Bitcoin Forum

Hi the fan control on msi afterburner is disabled and shows auto, and there doesnt seem to be an option to unlock it. How do i set the fan to run at 100% all the time via afterburner? thanks

In the bottom right corner of the main interface (not the temp gauges) click 'Settings'.  Then choose the second tab 'Fan'.  Check the box marked 'Enable user defined software automatic fan control'.  Set a temp/speed curve to your liking.  Click 'OK'.  Done.

It should also be noted that running just about any fan at 100% all the time is not only quite noisy but very likely to cause a fan to break prematurely.  Replacing a fan on the GFX card isn't easy or cheap, so I'd suggest against it.  The few extra Mhashs you get from OCing your card that much more to move from 70% fan to 100% won't make 5% of difference in the long term, and you're far more likely to burn out the fan causing your OC'ed GFX card to also burn up once the fan fails.

Based upon my research, I'd suggest trying to keep your temps lower than 75 degrees and your fan under 70% at all times.  My fan curve is set to move from 40% fan at 60 degrees to 70% fan at 80 degrees, jumping up to 100% fan if it ever gets to 81.  I'd recommend similar settings to optimize both performance and longevity of your card and fans.

If you want better performance than this allows, I'd suggest focusing on case fans, particularly side panel intake fans.  You can go crazy and run those 100% all the time, because they're relatively cheap and easy to replace, not to mention the better $15-$20 case fans will last FAR longer at 100% than any GFX card fan I've ever seen.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Auspician! i didnt realize the manual control curve thing is for fan speed.  The problem is i am not even trying to overclock :(  I just installed 2x 5970, with just ONE mining i am getting close to 100 degrees on the card and it gets throttled back, that's why i wanted to try running the fan at 100% all the time.  I have a completely open case (think of it as no case) and i added a clip on fan that blows directly on the gfx cards which didnt seem to help at all.

Trying to figure out what to do next, 75 degree seems like a pipedream with mining turned on.

I'd suggest playing with the angle of the fan you have blowing on the GFX cards to see what works best. 

If your environment is such that getting down to 75 degrees with less than 100% fan is impossible with stock settings, I'd suggest underclocking your card.  In my experiments, I've decided that dropping voltage has a better effect cooling the cards than dropping MHz does.  That said, in order to run stable on lower voltage you need to drop MHz as well. 

I'd suggest setting your Memory Clock as low as MSI afterburner will take it, and then gradually drop your voltage 10mV at a time.  After your system locks or crashes due to insufficient voltage, reboot and set voltage 15-20 mV higher than the unstable settings.  Make sure you're mining during the tests.  If you want to go cooler, just drop the Core Clock a bit and repeat the process.  But don't expect to be able to drop the mV more than about 10% unless you seriously underclock.

In my humble opinion it would be more cost effective to run your equipment underclocked yet cool and fans less than 100% than to try to pull as much Mhash/s out of your setup as you can.  You might make a bit more money in the short run that way, but in the long run you're just going to end up with a bunch of useless computer parts.

Thanks, yeah i played with all the settings. Even with memory at 300mhz and core at 550mhz (lowest), the thing is still 90+degrees. The only way i can get it to 80 is if i stopped mining one of the gpu. At 550mhz, it's only doing 230ish mhash, which kind defeats the purpose of getting a 5970.

It wont work long term. I ordered a pcie extender and a utility blower fan. Will try it out.  My other card(the one without the fan getting blocked) is only at 75 degrees with a 850mhz overclock! so looks like the issue is definitely the blocked fan. 

What I found works well is to plug my first card into the top PCIe slot, and my second card into the bottom PCIe slot, leaving a slot in between.  My mobo can only effectively run the bottom PCIe slot at 8x, but that has been more than enough for both mining and gaming.

I just bought one of those Honeywell Tabletop Air Circulator fans which from what I've researched, draws 27/31/35 watts on low/med/high settings.  When it's on low, pointing down at my cards, it lowers the temps by around 6-7C (or around 70-72C total), and I can turn down the fans on the cards by around 15-20% (40% for my 5870 and 60% for my 5830).  Would it be worthwhile to keep the tabletop fan on and reduce RPMs of the integrated fans, or just keep the integrated fans on higher settings all the time?

As long as your integrated fans are no higher than 70% the majority of the time, you're good.  The only benefit of going much lower than that is to reduce their noise.  External fans you can go crazy with, because if they break they are easy and cheap enough to replace.

Within that spectrum comes down to the noise vs performance issue.  If you don't mind maximum noise, crank up the cards so that they stay right at 75 degrees C at 70% fan speed and high speed external fans.  Otherwise, scale back from there until you're comfortable with the volume level.

HEy, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! If you just want to set a speed, click the thing showing it as auto - it's a button, if you click it, you can set a speed, it's not just an indicator! And undo the previous posts' recommendations if you want to use normal auto when you set it to auto! :P

I just want to thank everyone for their help. I have this thing down rock solid now at 1.3 ghash/sec, <70degree and <70% fan. I am pretty sure i can push it above 1.4ghash but decided it's not worth the trouble.  The pcie extender made a huge difference in term of temperature.

If i had to do over, will probably just paid the extra $100 and got a mobo with 3x pcie slot so i can separate the cards, the $50 mobo i have only has 2x pcie slot and they are right next to each other.

Some screenshots of my final setup and stats:

http://spoki.com/images/bitcoin.jpg


http://spoki.com/images/miner_remote.JPG

Congratulations, and nice work!

<shameless plug>: Oh, and if you're looking for an awesome pool to mine with, I suggest Triple Mining! (see my sig).</shameless plug>