R9 290 Heat Issues [Help!]

[joelgc]

Hey Everyone,

so my 290 arrived yesterday and yea its hot, in all terms of the word. After installing it and the new beta drivers to address the fan, it ran at around 90-95 degrees depending on what games I was playing. Honestly it hovered around those all night, not really going past or below those temps. The fan adjusted itself all night long from 40-47% as the patched has stated it would.

Now I have read that you can pull that little bit more performance by tweaking the fan speed up a little more then the now default 47%. So I bumped it up to a max of 55% as the post had stated. Obviously the card was starting to run cooler and touching the 85 mark most of the time. I guess what I am asking is this a viable idea? should I be running it at 55%? Is it better in the long run to have the card running at 95 degrees or having the fan run over the default amount?

Noise isn't really an issue, the noise of the card at 47% percent actually sounds close to the card at 55% fan speed, also with the sound of games, teamspeak and music running, I can hardly hear the PC at all. I know the card is built to run hot but just seeing those numbers honestly scares me... Do you think there will be cooling solutions in the future to replace the Ati one? without having to buy a totally new card?

I don't mind installing a new cooling solution to my problem but I am not 100% confident at it and would spit chips if I ruined my card after spending $499 AU on it. I appreciate all the help and once again love the quality of responses here at Toms Hardware.

 

[monsta]

You are all good to bump up the fan speed for it , it won't do any harm to the card and yes running the card at a lower temp is much better for it than it running at 95 for long periods.
Bump the fan speed up to 55 or even more to the point of where you can tolerate the noise from the fans.
There will be better cooling solutions for these cards, if you don't feel confident then bumping up the fan speed with MSI Afterburner will do the trick nicely and keep your temps down to run more reliably.

 

[joelgc]

Is it bad for the fan to bump it up like this?? Will the fan give out in a shorter period of time if I do so? just worried I will push to fan too hard if i turn it up... Since its default/out of the box is only 40%

 

[monsta]

The fan can handle it, don't be too concerned about it , best for the card to run cooler than it does standard.
I always adjust my fan curve to kick in higher for any card I use on my pc's. I have never encountered a fan failure ever, I've even run a card at 100 percent and the fan never failed.
Go for it , change the fan curve and adjust the fan speed to temps to your liking.
You can also add more case fans to your pc to draw more air into your case for better airflow.

 

[joelgc]

Well currently I am running with a HAF X case and a closed loop water cooling on my CPU, there is a lot of free space in the case for the card to heat up and it has good airflow. I often run my AC just to cool the room down and keep things running cool. Its just those big numbers that scare me, even though I know those numbers are okay...