Mining rig running too hot

[SheepOnDrugs]

Hey,

I'm new to mining and I thought I'd try out building a mining rig. Everything works fine except my GPUs are running way too hot (I'm mining scrypt btw, not sha-256).

I've got 2x R9 280x Battlefield 4 Edition.
I've got them both overclocked with the following settings and they both run at 730.
--lookup-gap 2 --thread-concurrency 8192,8192 --gpu-engine 1060,1060 --gpu-memclock 1500,1500 --auto-fan --temp-cutoff=90 --temp-over 85

First GPU: 85 ° Celsius
Second GPU: 78° Celsius

There is space between them and I could fit another one in.
I've got them both in a case and I tried various setups. All in all I've got 7 Fans + the 6 from the gpu itself.
no matter how I change the setup (case lying down, standing, fans blowing in different ways), the temp always stay the same
Even with following setup the temp won't decrease:
front sucking in
top sucking in
back blowing out
4x side blowing in

They all run on 100% but nothing changes. If the room has 5 or 25° degrees only changes the temperature about 5° overall. What am I doing wrong? I feel like those temps are way to high. No risers at the moment, will they do any significant change? I'm planning on putting another one in but then there is no space left between the 2 gpus.

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[bct-lurch]

Lob it in mineral oil 

Great username by the way.

[Varens]

Show photo...

[Flashman]

Judging by the look of the cards and the lack of shrouding, they don't really shove heat out of the grille on the backplate and just churn it round back into the fans...

I would experiment with tape and cardboard ducting such that either the fans pull in external air directly and have no possibility of "breathing" case air, or that heat off the sinks goes right out of the case.

One other thing to try is to have all your fans as intakes, and remove the slot cover on the next slot on the fan side, and that MAY shove all the heat out of the grille and next slot.

[cs2000]

To be absolutely honest, I don't think that's high...

I have friends mining litecoins on various GPU's and most of them report sustained temps of 80+ (but below 90)

Personally I invested in water-cooling a year or so ago, even when mining BTC (just to generate some heat for testing) I never hit above 35c, id advise this if you're hugely bothered about the temps you're seeing.

[Art385]

You can try to cut your voltage by a small margin and still be stable. This should lower your temps. You can also try to change TIM on your graphic cards for better heat transfer to your cooler though I think that your temps aren't all that high.
I would just decrease power limit to a point where I'm satisfied with temp and performance.

[AbiTxGroup]

Get rid of the case.   My GPU miners are sitting on a shelf. 

As the post above me stated, lower your voltages.

Pics would help a lot so we can see what you are physically dealing with.

[SheepOnDrugs]

First of all, thanks to everything for so many quick replies!

@Flashman:
What do you mean with cardboards? Already read that but I never know what exactly I should do.
@Art385: What is TIM?

I am already using powertune -20, what do you think how much volt is safe? I'll definitely try that although I don't want to loose any performance.
I already thought about removing the case and using a milk crate but they are nearly impossible to find round here and it's gonna take a long time to deliver them. But anyway, probably gonna go with that with my second rig.
I can live with temps near 90° C but the problem is that I want to get a third gpu which would be between the other 2. that would probably overheat them.

Here's a pic. I know the wires are messed up but I honestly don't think that it will change the temp if I rearranged them, or will it?
REMOVED PIC. PRIVACY AND SHIT

Tried new setting:
all sucking in expect the side fans (4 of them) blowing out the hot air). still no change, always between 83 and 87° C.
Watercooling is no option as I am to scared to do it as I probably would destroy my whole hardware. :p

[zackclark70]

have you manually set the fan speed or target temperature ?

[Art385]

Tim is thermal paste. If you use something IC7 or on the cheap side Arctic MX2 you should get lower temps on full load as paste can transfer more heat then stock TIM.

[v1l3n1n2]

You should lower Voltage on both cards.
I'm running 3x7950 on 1.080V overclocked at about ~73C each

[onetandonly]

if its not getting more than 100 then its ok. they are designed to run at 105-110 without a problem. atleast you dont need heating at home lol. you can always can a replacement if it fails..

[dogeball]

4 fans at 5 watts each? thats 20 watts, a energy efficient table fan can be 25-35 watts and will be powerful enough to cool down both cards with a case with one open side and the fan blowing directly on it. Guarantee you will see a huge temperature drop, but you don't really need to do this as I believe you cards are rated to run safely in those temperature ranges

[coinspoolco]

Below 90 its alright, I would suggest you to make sure the back fan of the case is pulling the air from the case, and not pumping it into the case, and get some desktop fan to push the air from the opposite direction, it can take 5C away.

Also you can undervolt, which saves some heat as well.

[SheepOnDrugs]

Is there any way to undervolt them in Linux without flashing the BIOS? I don't like that at all but if there's no other way then I have to do it, I guess.


It's 7 fans. 5 @ 120 or 140mm, I can't remember and 2 big ones.
Can't use desktop fans.

I'm really scared of summer because my home tends to get about 26° degree hot inside and I've got no air cooling.
What do you think how hot will my gpu get if I put a third one between the other two? Will PCIE-Risers do any good?

[coinspoolco]

You can't undervolt on linux without bios flash.

Yeah risers are a great idea, im going to buy some soon.

[Grass__hopper]

85 and 78 degrees are perfectly fine, but if you're really worried, buy a cheap, second-hand room fan, remove the side from your pc case and put the fan in front of it.

[pontiacg5]

Someone mentioned something about those fans just churning air, and they are right. It takes strategically placed fans to get the top card cool. Once you've got it set right it doesn't take much airflow to "move" the heat out of the case.



Since this picture I've added two 50mm fans on the empty PCI-e slots between the cards. They are stuck with sticky tape to the outside of the PCI-e slots. That pulls air out the rear of the case from between the cards, while the USB fans pushes air towards them. Works a champ, but is rather noisy. I see ~79 on the top card, and generally 75 on the lower.  


Edit: The cards will do fine at 95c+, it won't damage the GPU.

It will completely and totally screw the GPU fans though, and if you run them at 100% speed while sitting on a 95c heatsink they'll last about three months. I generally go for risers, because it makes holding 70c and 80% fan easy.

[dailycoins]

IMO more CFM equals always lower temperatures because in air cooling it's all about creating difference in air pressure. Of course it matters where you place your fan but it would still make more sense to use one or two larger fans (at least 120mm) than several well placed smaller ones. It makes less noise and produces better airflow. But as said below 90 is perfectly ok. I would also consider removing the case if you use your computer mainly for mining.

[CatsTheAYAYAian]

in my opinion, I'd attempt to crank up the static pressure in the case, remove the pci slot covers between the two cards, and focus on front to back airflow in the case.  

I'd ditch the hdd cage, and mount your hdd in the 5.25 inch bays with a 5.25 to 3.5" adapter, to get better flow from the front of the case.  

try adapters like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811993004

The people that mentioned the inability/inefficiency of your cards to dump the heat outside of the case, are most likely referring to the fan design using axial fans rather than a centrifugal/centripital blower.

In my experience, axial fans are simply spreaders to draw the heat off the card, and don't do well with alot of static resistance against them.
In order for them to really move any significant heat, or attain any reasonable amount of airflow, they need to be assisted with positive pressure backing them.  
Axial fans don't typically deal well with alot of resistance, such as blowing through long runs of tubing/piping.

This is where the static pressure comment I made earlier comes in, use fans such as the corsair sp120's that work well against a harder resistance to pressurize your case, and cause heat seepage out the back.  

If you had a blower style fan setup on your card, like the ones on my 7870's, you'd probably fare much better in that situation, sadly those don't seem to be used on any of the r9 series cards short of 290x's.

this is the type of fan I'm talking about:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161404

with blower style fans rather than axial, my 2x 7870's per case never cross over 62 celsius @ 50% fan speed.  why do they use axial fans...sigh.

tl;dr, i'd suggest swapping case fans for those that work well against high levels of resistance (noctua f12 or corsair sp120).
try to ditch the hdd cage and move your drive up to an empty 5.25" bay, so you have less objects resisting front to rear caseflow, and consider popping some 4.5" holes in the side panel to add a couple more gpu directed intake fans.

also your cable management looks pretty restrictive, try to minimize objects that your intake air has to blow past, as obstructions like your kraken of cables will only decrease air velocities.
positive pressure airflow with the pci vents being the only escape will crank the heat out the back, although if I had my way I'd lay the case on its face to let the heat rise on its own out the pci vents.

[Randallphoto]

I have an R9-290x and a 6870 mining and the R9 target temp is set to 90C (default target temp is 95C), so as long as you are under that, you should be fine.

My R9-290x averages around 87-90C and the 6870 hovers around 85C normally. These cards are designed for very high heat so I wouldn't worry too much about mid 80C temps

You can also use power catalyst to set the target temp lower and the fan speed higher which should lower temps as well, albeit with more noise.

[SheepOnDrugs]

I was able to change the volt of my gpu with atitweak under linux but as soon as I start cgminer the voltage is on 1200 again. How is that even possible, in cgmienr I can't change the voltage.

@CatsTheAYAYAian

I completely rebuilt my rig now and there are no cables showing in front and also I removed the spare hdd cages. Changed the temp about 2° C but now I only get 670khash instead of 730°. D:
Currently the rig is lying on its face and there are even 4 fans which are sucking out the heat which should rise from the GPU. It seems to work since there is hot air coming out from those 4 fans.
I am using these fans: http://www.alternate.de/Aerocool/Shark_Fan_12cm_Blue_Edition,_Case_Modding_Luefter/html/product/255006/

@Randallphoto
My gpu fans are already running on about 3700 which is 100%.

[Meuh6879]

simple question : how many Hash/s ?




because i have asic USB miner after discovery the "small power" of my gaming machine ... after 1 week.

[moonmoon]

Does phase change cooling bring anything 2 the table when you have card density?  Waste of power/money?

[sibilant_doge]

Here is a little secret I picked up dealing with computers running in the desert.
Take off your side-panel. Cut a ton of holes in it, and string up 6-9 large fans onto the side panel and have them blowing air forcibly in the case, it creates a forced air system where the fans on the side of your case are pumping air in faster than your GPU can pump it out, it takes some stress off the GPU fans, and as long as it is well sealed, should drop your GPU temp considerably. As a note, the hawaii based AMD GPUs are designed to handle heats over 94c nonstop for days. It's been well looked into. _{BTC ~ 1C7zzvdAtevGZ5jZj9UDM9zSqKZqx8pzyP}

[infinitybo]

@Sheepondrugs  No you ain't doing something wrong anyways it's really amazing to see this kinda mining hardware.

[yslyung]

get rid of case if possible.

I'm using a table fan to suck cold air from outside to blow directly into gfx card fans.  

let it flow.