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RMA R9 290 Overheating +Severe Throttling

Tags:
  • R9 290
  • RMA
  • Graphics Cards
  • Bullet
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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May 2, 2014 10:05:39 AM

Good day ladies and gents.

I ordered a Sapphire R9 290 graphics card, within 5minutes of playing Battlefield 4 the GPU is at around 95oC and the GPU clocks throttled down to about 500-650Mhz, not really acceptable for a £300 graphics card. I try the Afterburner trick of increasing fan speeds (not something you should have to do, and it doesn't throttle, but it sounds like theres a jet plane in my office) this is at around 90% speed, also not sure about how long the Fans will last at those speeds?.

I'm writing this to make UK people aware of how much of a Clown outfit ebuyer.com are, and why it's best to now dodge em' like a bullet.

After getting my RMA accepted for overheating - and collecting my card I had a message saying my graphics card was tested, works fine and is on its way back.

They'd tested the card on Crysis 3 for 3 hours and since the card didn't crash or BSOD they class that as "IN GOOD WORKING ORDER".

So I pass on a complaint to eBuyer.com's MD, which is then dealt with by Emily his Assistant, who comes back and tells me after 21 hours of testing the card didn't fail/bsod etc once, and in regards to my previous questions responds with:

"The technician has given me the specifications of the PC that we have tested this on, please see this below.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5 2603 at 1.8Ghz Socket 2011
Board: MSI X79A-GD45
Memory: 16 GB, 2 x 8Gb Corsair Vengeance 1333Mhz
OS: Windows 7 64 Bit
PSU: Corsair CX 600 PSU"

Now, I'd class my CPU as average for a gamer, it's a 3570k @ 4.4Ghz, which vs a stock 1.8 2603 is going to absolutely destroy it, quite frankly I'm shocked - how can that system above stress test a R9 290? Not to mention the PSU they use.. That's not even enough to power a R9 290X.

Everywhere recommends a good 750w+ PSU for an R9 card. Great.

They go on to tell me:
"This has been tested for a total of around 21 hours, we have tested this on YouTube and Crysis 3, however we are still unable to locate the fault. The technician has advised the card gets very hot as you have reported, he has advised under load he has clocked the card getting to 90 – 95C and the fan then becomes very noisy but this is not due to a fault."

These graphics cards do not spin up the fan speeds past 47%, they declock the GPU which can be up to 50% performance loss, not that you'd notice on that CPU..

Further on:

"He has advised that the card is using a reference cooler, this means the manufactures are using only basic technology and materials to cool the graphics chip."

What's that got to do with the price of baked beans? If the cards overheating and underclocking so fast, surely it's not fit for purpose? It's obviously not working at it's advertised speeds.

This is the first time they've given me a temp, but they've still not told me if the cards throttling and if so how much by, nor have they still been able to tell me if the system is a closed case system or the usually "open desk" motherboard on a desk fresh air all over type testbed (to which temps and running speeds would greatly differ).

Their last comment was:

"The technician has read through your complaints and has tested this for what you are advising, however we still cannot locate this fault unfortunately, therefore the item will be returned to you."

If that PSU is as old as the CPU then the PSU isn't even kicking out 600w.


Am I being too hard on them suggesting that I'll charge back using my credit card? Has it been that long since I've tested hardware myself where it's now common place to stress test graphics cards on crap hardware that's not actually going to stress test it at all?

Is a E5 2603 sufficient for stress testing an R9 290? I know my 4.4Ghz 3570k can hit max CPU usage in BF4 but is that pulling the slack up from the downclocked R9?.

More about : rma 290 overheating severe throttling

a b U Graphics card
May 2, 2014 10:19:42 AM

The corsair 600 is enough for 290. If it was a crap brand I'd say no. As far as the CPU and ram go its not going to prevent the GPU from fully operating if its a stress test. Testing on a game was dumb of them.
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a b U Graphics card
May 2, 2014 10:20:29 AM

P.s if the corsair 600w wasn't enough they would have bsod'd or errored while testing.
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a c 161 U Graphics card
May 2, 2014 10:22:29 AM

The reference cooler for the 290 and 290x is horrible and is known to run hot, loud and cause the cards to throttle. This why just about everybody(atleast on this forum) suggests avoiding the reference cooled cards unless you plan on removing the heatsink for a waterblack or a cooler like the Arctic accelero. If you are outside the return period I would suggest an after market cooler like Toms did(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290-accelero-xtr...).
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a b U Graphics card
May 2, 2014 10:51:19 AM

You could also open the card and replace the thermal paste. Sometimes they put too much on causing the card to heat up quicker. You can also try setting a manual fan speed before you load a game. Your idle temp will be lower and it will take a lot longer to start to overheat if at all. Maybe start around 70% and increase the speed only if it throttles again. The tradeoff is that the card will be pretty loud with a referance cooler. Hope this helps.
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May 2, 2014 11:29:05 AM

I started as low as poss... ebuyer.com have told me if I reapply TIM the cards warranty would be VOID.

That's one of the reasons I sent it back, I think I'm within my rights to sending it back?

Also if the GPU isn't actually being used enough then it's obviously not going to be using full power. If that test system has very little attached it might do fine, it's very small for a test rig imo though. Crysis 3 will bottle neck to hell with that CPU.

600w for a test rig is awful though, how would they test a 290x or a SLI/XFire setup on that?
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