Can't Cool a 4830

[angelkiller]

Hello,

All my cooling knowledge has failed me. Like the title says, I cannot keep my 4830s cool. My system specs are in my sig. Yes, I do have 2 4830s for CF. Even when only one card is in the system, it runs hot.

I have two of these. Stock cooling, as expected, was too loud, so I ditched it. With stock cooling, the cards idled ~52 and loaded at ~85. Average performance imo.

I got two Arctic Cooling S1s to replace the stock cooling. Passive cooling didn't work. 96C in Furmark is worrisome, especially when temps have not stabilized yet. So I bought 4 Scythe Kaze-Jyu Slim fans. For the uninformed, they are 100x12mm fans that run at 1000rpm max. I found them to be decently quiet at full speed, and inaudible at ~500rpm. So I got some Stretch Magic and I tied two fans to each AC S1. Final result looked like this:


So I get everything together and temps arn't what I was expecting. The cards idled at around 52 and loaded at 75C. It was much quieter, but still hot. Something else that worries me is the temperature of the actual card itself. (ie the PCB) Touching the back of the card will burn my finger. Some places are (realatively) hot and others are blistering. There are no 'warm' spots.

Just for fun, I decided to put a HR-03 onto the top card. This is the original 4 heatpipe HR-03. I put it so the heatsink is above the card. At first, I had my Thermalright Ultra-120 pointed to the rear exhauset in my P180. The card idled at ~60 and overheated in Furmark. I re-oriented my TRU so that it pointed to the top exhaust. Now the HR-03 was within a couple cm of the S-Flex (800rpm) used on the TRU. This time the card idled a few degrees lower and stabilized at ~90 in Furmark. What really bothered me was how hot the actual card and heatsink got, ignoring the numbers. I acidentially touched one of the HR-03's heatpipes. It was extremely hot. I can't describe how hot they were. It was the hottest thing I have ever felt in a PC. Even touching the end of the longest heatpipe burned my finger. Needless to say, the heatsink itself also burned my fingers. With the underside of card exposed, I finally got to feel the memory. Its GDDR3 and runs extremely hot. (it burned my fingers) Anyone see a pattern here?

Let me say that I know that all the temperatures I've mentioned are within 'thermal limits'. I also know that Furmark is an unrealistic load. Nonetheless, I still think cards should be able to withstand Furmark with higher-than-normal-but-still-reasonable temps.

So I have a few final questions.

1. 4830/4850 owners, how have you cooled your cards?
2. Are my experiences normal/reasonable?
3. How can I improve my situation? (switching cards is an option)

Thanks in advance.

[Ruu]

Lol, I signed in to start a new thread about my brand new roasting-potatoes-hot Powercolor 4830 that I've had for a week now. Then I find this thread.

angelkiller, your stock idle and load temps are the exact same as mine; I also have an Accelero S1, as well as a single Kaze-Jyu Slim, so if you'd like me to replicate your S1 cooling experiment and report back, I'd be happy to do so. To be honest though, I'm not surprised by the lack of effect the third-party cooler had on this card, and I expect that my temps with the Accelero will be the exact same as yours.

At any rate, your efforts and experiments do not instill the greatest confidence in me about the cooling options for this card... I will lurk and hope for suggestions and solutions, but I'm starting to think that as cheap as this card was, it's not worth the trouble. Perhaps the high temps have to do with the Powercolor's lack of a very aggressive undervolt/underclock in 2D? I hear that Sapphire's version of the 4830 is much more easily cooled and also consumes a more acceptable amount of power idle. Still, I couldn't turn down $65 for a card that I heard could be clocked up to 4850 performance.

Have you considered modding the BIOS to force a stronger underclock in 2D/idle? I've come across tons of guide for OVERclocking this card but no clear instructions on UNDERclocking, and being a bit of a noob at this, I'm really hesitant to experiment.

Final note---the stock cooler is unbelievably whiny and irritating. >_<

[angelkiller]

Lol, I signed in to start a new thread about my brand new roasting-potatoes-hot Powercolor 4830 that I've had for a week now. Then I find this thread.

angelkiller, your stock idle and load temps are the exact same as mine; I also have an Accelero S1, as well as a single Kaze-Jyu Slim, so if you'd like me to replicate your S1 cooling experiment and report back, I'd be happy to do so. To be honest though, I'm not surprised by the lack of effect the third-party cooler had on this card, and I expect that my temps with the Accelero will be the exact same as yours.

At any rate, your efforts and experiments do not instill the greatest confidence in me about the cooling options for this card... I will lurk and hope for suggestions and solutions, but I'm starting to think that as cheap as this card was, it's not worth the trouble. Perhaps the high temps have to do with the Powercolor's lack of a very aggressive undervolt/underclock in 2D? I hear that Sapphire's version of the 4830 is much more easily cooled and also consumes a more acceptable amount of power idle. Still, I couldn't turn down $65 for a card that I heard could be clocked up to 4850 performance.

Have you considered modding the BIOS to force a stronger underclock in 2D/idle? I've come across tons of guide for OVERclocking this card but no clear instructions on UNDERclocking, and being a bit of a noob at this, I'm really hesitant to experiment.

Final note---the stock cooler is unbelievably whiny and irritating. >_<

Whoa. We have the exact same setup. What are the odds?

I'd love to see your results with a S1 and that Kaze-Jyu Slim. Now that you mention it, I now remember that this card's idle specs arn't very "idleish", ie they're high. That might explain some of it. I have considered underclocking my card at idle. The only reason I haven't is because I also wanted to overclock the card via the BIOS while in 3D mode, and while trying to find my max OC, I ran into heat issues. (I'm at 770/925 so far)

As for how to underclock your card, this article discusses how to use Radeon BIOS Editor. Anyways, here's a screenie of the PowerColor stock clocking profile. How to interpret the info is in the article. Basically, Clock Info 0 is the boot settings and Clock Info 4, 5, 6 are used for video acceleration. Here's the tricky part. Nobody is sure whether the card uses Clock Info 1, 2, 3, or Clock Info 7, 8, 9 to determine the card's normal behavior. So here's my guess. Since the card idles at 500/700, I think that this card uses Clock Info 1, 2, 3 for no load (aka idle), medium load (aka 2D) and high load (aka 3D), respectfully. I'm not exactly sure what Clock Info 7, 8, 9 do, but I would set them equal to Clock Info 3, as that's how they were set as stock. Also shown, are 4 voltage choices. If you enter a value other than the choices, apparently the card defaults to the next higher value because currently, Ati Tray Tools reports the voltage of my card to be 1.082 and 1.46 is entered in the BIOS.

So, the PowerColor card idles at 500/750 @ 1.082v. Only slightly underclocked and not undervolted at all. When I do get around to flashing a new BIOS, my idle will likely be 160/250 @ 1.044v, the same as the reference 4830 bios. Hope this helps.

Edit: I had some incorrect info about RBE. Fixed now.

[shleepy]

Well, for one thing, 75C isn't a RIDICULOUSLY hot load temp. You won't damage the cards by running them that hot.

The case and the rest of your case will be pretty important when determining how cool your cards will be. When I had a couple of HD4850's in an Antec Solo, they ran quite hot when fanless with Accelero S1's. I put a 120mm fan blowing up from the very bottom of the case, and the temps (especially on the bottom card, but also on the top one) dropped significantly. But if you already have TWO fans blowing each card, I doubt that this is your problem.

Do you have an intake fan that's blowing in the general direction of the cards? I would imagine that this might make a difference.

[psiu]

I'm halfway to being happy I grabbed a 4670.
I'll finish being happy if it gets here and plays my games at kickass speeds.

That's insane. And even if the Sapphire was better at idle, you would still have the load issues I would guess.
Have you mashed ram heatsinks on *everything* including power and whatnot on the board?

Err, good luck!

[angelkiller]

When I had a couple of HD4850's in an Antec Solo, they ran quite hot when fanless with Accelero S1's.

But that's the problem. You have run your 4850s passively with S1s. There's no way I could run my 4830s passively.

Do you have an intake fan that's blowing in the general direction of the cards? I would imagine that this might make a difference.

That might be an issue. Before, I only had an 800rpm S-Flex on the rear exhaust, another on the CPU, and no intake. I'll try adding an intake fan, but first, I'll have to remove the HR-03 and replace it with the S1. (I'll do that in the morning)

Have you mashed ram heatsinks on *everything* including power and whatnot on the board?

Look at the card's newegg pics. The memory is cooled by 3 little metal bars that each touch two RAM chips. Since it came that way stock, I assumed it was adequate. Maybe not. As for the VRM heatsink, I removed the stock thermal pad thing and instead used Arctic Silver Céramique. I put the heatsink back on, and then removed it to make sure the VRMs made good contact.

[rei]

I'm halfway to being happy I grabbed a 4670.
I'll finish being happy if it gets here and plays my games at kickass speeds.

That's insane. And even if the Sapphire was better at idle, you would still have the load issues I would guess.
Have you mashed ram heatsinks on *everything* including power and whatnot on the board?

Err, good luck!

I downgraded from a 8800GTX -> HD4870 -> HD4670 and I am happy. It's so damn quiet.

[xev]

Sorry to hear you guys are having problems. I have a Sapphire 4830 with S1 and 120mm fan perpendicular to it. 28/42 on core.

The only thing i can come up with is its Powercoolers fault. Perhaps they cheaped out on the vrms or whatever manages the power distribution.

But i agree with shleepy, even 75 isn't necessarily too hot for a graphics card. It will still last you a good 2 years (as long as its not constantly in the 60s/70s).

Perhaps flash it to a different company, ie. msi, to trick it somehow.

That's all I can think of..

[angelkiller]

SI have a Sapphire 4830 with S1 and 120mm fan perpendicular to it. 28/42 on core.

The only thing i can come up with is its Powercoolers fault. Perhaps they cheaped out on the vrms or whatever manages the power distribution. <snip> Perhaps flash it to a different company, ie. msi, to trick it somehow.

I think you may be right. At the time I bought these, the Sapphire version was only $10 more expensive. You get what you pay for I guess.

But i agree with shleepy, even 75 isn't necessarily too hot for a graphics card. It will still last you a good 2 years (as long as its not constantly in the 60s/70s).

It's not too hot, but it's pretty hot for a 4830 with a huge heatsink and 2 relatively large (for a gpu fan) fans on it. These temps would be ok if it were a 4870 though....

[ntavlas]

I too suspect that the powercolor boards are somewhat more power hungry, I remember seeing that in a review.

That said, adding an intake to your case should help a little.

You could also experiment with adding heatsinks on the hot spots on the pcb. A southbridge heatsink above the gpu , ramsinks above the ram and vrms.

Finally I would definetely try to underclock/volt the card.

All those small steps should add up: you might end up with a max temp of 65 and a much cooler pcb.

[maf718]

Yes, the techpowerup review of this card said it used 30W more power at idle and 18-20W more in use than the reference Ati design, no wonder it is hot.

Good luck with the underclocking at idle, you may find that it will not underclock as far as the reference design without crashing due to the cheaper components used. If you use Catalyst Control Centre, you can create an Ati Overdrive profile to test your underclock frequencies before flashing the bios, if you don't want to risk a bad flash.

With regard to undervolting, if it is anything like the situation with the 4670, the manufacturer will have removed the components that allow voltage switching to save cost, and the card will always run at the default 3D voltage no matter what you set it to run at in 2D mode in the bios. (You could verify or disprove this by measuring the voltage with a multimeter or even by checking your power consumption at different idle voltages)

Good luck (from a 4670 owner)

[~El~Jefe~]

I cannot help but think that the thermal grease needs to be super cleaned and re-applied with high quality stuff. I think something is etched, offcenter or too thin.

[angelkiller]

I re-read the TPU review. How do you make a card use 30W more on idle?? I know downclocking and undervolting it helps, but I'd be downclocking it by ~70% but only undervolting it by ~3.6%. I've heard that lowering frequencies only helps a little, but lowering voltages helps alot. Right now, I'm going to flash the BIOS with lower idle clocks/voltages and add an intake fan. Specifically, I'm changing the idle to 160/500 @ 1.044v and the 3D settings will be 750/920 @ 1.082v

I've reapplied the heatsink and thermal paste numerous times now. Every time I replace it, I use a paper towel to wipe the old paste off, then with a different paper towel, I use 70% isopropyl alcohol on both surfaces. I then put a little bit of AC Céramique and use an (alcohol cleaned) razor to spread it out. In the end, the layer is pretty thin. My goal is to make it so I can't see the GPU, ie the sayer is uniformly white. All the times that I have removed the heatsink, the remaining impression indicated that good contact was being made. However, I've had some contact issues in the past using the AC S1 Rev 2.

[Ruu]

I'd love to see your results with a S1 and that Kaze-Jyu Slim. Now that you mention it, I now remember that this card's idle specs arn't very "idleish", ie they're high. That might explain some of it. I have considered underclocking my card at idle. The only reason I haven't is because I also wanted to overclock the card via the BIOS while in 3D mode, and while trying to find my max OC, I ran into heat issues. (I'm at 770/925 so far)

Lol, we must be the same person! I too wanted to OVER clock the card for 3D and games. But this business of these ridiculous temps at idle makes me wonder if the card is going to simply explode when overclocked.

As a point of interest, someone on Extreme Overclocking Forums has managed to hit 865/1262.5 on his 4830. He's also done some all-out, attach-custom-flattened-chunks-of-copper-pipe mod, so I don't expect to be achieving such outrageous overclocks.

But notice that his load temps are the same as ours with stock clocks and stock cooling. I'm wondering if the fault is with our fan setup or something?

Thank you so much for all the info and links about BIOS mods and adjusting the clocks! I will play with the software underclock, see if that changes the temps any, then put the Accelero+slim Scythe fan on and take some notes. Will get back to you.

P.S.: Is there any way to make sure that one's 2D underclock is stable? 3D testing I get; 2D testing... not so much. Do I just keep bumping the numbers down until my desktop crashes? Lol.

[angelkiller]

BTW, some of the RBE info I gave in my earlier post is incorrect. I'll edit it in a sec.

That guy with the 865/1262 OC has the Sapphire version.... Whyyyy did I get PowerColor?

I don't know of any ways to test 2-D settings. If it crashes, it obviously isn't stable. The reference 4830 does 160/250 so maybe that's a starting point. I'm getting ready to do some 2-D clock testing, so I'll have some results soon.

[Ruu]

All right, I will wait patiently for your 2D results---you are obviously more knowledgeable in that area than I am.

I will pop on the Accelero and see if I get the same temps you did when you used the Accelero on yours. We'll see if our respective case airflow situation changes things much or if it really is that this card is the problem....

[angelkiller]

Luckily, the bios flash was successful. However, I didn't get the expected results. This is the BIOS that I flashed to the card. Matter of fact, that is the BIOS that I got from the card itself after the flash.

Now, this behavior is quite odd. Let's see what RivaTuner has to say. Surprising indeed. The card is switching from 160/500 to 750/920, which are my intended idle and 3D profiles. The issue is that it is switching about once every second or two. My guess is that 160/500 is too slow to render the desktop, so it jumps to 750/920 in order to compensate, at the OCed speeds, it renders what it needs to, then sees that there is no demanding load and drops back to 160/500. Then the cycle repeats. Also notice that there is constant GPU usage around 10%. (Eventually the graph stops spiking and just fluxuates between 8-12%)

Hmmm. Just got some more interesting results. Let's look at Ati Tray Tools' monitoring app. (Wasn't aware of this until now, very nice!) Very interesting. This app can show the voltage. As you can see, everything is working as it should! Except for the timing. So this confirms that the dynamic voltage/clock switching works. However, I don't want it to clock up at the desktop like it currently is. In that pic, the graph updated every 10ms, so the period that it is downclocked is actually very short. In fact, it was only a tiny dip at 1000ms. I'd also like to note that when the RivaTuner's HW Monitoring thing was running the GPU did not downclock at all. After I closed it the GPU was downclocked.

Actually, I take some of that back. According to ATT's monitoring app, the GPU stays clocked down most of the time. It only jumps up when I click some other window and a few seconds after switching to the window, the clocks jump back down.

So much info.... Here's what I think is happening. I think that RivaTuner's HW app uses more GPU power than ATT's app. So when displaying RivaTuner's app, the GPU spends more time in OCed mode. When in ATT's app, the GPU spends more time in idle mode.

So, I think I have a general conclusion. I think that 160/500 is too slow for ordinary tasks, which explains why the GPU clocks up so frequently. (ie when changing windows)

Now, I see two options. First, I can change Clock Info 2, or the 'medium' profile. I'd change that to something like 400/500. Then when 160/500 is too slow, it clocks up only a little, then back down. That way when it fluctuates, it's between really slow and slow, versus really slow and really fast. But this method assumes that 400/500 is adequate enough for 2D needs. So my second option is to keep playing around and try to find the minimum speed at which 2D tasks can be completed. I already know that 500/750 works fine.

I think I'm going down the second route and will try to find the slowest clocks for 2D. But I still wonder how the reference 4830 works at 160/250. Maybe it was designed to throttle between 160/250 and 575/900?

Edit: I frequently mentioned that I changed my idle clocks to 160/500. However, in both of my pics, the actual speeds idle clocks were 160/750. This is a mistake on my part. I forgot to change the 750 to 500 when editing the BIOS. So in my post, 160/500 is really 160/750.

Edit 2: 1.044v is not enough to run 750/920.

Edit 3: I tried setting the idle to 300/750. Same thing as 160/750. Now I'm going to go back and try 500/750 which are stock speeds. I want to make sure they don't clock up. I also did a little experiment. I changed Clock Info 7, 8, 9 to 740/920. So when those profiles are used, I'd be able to tell. At no time did the GPU clock ever run at 740MHz. So as far as I'm concerned, Clock Info 7, 8, & 9 are not used on the PowerColor 4830. Another thing of possible interest, I set the fan to turn off below 50C. However, the card does not have the ability to turn off the fan, instead the fans run at 30%. I looked at the fan profile via ATT instead of RBE and ATT confirmed that where I had 0's, the card set to 30, indicating the minimum fan duty cycle is 30%.

EDIT 4: Got some good info guys. You know Clock Info 7 8 & 9 in RBE that I said weren't used earlier? Well they are. Clock Info 7 8 & 9 are Crossfire Profiles. That's right, when your card is in Crossfire mode, it uses Clock Info 7, 8 & 9 instead of 1, 2 & 3. I discovered/confirmed this because with my second card installed, my clocks do not change at all. Ever. But I know I changed the stock BIOS so that it would idle at 160/250. In fact, when I extract the BIOS from the card, Clock Info 1 is 160/250, and my card idles at 575/700.

[Ruu]

angelkiller,

Hooray for a slightly sucessful BIOS experiment! I eagerly await your 2D conclusions... so that I may profit as well, ha ha. I agree with your conclusion that 160/500 is too slow for the plain desktop environment. As for how the other 4830 models do it... maybe they have physically different RAM chips, which affect the performance in a desktop environment? Is that likely? xev mentioned the possibility a few posts back....

As for my own experimentation:

1) I left my whole setup the way it was and stress-tested with RTHDRIBL. Idle temps 58, load temps 100+ (got up to 102). I got nervous and stopped the test.

2) I took out my Audigy 2 ZS, which was occupying the PCI slot next to the PCIe slot and was close enough to the Powercolor to almost touch the heatsink's fins. Ran RTHDRIBL again. Idle temps 48, load temps 78.

3) I cleaned up/out the stock thermal paste and applied Arctic Silver 5. Put the stock heatsink back on, tested again. Idle temps 45, load temps 79. Hmm, interesting.

4) I cleaned all the paste up/out again, zip-tied a single Kaze-Jyu Slim to an Accelero S1 Rev. 2, and tested it once more. Idle temps 41, load temps 64.

Before I tried all this, I was hoping to blame the card for its roasty temperatures, but it seems that I had simply had poor airflow or something. I will leave the stress/imaging program on for a few hours this evening and see if temps climb any higher.

This basically means that this card CAN be brought down to reasonable temps with airflow alone. angelkiller, perhaps you should experiment with one fan per Accelero instead of two? Is it possible that the airflow of two fans together is somehow creating interference?

Other thoughts: Every single component on this card is unbelievably hot. I went around poking random bits of the card, touch-testing the temps, and everything from the heatsink to the RAM to the capacitors to the metal bracket attaching it to the case was either quite warm or blisteringly hot. Makes me nervous.

Also: I need a new sound card, since there is no way the PCI Audigy can stay in there. Sad.

Also: Idle wattage consumption is still ridiculous. Hopefully the BIOS business can bring that under control, too!

[angelkiller]

That's crazy how you took out your sound card and got 10C drops on idle.... Does that card run hot? Was it blocking airflow?

Ok, I did the exact same tests as you did. Only difference is that I'm using an AC S1 Rev 1. Here are my results. The vertical pink lines are mine. Before the first pink line, the card was idle. In between the lines, the card is running rthdribl. After the second pink line, I tried changing some settings several times, which caused rthdribl to puase, dropping load and temps. Just ignore that part.

My temps are nearly identical to yours. Idle was around 40C, load around 60C. Now remember that this test was done with only one of my cards and my case side panel was removed. Also the card was OCed. But the temps I gave earlier were of the top card with another 4830 below it. (Which dumped lot of heat onto the first one.

Every single component on this card is unbelievably hot. I went around poking random bits of the card, touch-testing the temps, and everything from the heatsink to the RAM to the capacitors to the metal bracket attaching it to the case was either quite warm or blisteringly hot.

Something else that worries me is the temperature of the actual card itself. (ie the PCB) Touching the back of the card will burn my finger. Some places are (realatively) hot and others are blistering. There are no 'warm' spots.

Yep. Same here.

As for my bios flashing experiments, I think I have a conclusion. Right now I have the card essentially back at stock. (500/750 @ 1.044v during idle, 750/920 @ 1.084 during load) Even though the 2D settings are essentially the same as stock the card still frequently bounces up to full speed, which indicates that 500/750 (aka the stock idle mode) is not enough to render the desktop. That said, this also means that the card was designed to throttle between 500/750 and 575/900.

So I'm going to clock this card back down to 160/250 @ 1.044v. Then my Clock Info 2 will be the stock settings which are 575/900, and my Clock Info 3 settings, (aka 3D) will remain 750/925 until I figure out how much faster it can go.

There's one last experiment I'll do. Right now my card idles at 40C (remember this is with only 1 card) at a voltage of 1.044. I'm going to change the voltage to 1.084 and see if it makes a difference. That will show how much of an effect undervolting has. (I suspect very little)

[Ruu]

Yeah, the Audigy was almost covering the opening of the heatsink; it was that close to touching the graphics card. It must have been more or less cutting off all of the fresh air to the graphics card fan, as well as preventing it from exhausting properly.

But I've tried the onboard, and I've tried the Audigy, and I still think the Audigy sounds better, so I was hoping I could keep it. Guess I'll have to get the Xonar DX; the Accelero+fan has taken up my only PCI slot.

I'm disappointed that the card has apparently not taken well to lowered clocks and voltages, though I'm not all that surprised; all of the reviews on this version of the card seemed to imply pretty limited ability with respect to that sort of thing. Again, will wait for the results of more experimentation.

[psiu]

As for my bios flashing experiments, I think I have a conclusion. Right now I have the card essentially back at stock. (500/750 @ 1.044v during idle, 750/920 @ 1.084 during load) Even though the 2D settings are essentially the same as stock the card still frequently bounces up to full speed, which indicates that 500/750 (aka the stock idle mode) is not enough to render the desktop. That said, this also means that the card was designed to throttle between 500/750 and 575/900.

So I'm going to clock this card back down to 160/250 @ 1.044v. Then my Clock Info 2 will be the stock settings which are 575/900, and my Clock Info 3 settings, (aka 3D) will remain 750/925 until I figure out how much faster it can go.

There's one last experiment I'll do. Right now my card idles at 40C (remember this is with only 1 card) at a voltage of 1.044. I'm going to change the voltage to 1.084 and see if it makes a difference. That will show how much of an effect undervolting has. (I suspect very little)

That can't be. Something is screwed up somewhere, whether it's the monitoring software I don't know...try watching GPU frequency in GPU-Z, have it record in the background for a bit.
My new 4670 stays at 165/250. Heck, I've had no problem with my old X800's at 125/250...or any of the muuuuch older early AGP cards. There is NO way a 4830 has to run at 750 to render your desktop.

[angelkiller]

That can't be. Something is screwed up somewhere, whether it's the monitoring software I don't know...try watching GPU frequency in GPU-Z, have it record in the background for a bit.
My new 4670 stays at 165/250. Heck, I've had no problem with my old X800's at 125/250...or any of the muuuuch older early AGP cards. There is NO way a 4830 has to run at 750 to render your desktop.

I thought something was wrong. But I showed you the graphs.... Something odd is happening now.... I flashed back to stock and it's not downclocking at all. Stays at 575/900. Temps are awesome though, 38 idle. But my room is much cooler than it was yesterday.

So I have some more semi-conclusions. This card definitely runs hot and so far, downclocking or undervolting has little to no effect. However, when using a single card, the thermals can be controlled. But the problem comes in when I close my case and add another 4830 below this one. Then I get idles in the 50s and such. Is there no solution? Maybe I could somehow duct an intake fan to the cards and have it blow out the rear of the case?....

On a completely unrated note, I have some single card, case open, AC S1 passive results. With the fans stopped, it idles at 48C, rthdribl loads at ~80C and Furmark loads at ~80C. I think that's reasonably acceptable.

Another random point about fan control. I noted earlier that you can't set the fan below 30%. Well I'm partially wrong. The bios does not support setting the fan below 30%. But ATT and the card itself have the ability to go lower.

Yet another point. The card was artifacting pretty badly in FurMark.... It was only at 88C...., but the PCB got no airflow. I think the memory isn't being cooled adequately, the tiny metal 'bar' on them is scorching hot. (100C+)

I made a little graph of the Kaze Jyu Slim's rpm vs Duty Cycle (aka %). Oddly, this fan spins at 1300rpm at full speed. No problem though

And I won't be able to run any tests until much later tonight.

[Kaleid]

Too much text to read. So I'll sum up my PowerColor ATI HD4830 512MB GDDR3.

Modded bios, have not changed voltages: 160/200 2d mode. Gives idle temp about 30C.
O/C to 700/900 (ie nothing on memory). Temp about 60C

Use a AC S1 rev 2 with 1x Scythe Slipstream 800rpm. I get artifacts with 600rpm fan.
2x 500rpm slipstream in the case, only exhaust. CPU is running passive.

Powerdraw from wall about 100w idle. Up to 220w with Crysis (not calculated: monitor and sound setup)

[Ruu]

angelkiller,

Based on Kaleid's post, have you tried clocking the card down to 160/200 on stock voltages? I think you said you tried 160/200 on reduced voltages, but not stock. Then again, I guess not reducing voltage doesn't really affect temps/power consumption? Then again, every little bit helps? Lol.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to keep this card; perhaps I'll be more impressed with it when I overclock it a bit. It really was a steal at the price....

[psiu]

I saw the deal on this card as well, guess I'm glad there was a rebate involved. I have an undying hatred for rebates.

I don't think it was this thread, but maybe another, but as you pointed, no airflow over all the other components might be the culprit even with auxiliary heatsinks...of course two 100mm fans kind of kills that argument.

Do you have a side vent?
Fan controller? Might need to have some industrial strength cooling when gaming, cranking up intake and exhaust fans to keep cooler air in the vicinity.

[enobm]

Hello,

I have two of these. Stock cooling, as expected, was too loud, so I ditched it. With stock cooling, the cards idled ~52 and loaded at ~85. Average performance imo.

I got two Arctic Cooling S1s to replace the stock cooling. Passive cooling didn't work. 96C in Furmark is worrisome, especially when temps have not stabilized yet. So I bought 4 Scythe Kaze-Jyu Slim fans. For the uninformed, they are 100x12mm fans that run at 1000rpm max. I found them to be decently quiet at full speed, and inaudible at ~500rpm. So I got some Stretch Magic and I tied two fans to each AC S1.

first i must sa f*kingly nice setup i first wonder what a hell of accelero turbo modules did you get?
Kaze-Jyu (kaze juny as i use to pronounce) explained me a lot. These 100mm 'monsters have only 15CFM @1000rpm and (27.6CFM for 2000rpm models) and that's pretty poor considering some crappy 1000rpm 120mm like AF12025L have 37CFM of direct stream and costs half of that Kaze-Jyu. Yeah it's not slim i know But that's 37CFM of direct stream to the core vs. two nice breezes (2x15CFM) that might interfere their flow in some parts.

So you should try some higher speed fans cause even 2500rpm w/ fluid bearings (FDB) is not loud and you need pretty good intake of cold air in front of bout cards cause stalled hot air around two 120W monsters wont simply create bubble area around cards w lower temperature than in the rest of case.

I found out that even 2x80mm @2000rpm PWM controlled on Accelero TwinTurbo (40CFM total) are usually not better than stock cooler when you connect them directly to card and let the firmware take care of the rest. Only when manually connect them to 7V an 12V you'll get massive drop in core temp. Of course ambient temp is usually always better that on the stock cooler.

[enobm]

Now, this behavior is quite odd. Let's see what RivaTuner has to say Surprising indeed. The card is switching from 160/500 to 750/920, which are my intended idle and 3D profiles. The issue is that it is switching about once every second or two. My guess is that 160/500 is too slow to render the desktop, so it jumps to 750/920 in order to compensate, at the OCed speeds, it renders what it needs to, then sees that there is no demanding load and drops back to 160/500. Then the cycle repeats. Also notice that there is constant GPU usage around 10%. (Eventually the graph stops spiking and just fluxuates between 8-12%)

It looks like it doesn't like underclocking

a while ago when i get myself 2900pro (powerhungry mf sob) with 600Mhz stock i played around to save some power. In facr you could set it down to 180Mhz or so thru AtiTool 0.27b. And i use to monitor power draw in RivaTuner (core current) on that digital voltera psu it has so i noticed it sucks a lot more around 82A when OC @760MHz (no any volt mods or bios tweaks) and @600MHz it sucks only ~55-60A. I see that @~430Mhz it sucks only ~38-41A. All below that 430Mhz was in fact more instable in power draw and didn't notice any significant temp drop or power drop just system instability.
So i get to (wrong?) conclusion that from some 430Mhz up to whatever i can squeeze (maybe 800Mhz+) there are some predefined values in BIOS that control GMU-mem communication anything above beyond that is a waste of time and under your modding passion.

I then wonder how it reflects on my old 1950pro that i had before and see that stock 575Mhz card could be easily downclocked to about 490MHz but anything below was a problematic (no that kind of spikes). But i wonder if i downclocked it at all below that or it was just that application says so (ATT/RT) but in fact no performance drop was there in the games.

So my guess is that BIOS pre-settings considering memory and GPU doesn't allow you to downclock it below some limit just like 3870 couldn't been OC beyond some limit w/o BIOS modding. Best and imo only right way is to find what part of BIOS is dedicated for that pre-settings and how to convert between hex-human values and directly edit it thru some hex editor. All tools that offers all-in-one solution are generic and doesnt men that w/o update will do things as they proclaim.

[angelkiller]

angelkiller,

Based on Kaleid's post, have you tried clocking the card down to 160/200 on stock voltages? I think you said you tried 160/200 on reduced voltages, but not stock. Then again, I guess not reducing voltage doesn't really affect temps/power consumption? Then again, every little bit helps? Lol.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to keep this card; perhaps I'll be more impressed with it when I overclock it a bit. It really was a steal at the price....

No, I never got around to trying 160/250 on stock voltage. However, from my other experiments, I think it's safe to conclude that lowering voltage has little effect on this card. (Kaleid has a higher voltage and gets lower temps) As for keeping it or not, I would keep it. With a single card, I got my idle to 38C & load at 52C, which is perfectly reasonable to me. MY problems com in when you add another 4830 right below the top one. With 2 4830s, case open the top idles at 45. Case closed, idle is 52. So as long as you're running only 1 graphics card, I think you'd be ok.

[angelkiller]

first i must sa f*kingly nice setup i first wonder what a hell of accelero turbo modules did you get?
Kaze-Jyu (kaze juny as i use to pronounce) explained me a lot. These 100mm 'monsters have only 15CFM @1000rpm and (27.6CFM for 2000rpm models) and that's pretty poor considering some crappy 1000rpm 120mm like AF12025L have 37CFM of direct stream and costs half of that Kaze-Jyu. Yeah it's not slim i know But that's 37CFM of direct stream to the core vs. two nice breezes (2x15CFM) that might interfere their flow in some parts.

So you should try some higher speed fans cause even 2500rpm w/ fluid bearings (FDB) is not loud and you need pretty good intake of cold air in front of bout cards cause stalled hot air around two 120W monsters wont simply create bubble area around cards w lower temperature than in the rest of case.

I found out that even 2x80mm @2000rpm PWM controlled on Accelero TwinTurbo (40CFM total) are usually not better than stock cooler when you connect them directly to card and let the firmware take care of the rest. Only when manually connect them to 7V an 12V you'll get massive drop in core temp. Of course ambient temp is usually always better that on the stock cooler.

I think you've found my fundemental problem. Cooling. I think your right that my two undervolted 15cfm fans don't move much air. But, simply adding some 120x25mm fans doesn't work. You see, there is only one expansion slot of space to add a fan. A rough measurement indicates that one slot is about 25mm of space. So if I put a normal 120mm fan in there, the bottom of the fan would literally be resting on the bottom card. Here's a quick pic from my phone of my setup. The top pink line is the bottom of my AC S1 and the lower pink line is top of the lower card. The space between them is ~25mm and the fans are 10mm. There is simply no space for a 120mm fan.

That said, I'd like to shift the focus of this thread now. Clearly underclocking/undervolting has little effects. I'd like to concentrate on how I can get airflow to to and from these cards.

So these cards need some extra airflow, how can I do this? Ducting maybe?

[mentawl]

I noticed you have a P180. Assuming the 4830s fit behind the upper HD bay, have you tried using it with a 120mm fan to act as a sort of duct from the front panel direct to the front end of the cards?