Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

[Spork Schivago]

I have a video card, an R9 380 made by MSI. The fans don't appear to be working properly. I'm gonna try the card in another machine, just to rule some things out. They spin sometimes, but not very fast at all. It's so slow, I could actually count the blades on each fan while it's spinning. If I blow at the fan, it'll spin faster than what it spins while it's powered on.

I understand some fans are off until they reach a certain temp, but these two fans never kick on. The PC hard locks when we stress it a little and when we tried removing the video card, it was soooo freaking hot, we actually had to wait until it cooled down.

I believe they use PWM to control the speed of the fans on video cards, don't they? Is there anyway I could modify the video card to get the fans to always spin at max speed? Two fans connect to a small circuit board. The circuit board just connect the two fans together and has a wire coming off that connects to the video card. Both fans have a 4-pin header, but with one of the fans, one of the pins aren't being used for nothing. I think that's probably the pin that reports the speed. It's probably just reading the speed of one fan, not both.

Thanks!

[dmill89]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

I have a video card, an R9 380 made by MSI. The fans don't appear to be working properly. I'm gonna try the card in another machine, just to rule some things out. They spin sometimes, but not very fast at all. It's so slow, I could actually count the blades on each fan while it's spinning. If I blow at the fan, it'll spin faster than what it spins while it's powered on.

I understand some fans are off until they reach a certain temp, but these two fans never kick on. The PC hard locks when we stress it a little and when we tried removing the video card, it was soooo freaking hot, we actually had to wait until it cooled down.

I believe they use PWM to control the speed of the fans on video cards, don't they? Is there anyway I could modify the video card to get the fans to always spin at max speed? Two fans connect to a small circuit board. The circuit board just connect the two fans together and has a wire coming off that connects to the video card. Both fans have a 4-pin header, but with one of the fans, one of the pins aren't being used for nothing. I think that's probably the pin that reports the speed. It's probably just reading the speed of one fan, not both.

Thanks!

What OS are you using it with?

If you're on Windows the MSI gaming app available on MSIs site should give you the ability to set up custom fan curves or set the fans to 100% all the time(they will be loud as hell if you do). Just about every video card vendor has such an app these days (at least for non-reference cards with custom coolers, etc.): https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/sup...l#down-utility

If the PWM controller is completely shot and software doesn't work you can always hard wire than fans to 12V but again they will be very noisy.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

For older hardware and OSes, RivaTuner is great.

Not sure what you would use for the newer stuff like an R9 380, though. Perhaps MSI Afterburner as dmill89 said.

You don't need to bump the speed up to 100%. Just enough so the card is kept cool.

Use GPU-Z to monitor the temperature. If it goes over 45°C, speed up the fans a bit. Ideally, you want to keep the idle temps below 50°C (below 45°C would be even better) and the load temperatures to no more than 60°C if possible. That should give you a fairly long-lasting card (though there is a lot more on that topic, but I will forgo going into that now).

[stj]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

just find the fet or transister that sits between the fan and the power/ground rail.
then replace it with a jumper.

[diif]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

What temperatures are you seeing ?

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

just find the fet or transister that sits between the fan and the power/ground rail.
then replace it with a jumper.

Not a good idea to run the fan at 100%.

Most modern video cards tend to have shitty quality fans, especially the low-end ones. Even when fan-controlled, they tend to seize after a few years. The high-end video cards may or may not have good quality fans in them, so that's why I don't suggest doing this. Just run the fan at a speed where it is enough to cool the GPU, but not so high to cause the fans to wear out very quickly. Not to mention that running the fans full tilt will make the video card very noisy and also accumulate dust a lot faster. So in less than a year, your heatsink may clog up with dust and become useless unless cleaned.

[stj]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

if the fan is shit, better to find out now - and replace it.

if you run it slow, you wont notice it die till it takes the gpu with it.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

if the fan is shit, better to find out now - and replace it.

if you run it slow, you wont notice it die till it takes the gpu with it.

That's a logical fallacy.

If you run the fan at full speed, nothing says the fan can't fail suddenly while you are not near the PC and take the GPU with it.

The only difference between running the fan full speed and at lower speed is that at the lower speed, it will take much longer to fail. But in both cases, you can end up with a fried GPU if you don't catch it.

Another thing I recommend to get a cooler GPU is to disable the boost clocks and boost voltages, if possible. Some GPUs might even need an underclock and undervolt mod to get them to last.

I see modern high-end GPUs push 1.2V on a sub-20 nanometer cores just to get higher clocks. That in itself is a HUGE problem and shows that manufacturers no longer care about how long hardware lasts.

Funny side note...
The electronics retailer where I was just working would offer extended warranties on pretty much everything we sold there.... except for high-end GPU.
Why? -Because the managers well know the return/failure rate on high-end GPUs. In particular, it first started with the GeForce GTX 1080 an 1080 TI, because people would buy them for "Deep Learning" and Bit Coin "mining" rigs. As such, the GPU is used at 100% load in these, and it quickly goes bad. So the 1080 and 1080 TI were the first cards on which we stopped offering extended warranty.

[dmill89]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

That's a logical fallacy.

If you run the fan at full speed, nothing says the fan can't fail suddenly while you are not near the PC and take the GPU with it.

The only difference between running the fan full speed and at lower speed is that at the lower speed, it will take much longer to fail. But in both cases, you can end up with a fried GPU if you don't catch it.

Another thing I recommend to get a cooler GPU is to disable the boost clocks and boost voltages, if possible. Some GPUs might even need an underclock and undervolt mod to get them to last.

I see modern high-end GPUs push 1.2V on a sub-20 nanometer cores just to get higher clocks. That in itself is a HUGE problem and shows that manufacturers no longer care about how long hardware lasts.

The R9 380 basically qualifies as a space heater with a 190W TDP (that's 10W more than a GTX 1080 which has a 180W TDP) and non-reference examples with a mild factory overclock like that MSI have been known to draw over 200W under load, so while that may be worth a shot I don't think there is much of anything that will make it run exceptionally cool.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

Undervolting can make things run much cooler than you think.

Just to give you a ballpark: a 20% drop in the core voltage will also drop the load temperatures by about 20%... and sometimes even more. So a card running at 80°C under load may drop down to 64°C (given the same fan airflow as at 80°C - I'm just mentioning this, because some GPUs tend to turn the fans up only when the GPU starts baking at 80+°C).

To undervolt, however, the GPU core also needs to be underclocked accordingly.

[stj]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

190w??
that's ducting and 120mm fan territory!!

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

More like liquid cooling territory.

Think about the GPU as if it was a CPU. If you had a ~200W CPU, you'd need a tall tower heatsink with at least 8 copper heatpipes and a 120 mm fan wooshing away. And even then, it would not run very cool under load (probably hitting high 50s Centigrade, minimum).

The thing about heatsinks is that the closer you want to keep the CPU/GPU temperature to room temperature, the size of the heatsink and airflow through it grow exponentially. The opposite of that is why manufacturers can get away with using a small heatsink on a CPU/GPU with a fairly large TDP: the higher the temperature of the heatsink goes above room/ambient, the easier it becomes to remove heat from it, even with minimal airflow.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

What OS are you using it with?

If you're on Windows the MSI gaming app available on MSIs site should give you the ability to set up custom fan curves or set the fans to 100% all the time(they will be loud as hell if you do). Just about every video card vendor has such an app these days (at least for non-reference cards with custom coolers, etc.): https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/sup...l#down-utility

If the PWM controller is completely shot and software doesn't work you can always hard wire than fans to 12V but again they will be very noisy.

It is Windows and that app is supposed to allow us to set the fans, but there's something wrong. Originally, we thought it was the video card, it's not, it's something with the PC. Another video card is experiencing the same problems. Fans don't run very fast at all (extremely slow) and the PC hard locks after x amount of minutes. Not really sure how to proceed with this.

I'm going to just verify that the card itself works in another PC and runs accordingly. This person knows a bit about computers, so who knows what he did. I didn't install the OS, he did. Maybe he used a pirated copy? I dunno. He has a few programs installed to read speed fans. To make sure there wasn't a conflict, I had him run msconfig and disable all non-microsoft services and all auto-start programs. Still same issue.

I'll check the power supply as well. Maybe those two 6-pin cables going to the PSU aren't working properly? I would have thought the fans would have drawn their power from the PCI-E bus though. Maybe not.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

For older hardware and OSes, RivaTuner is great.

Not sure what you would use for the newer stuff like an R9 380, though. Perhaps MSI Afterburner as dmill89 said.

You don't need to bump the speed up to 100%. Just enough so the card is kept cool.

Use GPU-Z to monitor the temperature. If it goes over 45°C, speed up the fans a bit. Ideally, you want to keep the idle temps below 50°C (below 45°C would be even better) and the load temperatures to no more than 60°C if possible. That should give you a fairly long-lasting card (though there is a lot more on that topic, but I will forgo going into that now).

They're not working, the programs to adjust the fan speeds. That's the problem. The temperature of the GPU keeps rising and rising, and the fans are barely spinning.

I think if the video card works in another computer, we should look at his PSU and see if that fixes the issue, and if not, maybe reinstall Windows, the proper way.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

What temperatures are you seeing ?

It's been a bit since I worked on this (I've been real busy doing other stuff and just haven't had the time) but I want to say it was locking around 80C or so. Maybe higher. He ran out of minutes on his phone so we're having trouble communicating now.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

The R9 380 basically qualifies as a space heater with a 190W TDP (that's 10W more than a GTX 1080 which has a 180W TDP) and non-reference examples with a mild factory overclock like that MSI have been known to draw over 200W under load, so while that may be worth a shot I don't think there is much of anything that will make it run exceptionally cool.

I know these R9 380's run hot. Something's really wrong here though.

What normally controls the fan speed? I'd imagine the firmware on the video card itself, right? At first at least, and then maybe the driver or some program can modify the speed? The BIOS in the PC can control fan speeds to some degree, right? But can it control video card fan speeds?

I'm trying to figure out why both video cards in his PC has the same issue. Fan's are not being controlled. When they do spin, it's extremely slow. The video card I loaned him, in another computer, works just fine. Something definitely with the PC.

His video card is an AMD, the one I loaned him is an nVidia. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before? For some reason, I'm leaning towards power supply. the nVidia uses an 8-pin and 6-pin, his AMD card uses two 6-pins.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

Undervolting can make things run much cooler than you think.

Just to give you a ballpark: a 20% drop in the core voltage will also drop the load temperatures by about 20%... and sometimes even more. So a card running at 80°C under load may drop down to 64°C (given the same fan airflow as at 80°C - I'm just mentioning this, because some GPUs tend to turn the fans up only when the GPU starts baking at 80+°C).

To undervolt, however, the GPU core also needs to be underclocked accordingly.

If I'm not mistaken, this video card here is overclocked at the factory. I think they just crank up the core voltage to get it run faster, and hotter. The two fans on his card seem extremely cheap.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

They're not working, the programs to adjust the fan speeds. That's the problem. The temperature of the GPU keeps rising and rising, and the fans are barely spinning.

I think if the video card works in another computer, we should look at his PSU and see if that fixes the issue, and if not, maybe reinstall Windows, the proper way.

In that case, there may be a driver issue causing the card not to enter into power saving mode or not turn the fans... or a piece of software that has rooted itself in the driver-level. Hard to tell without a GPU-Z screenshot, though. Use that to see if the clocks and voltages throttle.

Reinstalling the drivers may or may not fix the issue. I've seen botched drivers make it impossible to do anything other than to reinstall the OS to get rid of them

That said, before you reinstall his OS... try a new OS on a spare HDD, if you have one. At work, I always used to pull HDDs from recycled computers and save them for this purpose. Many times, I found hardware problems that were caused by the OS and not the hardware itself.

With that said, you can try Windows 10 on your test drive, as it seems to care the least when you switch it between totally different hardware. Either that, or if the computer is older, Windows XP Pro with VLK key, if you have one. VLK allows you to change the hardware as much as you like without setting flags and deactivating the OS.

[Spork Schivago]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

In that case, there may be a driver issue causing the card not to enter into power saving mode. Hard to tell without a GPU-Z screenshot, though. Use that to see if the clocks and voltages throttle.

Reinstalling the drivers may or may not fix the issue. I've seen botched drivers make it impossible to do anything other than to reinstall the OS to get rid of them

That said, before you reinstall his OS... try a new OS on a spare HDD, if you have one. At work, I always used to pull HDDs from recycled computers and save them for this purpose. Many times, I found hardware problems that were caused by the OS and not the hardware itself.

With that said, you can try Windows 10 on your test drive, as it seems to care the least when you switch it between totally different hardware. Either that, or if the computer is older, Windows XP Pro with VLK key, if you have one. VLK allows you to change the hardware as much as you like without setting flags and deactivating the OS.

I like the hard drive idea and if botched drivers can cause this, then I think that's the issue. He said he put the official AMD drivers on but they were incompatible. He probably never uninstalled them. He said he had to grab drivers from the manufacturer's website (it's some weird name that I want to say has something to do with rainbows or something). He said those drivers haven't been updated in years.

I thought of this a little and figured by him installing the nVidia card, it'd rule out the AMD driver issue all together. But could having those AMD drivers installed be affecting the nVidia card as well I wonder? I'd think not, but maybe they are somehow. It's Windows 10. I want to say it's Ultimate, which to me, means almost always a pirated copy. Who knows what the disc might have contained!!!!

I'll put a fresh copy of 10 on another hard drive when I get his PC back (he currently has it and it's hard getting in touch with him right now). Even in trial mode, it should at least allow us to rule out or confirm hardware issue vs software issue.

[stj]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

fuck this,
what asshole allows the o.s. to control the fans?
that's just asking for the gpu to be killed by a virus, a rogue buggy o.s. (windows),
or just some asshole who wants his supercomputer to "run silent" and has some type of "power tweak" program off the net he does not understand!