Toasty HIS RX 480 IceQ X² 4GB

[TheJudge]

Hoping for some of the trademark Carb advice!

I recently bought a mined HIS RX 480 IceQ X² 4GB off Carb, clean heatsink, fans had the usual layer of dust to clean off. It had a custom BIOS so I reflashed it to the original BIOS from TechPowerUp (confirmed memory and device ID first). Went fine and fired up without any hassles, drivers installed without issue (the system had actually had an HIS RX 580 IceQ X² OC 8GB in before). Testing in Heaven though the heat ramped very quickly and it throttled. Fans were working fine and fire up above 55 as is standard.

I stripped the GPU and changed thermal paste which was definitely past its sell-by date using DeepCool Z9. The heatsink plate only covers the core, fins only over VRAM and no thermal pads (the design doesn't seem made for contact between heatsink and VRAM). A thermal pad was however on the VRM as advertised by HIS.

Put it all back together and base temps dropped nicely. Its in a Thermaltake Versa H18 with three 120mm DeepCool input fans. Idle temps were in the low 30s. I tried Heaven again and stability was fine for the time I tested (admittedly not more than a few minutes). I checked temps again and it was running upto about 85 but not throttling. I then tried 3DMark11 and it reached 89 (so probably throttled as the max is 90). Temps plunge quickly after you stop a test and it quickly drops into the low 40s soon after.

I've done some reading up and I know these are toasty cards but the peak temps seem beyond what I should get from a clean card. If the max is 90 I imagine the card shouldn't be hitting that on boost on standard settings.

So, the questions: Do I go the undervolting route to try and bring some sanity to max temps? Is the thermal paste not great? Anyone else found the HIS RX 480 IceQ X² 4GB cooling solution to be inadequate for the power the card uses stock?

 

[goldfritter]

Hoping for some of the trademark Carb advice!

I recently bought a mined HIS RX 480 IceQ X² 4GB off Carb, clean heatsink, fans had the usual layer of dust to clean off. It had a custom BIOS so I reflashed it to the original BIOS from TechPowerUp (confirmed memory and device ID first). Went fine and fired up without any hassles, drivers installed without issue (the system had actually had an HIS RX 580 IceQ X² OC 8GB in before). Testing in Heaven though the heat ramped very quickly and it throttled. Fans were working fine and fire up above 55 as is standard.

I stripped the GPU and changed thermal paste which was definitely past its sell-by date using DeepCool Z9. The heatsink plate only covers the core, fins only over VRAM and no thermal pads (the design doesn't seem made for contact between heatsink and VRAM). A thermal pad was however on the VRM as advertised by HIS.

Put it all back together and base temps dropped nicely. Its in a Thermaltake Versa H18 with three 120mm DeepCool input fans. Idle temps were in the low 30s. I tried Heaven again and stability was fine for the time I tested (admittedly not more than a few minutes). I checked temps again and it was running upto about 85 but not throttling. I then tried 3DMark11 and it reached 89 (so probably throttled as the max is 90). Temps plunge quickly after you stop a test and it quickly drops into the low 40s soon after.

I've done some reading up and I know these are toasty cards but the peak temps seem beyond what I should get from a clean card. If the max is 90 I imagine the card shouldn't be hitting that on boost on standard settings.

So, the questions: Do I go the undervolting route to try and bring some sanity to max temps? Is the thermal paste not great? Anyone else found the HIS RX 480 IceQ X² 4GB cooling solution to be inadequate for the power the card uses stock?

At the risk of stating the obvious, are you sure the fan curve is allowing the fans to spool up to 100%? And, do they report actually reaching 100%?

 

[TheJudge]

At the risk of stating the obvious, are you sure the fan curve is allowing the fans to spool up to 100%? And, do they report actually reaching 100%?

Feel free to state the obvious.

I did check yesterday after 3DMark and it reported the fans at sitting at 100% after it hit 89. You can hear them ramp through the stages. That said I'm new to tinkering with settings so will take a look after work. I did read one thread that indicated that setting fans to fire up earlier can drop the max temps a bit by allowing cooling to start a bit earlier ie catching the problem before its too hot to handle so-to-speak.

 

[goldfritter]

Feel free to state the obvious.

I did check yesterday after 3DMark and it reported the fans at sitting at 100% after it hit 89. You can hear them ramp through the stages. That said I'm new to tinkering with settings so will take a look after work. I did read one thread that indicated that setting fans to fire up earlier can drop the max temps a bit by allowing cooling to start a bit earlier ie catching the problem before its too hot to handle so-to-speak.

I would start with that. A good undervolt also never hurts, and probably won't drop performance very much.

Failing that, you have two main options -
A) Get an aftermarket cooler. There are heatsink/fan coolers and closed-loop water-cooler adapter brackets like the G12, but these are pretty much unavailable in SA unfortunately. You would have to import.
B) Remove the fan shroud but leave the heatsink in place, and cable-tie a couple of normal case fans to it. Unfortunately with this solution you will not be able to set a fan curve to respond to GPU temp, you'll have to connect the fans to motherboard headers and set a curve based on CPU temps (or just leave them at a set speed). Unless you get a GPU fan header to PWM adapter cable, but again, this you would have to import.

 

[TheJudge]

I would start with that. A good undervolt also never hurts, and probably won't drop performance very much.

Failing that, you have two main options -
A) Get an aftermarket cooler. There are heatsink/fan coolers and closed-loop water-cooler adapter brackets like the G12, but these are pretty much unavailable in SA unfortunately. You would have to import.
B) Remove the fan shroud but leave the heatsink in place, and cable-tie a couple of normal case fans to it. Unfortunately with this solution you will not be able to set a fan curve to respond to GPU temp, you'll have to connect the fans to motherboard headers and set a curve based on CPU temps (or just leave them at a set speed). Unless you get a GPU fan header to PWM adapter cable, but again, this you would have to import.

Thanks! I'll give it a shot after work. Basically just hoping to get it down to 80 which seems to be relatively normal for this type of GPU!

 

[JollyJamma]

1 times 140mm fan and some cable ties will push some decent air through it.

 

[TheJudge]

I think it's actually the voltage. I changed the fan profile so it kicks in earlier but GPU-Z indicated that on boost it hit 1.25V which, after reading up, seems very high for stock with most not going beyond 1.15. So that might be the source of some of that extra heat.

I'll play with my voltage and bring them down but I think that and the fan profile will solve the issue!

 

[TheJudge]

For those interested I got the voltage down to 1.01V on full clocks. I believe it can go down further but am happy for now. Custom fan profile definitely helps too.

Power dropped from over 120W to around 105W and the peak temp using Heaven was 81 (it plateaus there for part of the benchmark).

The HIS 580 OC version has a much more beefy heatsink so I can understand why it's temps are far better than this predecessor.