't use that, also I do have 60hz monitors so how can I cap my fps at 60?

Also I swapped the cards over and am playing bf4 on ultra and no shutdown yet but the vrm still got up to 100 at one point even though the gpu was only at 75-80 so far. I will keep playing and see if it shuts off or otherwise just check the logs after the next match
 
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Jacob227

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Another issue I have been having and am still having now is that it seems like sometimes the crossfire stops working and the framerate drops back down as if it was only running off one card (getting 25-35 on ultra on three screens). Might make a new thread about that after I sought out the overheating issue though
 
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Jacob227

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Do you get notifications if I just post in the thread or do I have to click reply to your post? I am new to posting on this site so I was just wondering
 
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Jacob227

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Ok well I will just reply then to be safe, I just finished testing in BF4 and I was having that same issue where the second card didn't seem to be running and I was getting shitty framerate, but I was running it on ultra anyway and the hottest the vrm got was 100 but most of the time it was sitting between 80-90 which is ok. This was after switching the cards so maybe the original card is faulty, I will need to look at sending it back then
 
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Jacob227

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Ok yeah I knew it had to be in fullscreen and when you alt tab it turns it off and back on when you re-enter it but I did not have the same problem when playing tomb raider at all, only when playing bf4 and it was annoying when it happened. I just finished doing a test in Tomb Raider on ultra (hair quality on normal) and then ultimate (hair quality on tressfx) I put vsync on and during the testing it only went to about 80 degrees for gpu and 90 for vrm while on ultra and then 86 for gpu and peak of 102 for vrm on ultimate but most of the time the vrm was mid 90's while on ultimate so maybe the original card is faulty then as I had no shutdowns while playing bf4 or tomb raider after switching them and the max temp as I said was 102 whereas before it was going up to 112 and shutting down

Also I did not play with gpu fan speeds while testing this time while with the other card I even tried putting gpu fanspeed to 100% for one test and vrm still overheated and shut down the cards so I think that the original card must be faulty then
 
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Jacob227

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Yeah wish I'd know that before buying them lol, although supposedly this series had a major improvement from the last it is still pretty shitty
 
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Jacob227

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I swapped them over and did some testing, and the hottest the vrm got was 102 but most of the time was between 85-95 for BF4 on same settings as before and 90-100 for tomb raider on same setting as before and there were no shutdowns while playing, and I played BF4 for about an hour with gpu-z monitoring temps. (just to note the actual gpu temp only registered as 86 at the hottest and most of the time in BF4 was at 75 and in tomb raider was around 82)

So maybe the original card is faulty but even still it is clear they have shitty cooling for the vrm if the new card still hits 100 anyway, at least it stops there and doesn't cause shutdowns though, if I can return the original card and get a new one then just put another fan blowing directly onto the card that might be enough to make it usable without overheating to much
 
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coolcole01

coolcole01

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You can use a couple things to cap fps i use msi afterburner for oc but it installs rivatuner with it and if you go into it it will have a little fps counter set it to 60 and instead of vsync its just capped keeps the card from running full steam when not needed.
 
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Jacob227

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I might get radeon pro to cap the framerate, but first I will just worry about sorting out the overheating issue which will probably involve sending the card back and trying to get a new one so I will see how that goes.

I'm going to leave the thread as unanswered in case anyone has any input for cooling solutions or other fixes and I will see how it goes when I sort out the return for the faulty card and get some better/more fans, hopefully if it will be all fixed after that
 
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Leonard Callus

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Hi Jacob.

Sorry if hasn't much to do with your temperature issue but did you have problems with connecting them with Crossfire Bridge? I have heard that some people had issues with the bridge not being long enough. If you manage (which I believe you did) what motherboard did you use and how long is your Crossfire Bridge please? Thank you!!
 
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Jacob227

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Hi Leonard, the motherboard I am using is the Asrock Z87 Extreme 3 motherboard and I just used the standard flexible crossfire bridge that came with the amd cards, it was only just long enough but it has to bend over the top card. I can measure it for you if you want but that probably won't be any help unless you know the distance between the slots on your motherboard anyway. I forgot to post in the thread but I sent the card off and it was faulty but it took about two months for the manufacturer to test it so I only just got my refund about a week ago. I am probably not going to bother with crossfire again for a while because of too much overheating issues in general especially with this series of cards. The only reason I did it was because I have an eyefinity setup and I wanted to get a better framerate as one card was sufficient but it could be better. I am probably just going to wait a bit and then buy a more expensive card now. And I would suggest that to anyone else unless they are getting liquid cooling, in that case go for it and have fun.
 
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Leonard Callus

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If you measure some distances for me - I would really appreciate (like the space between the Pci lanes and from one Crossfire port of one card to the other and length of the Crossfire Bridge given with the XFX Cards). Thank you!!
 
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Jacob227

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If you look up the motherboard (or any other one) you should be able to find a measurement for the distance between the PCI lanes, I would have to pull the card out to measure it as the card takes up two slots and I don't have time to do that right now sorry. Also I don't have the other card anymore so I can't measure the distance between the two crossfire ports. The length of the flexible crossfire bridge is 9.3 cm for the plastic back and 7.4 cm for the inside distance between the two connectors and 8.8 cm for the outside distance of the two connectors with each connector being 1.4 cm wide. (Those distances are all length-wise as the width is always going to be the same). If you need certain numbers for some parts try searching that particular part and finding the manufacturers page.
 
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