Fan blowing into GPU, good idea?

[Katzenritter]

Recently I picked up a used Sapphire Nitro+ RX 580 4GB, and it runs hot. Temperature is raising quickly and it capped at 75C then it throttle down performance.

My reference is this video, in it, this exact same card model has temperature of 69-70C running game maxed out.. my card can only run the same game at medium and it already reached 75C then slows down, giving sub 50fps. Running maxed out would only gets me half or a third of the fps. Tried in the same games as in the video.

I figured there might be something wrong. I intend to change the thermal paste and pad, and the place where I'm buying the thermal compound also selling this fan bracket to be put right under GPU. This is my first video card and I'm reluctant to disassemble it, I think I wanna try the GPU fan first.

Is it a good idea though? Would it mess up the airflow into the GPU or would it aid to get more cool air inside?

This is my case model and the fan bracket that I'm talking about.

Any thought?

 

[kurosagi01]

GPU fans act as an intake which is pulling air in and blowing out of the rear ventilation holes. If you have fans mounted at bottom or in front then they generally should be acting as intake to bring cool air into the case. Which your CPU and GPU fans can suck in and then exhaust it back out of the ventilation hole or exhaust fan.
Your temperature may be down to the case airflow or if you RX580 has got on a bit then changing the thermal paste would help too.

 

[Sithaer]

I have x3 fans at the bottom of my case but they are also intake by design. 'IN Win 101'

Can't say that I ever noticed issues with it.
In my case its an undervolted Gigabyte Gaming RX 570 with manually fixed 40% fan speed,usually stays in the 60-68 celsius range depending on what I play and barely going over 70 during summer days. 'its hot in my room during summer'

Around 73-75 is pretty normal for most 400-500 serie RX cards with stock settings.

 

[mrthanhnguyen]

You can try liquid metal on your card. If its not enough, you can buy the kraken g12 to watercool it.

 

[PLAfiller]

Hi, I have the exact same card in my main RIG. You are right it tops at about 70 degress when playing and my case is not really special. Something is either wrong with your card or your setup in general. Sounds more like the card ain't working properly. I am gonna jump on a leg and guess you bought it used? Local ad or ebay/amazon etc? May be check if it has the correct BIOS version, there is a switch on the side for "Silent" and "performance". How do you control the fans in your case? Unless you have pretty good fans holding them on 20% of their potential won't help the temps inside.

You can try liquid metal on your card. If its not enough, you can buy the kraken g12 to watercool it.

Guy just bought his first card. I've had G12 and it's a long ball that is not worth it in this case IMO.

 

[xman2007]

Take the 75c limit of it is good up to around mid 80s/90c before it will throttle on its own it is designed this way, and unless you have the same components and test setup then it's useless comparing your system with a reviewers . Use a more aggressive fan curve but don't now hot air from the psu compartment into the gpu when gaming it will likely increase the temps further

 

[Katzenritter]

I forgot to mention this on my post, my case is lying on it's side, not standing up. Not sure how it makes a difference.

GPU fans act as an intake which is pulling air in and blowing out of the rear ventilation holes. If you have fans mounted at bottom or in front then they generally should be acting as intake to bring cool air into the case. Which your CPU and GPU fans can suck in and then exhaust it back out of the ventilation hole or exhaust fan.
Your temperature may be down to the case airflow or if you RX580 has got on a bit then changing the thermal paste would help too.

My case is configured exactly as in the above picture, 3 front in-take, 1 back exhaust, 2 top exhaust.
The fans below GPU will be intake, blowing from bottom-to-top, to blow more air into the GPU. Yes I'm gonna do the thermal paste as last resort, if the fan solution is not working, but is the fan worth trying though?
Thanks.

I have x3 fans at the bottom of my case but they are also intake by design. 'IN Win 101'

Can't say that I ever noticed issues with it.
In my case its an undervolted Gigabyte Gaming RX 570 with manually fixed 40% fan speed,usually stays in the 60-68 celsius range depending on what I play and barely going over 70 during summer days. 'its hot in my room during summer'

Around 73-75 is pretty normal for most 400-500 serie RX cards with stock settings.

I see, thanks, so the fans blowing into GPU won't cause any trouble then?
I'm not sure about normal... but even if 75C is the normal temperature, still, I'm not getting the normal performance, according to the video that I linked.

You can try liquid metal on your card. If its not enough, you can buy the kraken g12 to watercool it.

Thanks for the advice! I wouldn't dare using conductive compound. Also I don't think cooling solution like Kraken G12 is worth the price for a $100 used card.

Hi, I have the exact same card in my main RIG. You are right it tops at about 70 degress when playing and my case is not really special. Something is either wrong with your card or your setup in general. Sounds more like the card ain't working properly. I am gonna jump on a leg and guess you bought it used? Local ad or ebay/amazon etc? May be check if it has the correct BIOS version, there is a switch on the side for "Silent" and "performance". How do you control the fans in your case? Unless you have pretty good fans holding them on 20% of their potential won't help the temps inside.

Correct! I bought it used, it was a mining GPU. The seller assured me that he hasn't changed the BIOS, but I don't know how to tell if it's true, and AFAIK it's not possible to be sure.
I bought it from local ad.
I didn't know about the switch, will check, but I think it's turned to the right (performance), but if it's on Silent, why is it hotter than usual, and if it's on Performance, why is it slower than usual.
My case fans aren't controlled, they're 6 simple 1300RPM fan directly connected to PSU.
Thanks.

Take the 75c limit of it is good up to around mid 80s/90c before it will throttle on its own it is designed this way, and unless you have the same components and test setup then it's useless comparing your system with a reviewers . Use a more aggressive fan curve but don't now hot air from the psu compartment into the gpu when gaming it will likely increase the temps further

I didn't set any limit, the fan curve is controlled by AMD driver. The OS is fresh.
I understand that, but by having almost half the performance at higher temp of same GPU model, is kind too big of variance even if I'm not running the exact same components and setup as long as I'm not CPU bottlenecked.
That's my concern as well.. I don't know whether my PSU is contributing heat or not (I'm not gonna touch the inside of my PC when it's on, especially the PSU). My PSU is Corsair CX 650 by the way, if you by any chance know whether it runs hot or not.
Thanks.

 

[Sithaer]

What you could also check is the clock speed of your card while stressed/gaming.

Mine had an issue where it only boosted between 1000-1100 instead of ~1200-1244 'thats the boost speed of my card model', needless to say I was also losing out on a fair bit of performance.

What fixed that for me is undervolting the card in the AMD driver and also increased the power target limit, now its running at a fix 1244 in games and also lowered the card's temp.

From what I can see your card should run around 1400, your PSU should be also fine as I ran a RX 580 Aorus Xtreme with a 450W PSU for testing purposes 'not a good idea but it worked'.

 

[xman2007]

It shouldn't be throttling at 75c can you open the gpuz sensors tab and screenshot it when you get the throttling /performance drop off, also use the save bios button in gpuz to upload a copy of your current bios

A screenshot of gpuz main page wouldn't go amiss either

 

[spectatorx]

It shouldn't be throttling at 75c can you open the gpuz sensors tab and screenshot it when you get the throttling /performance drop off, also use the save bios button in gpuz to upload a copy of your current bios

A screenshot of gpuz main page wouldn't go amiss either

I guess card is not throttling but rather 4GB vram limits it and it starts to stutter when game hits close to or passes 4GB of vram usage. I'm using sapphire rx580 nitro+ but with 8GB, it reaches the same temperatures of 75 degrees and stops there but i've never had it throttling because of temps.

Advice to OP: when you see stutter which you may (i understand why) perceive as possible thermal throttling you just need to lower details in game you are playing. Any further modifications will not change anything, at least to degree you are expecting. Unless we are talking about watercooling but again, this way you indeed will lower temps of gpu but 4GB vram will still be the limiting factor. Sapphire's cards are wonderfully designed and are working as good as they can be.

 

[xman2007]

I guess card is not throttling but rather 4GB vram limits it and it starts to stutter when game hits close to or passes 4GB of vram usage. I'm using sapphire rx580 nitro+ but with 8GB, it reaches the same temperatures of 75 degrees and stops there but i've never had it throttling because of temps.

Advice to OP: when you see stutter which you may (i understand why) perceive as possible thermal throttling you just need to lower details in game you are playing. Any further modifications will not change anything, at least to degree you are expecting. Unless we are talking about watercooling but again, this way you indeed will lower temps of gpu but 4GB vram will still be the limiting factor. Sapphire's cards are wonderfully designed and are working as good as they can be.

No, I've had a few 4gb 580's and never hit a vram limit where it would tank to 1/3 fps, he specifically says that it his 75c and is capped there and his performance then goes down, let's wait for the gpuz info before speculating further

 

[Vya Domus]

The GPU is not acting as an intake, it's simply recirculating air inside the case. Having front and bottom intakes is the correct way to deal with airflow as the GPU constantly needs fresh air. Ideally you should have exhauts at the top and back of the case.

 

[xman2007]

The GPU is not acting as an intake, it's simply recirculating air inside the case. Having front and bottom intakes is the correct way to deal with airflow as the GPU constantly needs fresh air. Ideally you should have exhauts at the top and back of the case.

Power supply is on the bottom with no other vents for intakes so I can't see what benefit his drawing of 3 fans sucking non existent air from that psu compartment will do, remember his gpu isn't even overheating at 75c but it seems to be stuck to that causing throttling, could well be a mining bios as it was bought from a miner, he said it hadn't been modded but how many times have we heard that, could well have power limit and temp limit applied to bios

 

[agentnathan009]

No, I've had a few 4gb 580's and never hit a vram limit where it would tank to 1/3 fps, he specifically says that it his 75c and is capped there and his performance then goes down, let's wait for the gpuz info before speculating further

I have a Gigabyte 570 with 4GB of VRAM and if I don't lower details it will stutter and get sluggish in more rendering intense areas of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Definitely have to lower details in AC Odessey

 

[Vya Domus]

Power supply is on the bottom with no other vents for intakes so I can't see what benefit his drawing of 3 fans sucking non existent air from that psu compartment will do

The PSU fan spins very slowly, doesn't move a whole lot of air. There is still plenty of fresh air that can be moved into the case.

 

[agentnathan009]

Recently I picked up a used Sapphire Nitro+ RX 580 4GB, and it runs hot. Temperature is raising quickly and it capped at 75C then it throttle down performance.

My reference is this video, in it, this exact same card model has temperature of 69-70C running game maxed out.. my card can only run the same game at medium and it already reached 75C then slows down, giving sub 50fps. Running maxed out would only gets me half or a third of the fps. Tried in the same games as in the v
I figured there might be something wrong. I intend to change the thermal paste and pad, and the place where I'm buying the thermal compound also selling this fan bracket to be put right under GPU. This is my first video card and I'm reluctant to disassemble it, I think I wanna try the GPU fan first.

Is it a good idea though? Would it mess up the airflow into the GPU or would it aid to get more cool air inside?

This is my case model and the fan bracket that I'm talking about.

Any thought

My Gigabyte Aurous 570 4GB runs about 72 C if I leave fan on auto setting. If I boost fan speed via Radeon software a couple hundred RPM then temps drop to 65-68 range. I have never had any trouble running fans at auto. 75 C is not that hot for a video card, 85+ s getting hot and near to throttling. Sapphire probably has a quiet fan curve so they allow card to get to 75 C to keep noise lower. Just raise fan curve on video card and it should lower your temps for a lot less than an add in fan bracket.

 

[Katzenritter]

Hiya everyone, thanks for taking your time to reply to my post. Also please pardon me if I don't know certain things, it's my first PC afterall .
What I can gather:

1. GPU-Z main page.

2. Stat at GPU-Z while gaming, still scene. Power is dropping from the 160W range, temp also dropping, low fps (27).

3. Another take, see the power draw dip to very low to 61W still at low 25 fps.. it will eventually climb up again up to 130-160W though, once temp reached below 60C, then temp rises to ~70C-ish, then dropping again.

4. GPU BIOS attached

What you could also check is the clock speed of your card while stressed/gaming.

Mine had an issue where it only boosted between 1000-1100 instead of ~1200-1244 'thats the boost speed of my card model', needless to say I was also losing out on a fair bit of performance.

What fixed that for me is undervolting the card in the AMD driver and also increased the power target limit, now its running at a fix 1244 in games and also lowered the card's temp.

From what I can see your card should run around 1400, your PSU should be also fine as I ran a RX 580 Aorus Xtreme with a 450W PSU for testing purposes 'not a good idea but it worked'.

Checked see screenshot.

It shouldn't be throttling at 75c can you open the gpuz sensors tab and screenshot it when you get the throttling /performance drop off, also use the save bios button in gpuz to upload a copy of your current bios

A screenshot of gpuz main page wouldn't go amiss either

75C is recorded highest by HWinfo.. it never get any further than that weirdly, during game on very intense scene it ranges 70-73C. BIOS attached. Also tried Furmark for 10 minutes.

I guess card is not throttling but rather 4GB vram limits it and it starts to stutter when game hits close to or passes 4GB of vram usage. I'm using sapphire rx580 nitro+ but with 8GB, it reaches the same temperatures of 75 degrees and stops there but i've never had it throttling because of temps.

Advice to OP: when you see stutter which you may (i understand why) perceive as possible thermal throttling you just need to lower details in game you are playing. Any further modifications will not change anything, at least to degree you are expecting. Unless we are talking about watercooling but again, this way you indeed will lower temps of gpu but 4GB vram will still be the limiting factor. Sapphire's cards are wonderfully designed and are working as good as they can be.

I see... I will test this by running the game at lowest setting. Thanks.

No, I've had a few 4gb 580's and never hit a vram limit where it would tank to 1/3 fps, he specifically says that it his 75c and is capped there and his performance then goes down, let's wait for the gpuz info before speculating further

I'll try this further.

The GPU is not acting as an intake, it's simply recirculating air inside the case. Having front and bottom intakes is the correct way to deal with airflow as the GPU constantly needs fresh air. Ideally you should have exhauts at the top and back of the case.

Got it. I already have the exhaust at top and back, that's why I'm wanting to install a bottom intake.. except it's not exactly bottom intact since the bottom part of my case is PSU and storage. The supposed bottom-intake fan will be placed right under GPU above PSU.

Power supply is on the bottom with no other vents for intakes so I can't see what benefit his drawing of 3 fans sucking non existent air from that psu compartment will do, remember his gpu isn't even overheating at 75c but it seems to be stuck to that causing throttling, could well be a mining bios as it was bought from a miner, he said it hadn't been modded but how many times have we heard that, could well have power limit and temp limit applied to bios

Hi, BIOS file attached.
I see.. I won't get the fan then, and will try to reapply thermal paste and pads instead.

I have a Gigabyte 570 with 4GB of VRAM and if I don't lower details it will stutter and get sluggish in more rendering intense areas of Rise of the Tomb Raider. Definitely have to lower details in AC Odessey

I'm not experiencing severe stuttering, except HDD induced when traveling to new area.
It's the constant low fps after temp hitting certain point, until temp dropped again then fps climbed up again, rinse, repeat. Also I'm playing at Average preset.

 

[Katzenritter]

The PSU fan spins very slowly, doesn't move a whole lot of air. There is still plenty of fresh air that can be moved into the case.

Not to mention PSU draw air from the bottom of the case, and pushes it to the back of case, not inside. At least that's my assumption.

My Gigabyte Aurous 570 4GB runs about 72 C if I leave fan on auto setting. If I boost fan speed via Radeon software a couple hundred RPM then temps drop to 65-68 range. I have never had any trouble running fans at auto. 75 C is not that hot for a video card, 85+ s getting hot and near to throttling. Sapphire probably has a quiet fan curve so they allow card to get to 75 C to keep noise lower. Just raise fan curve on video card and it should lower your temps for a lot less than an add in fan bracket.

Alright I'm finding out on how to do this. Thanks.

 

[xman2007]

Apply a manual fan curve using afterburner, try 50% when it gets to 60c 70% for 70c and 80/90% for 80c and see if that helps, there's nothing that looks out of the ordinary from that gpuz shot, also whichever game that is, you are indeed hitting the 4gb limit unless its just allocating it, turn the textures down to the next level down from the setting you have them at right now and see if that helps, it won't help you have an ultrawide monitor that's pushing more than 1080p which is about the sweet spot for a 580 though will still struggle in some new games at that res

 

[agentnathan009]

Alright I'm finding out on how to do this. Thanks.

Check this thread out, maybe the highlighted green box answer will help (https://community.amd.com/thread/215258)

 

[Katzenritter]

Apply a manual fan curve using afterburner, try 50% when it gets to 60c 70% for 70c and 80/90% for 80c and see if that helps, there's nothing that looks out of the ordinary from that gpuz shot, also whichever game that is, you are indeed hitting the 4gb limit unless its just allocating it, turn the textures down to the next level down from the setting you have them at right now and see if that helps, it won't help you have an ultrawide monitor that's pushing more than 1080p which is about the sweet spot for a 580 though will still struggle in some new games at that res

Thank you.
So to conclude:
1. There's nothing wrong with the BIOS
2. The problem most possibly lies within thermal paste went bad
3. Fans below GPU blowing air into it most likely won't help

I will update this thread once I had someone replace the paste.

AMD overlay reported incorrect VRAM usage, in Windows task manager it displayed only around 3.5 GB of VRAM used, I'm running at the lowest setting fps capped.
So I tried to change the fan curve following your suggestion and the fan sounds like jet engine always (70% at 70C and above), it can't bring the temperature below 71C, again game set at lowest setting.
Even worse, when I set it back to default, fan speed is rising very very slowly, I actually broke the 75C record and reached 79C because the fan is not spinning fast enough while power draw is maxed out. A take moments before reaching top:

It seems like the AMD default is different from what the card has when I got it.
Naturally I panicked and shut down the game immediately. Will continue to experiment with fan curve until I got the correct fan speed increase.

(picture of amd radeon software)

Thank you.

 

[xman2007]

79c is nothing to worry about if your GPU hits that high, take the fan curve down a tad until you're happy with the acoustics and the temperature, it's not an exact science, you have to find the right balance for what you are happy with, as long as you keep the GPU under 85-90c, then tweek the fan profile to your liking, I know we're recommending things for you, but you have to take some responsibility and help yourself also, play around with the fan speed etc until you're happy with it and you don't exceed say around 82c?

Thermal paste change might shave another few degrees off your temps which will help.

Also I have done a slight mod to your current bios if you are interested, I have raised the desired temp to 85c from 75c, as well as raised the power limit/TDP slightly and lowered the vram speed from 2000mhz to 1750mhz, feel free to give it a try to see how it compares if you are comfortable in performing a bios flash, otherwise, change the thermal paste, set more aggressive fan profile with increased noise and lower your in game settings, as you have an ultrawide monitor which is more taxing than standard 1080p

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

my 580 can get pretty loud although it never gets over 80
ive found removing my bottem case fans haleped it out i dont know if they where in the wrong config

 

[Sithaer]

Even tho the clock speeds are proper alright, you could still try undervolting to shave off a few degrees.
Its easy to do and worst case scenario it will crash and the AMD driver will reset itself to the default values until you find the stable undervolt for your card. 'this depends on each card,i also had to experiment with mine till I found the rock stable value I'm using now'

As you have an ultrawide monitor which is more taxing than standard 1080p

The one in his profile is a standard Full HD monitor, at least that what google finds for me.

Ultrawide would explain the less performance tho, when I switched from standard 1080p to my current Ultrawide I lost about ~10-12 FPS depending on the game.

 

[Katzenritter]

This information might be useful for me at least, so I'm putting it here. HWInfo reading:

Temps capped at 75C for all readings.. that's weird aren't they different sensors on different components.

Some values is recorded differently than Afterburner, not sure if it's because of HWInfo 2 seconds logging time or another mismatches. For instance, the max GPU Power is at 150W, but Afterburner in-game overlay reported 160-170W at max, so does fan RPM, in this it's 1700RPM-ish, in Afterburner it max out at 2400RPM-ish, mostly at 2100RPM-ish. Also as you can see I never surpassed the 4GB dedicated memory.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

play around with the fan speed etc until you're happy with it and you don't exceed say around 82c?

Thermal paste change might shave another few degrees off your temps which will help.

Also I have done a slight mod to your current bios if you are interested, I have raised the desired temp to 85c from 75c, as well as raised the power limit/TDP slightly and lowered the vram speed from 2000mhz to 1750mhz.

Yup managed to bring max temp back to 75C again after fiddling around with the curve.

Had to cancel going to town to get the paste changed.. but I ordered the paste and planning to change it myself, wish me luck and not to break anything.
I'm not gonna change the thermal pads since the price for branded/specialized GPU pad isn't justified ($40 strip of pad for a $100 used GPU!? Yeah no way).
Would you know if regular $2 thermal pads would be sufficient though? They're for low-tech generic electronic PCBs and ICs uses, and I can get them easily. Or perhaps I should leave the pads alone.

I appreciate it, though I don't know how to to flash it and after looking at tutorial here I don't think I'm comfortable doing to the flash..but might I have the modified BIOS nonetheless? Probably will try it once I'm confident enough .

my 580 can get pretty loud although it never gets over 80
ive found removing my bottem case fans haleped it out i dont know if they where in the wrong config

I see... thanks for sharing your experiences.

Even tho the clock speeds are proper alright, you could still try undervolting to shave off a few degrees.
Its easy to do and worst case scenario it will crash and the AMD driver will reset itself to the default values until you find the stable undervolt for your card. 'this depends on each card,i also had to experiment with mine till I found the rock stable value I'm using now'

It's crashing indeed, I'm following this guide on undervolting. In benchmark it was fine but in game it's crashing during intense scene. If you were to know any other more comprehensive undervolting guide, please do let me know.
I returned the voltage to default for now. Thank you.