Overheating Miner

[Kmitchell03]

I am running a 6970 with the perameters at -v -w128 and it seems to keep freezing every 12+ hours due to overheating I'm assuming. This frightens me because I have a 5870 on its way and not sure how the overheating will be with that in my cpu as well. any suggestions?

- K

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[ensign_lee]

what does -v -w128 mean / do anyway?

[Kluge]

You've got some serious airflow problems if your card is overheating and it's the only one in the case.

Download & run MSI Afterburner (found here) to check temps first.

If it's around or above 100*c, open up your case -- I imagine you must have a LOT of dust & whatnot clogging your intake vents to clean out. If there's still a problem, try keeping one side of the case completely open and buy some more case fans to mount inside it.

[Kmitchell03]

You've got some serious airflow problems if your card is overheating and it's the only one in the case.

Download & run MSI Afterburner (found here) to check temps first.

If it's around or above 100*c, open up your case -- I imagine you must have a LOT of dust & whatnot clogging your intake vents to clean out. If there's still a problem, try keeping one side of the case completely open and buy some more case fans to mount inside it.

I have a temp program already - it's saying it goes between 88c and 92c on average. It's once it hits 99c it freezes. I just bought all new parts and a case which has 2 fans going and now i have the side open and it freezes less but i dont want it to freeze at all. I now have a fan blowing into the cpu externally but im still concerned at its average temp. Is that 88 - 92c average??

[TehZomB]

Most graphics cards recommend to stay below 85º, more than that is bad. I'm pretty sure the freeze at 100º is more of a safety thing to make sure you won't melt your card, most if not all motherboards have the same thing for CPUs, maybe GPUs started to implement it too.

But, I would download MSI Afterburner (as Kluge said) and make sure your fan is PUMPING 100% when it gets that high, and if you can't hear the difference, you have a problem. Try clearing out the dust, and if that doesn't work, buy a new fan / water cooling.

[Kluge]

You've got some serious airflow problems if your card is overheating and it's the only one in the case.

Download & run MSI Afterburner (found here) to check temps first.

If it's around or above 100*c, open up your case -- I imagine you must have a LOT of dust & whatnot clogging your intake vents to clean out. If there's still a problem, try keeping one side of the case completely open and buy some more case fans to mount inside it.

I have a temp program already - it's saying it goes between 88c and 92c on average. It's once it hits 99c it freezes. I just bought all new parts and a case which has 2 fans going and now i have the side open and it freezes less but i dont want it to freeze at all. I now have a fan blowing into the cpu externally but im still concerned at its average temp. Is that 88 - 92c average??

88-92c is adequate. It's possible (though unlikely) the card you're using kicks the itself off @ 100c for safety reasons -- that's usually considered when it becomes too hot for consumer electronics to operate, though many people run gfx cards up to 110c without problems.

Does the program you're using allow you to set (or at least monitor) the speed of your gfx card fan? Make sure it's at 100%. You could also try underclocking your mem clock speed to lower the temperature a few degrees.

I think you should explore other alternatives to the card shutting off than temperature. Perhaps the card is unstable at whatever clock speed it's at (though I'm assuming it's at default speeds) or the power supply is insufficient. PSUs output less watts the higher the temperature is which could explain the card shutting off (they're rated at "room temperature" - a variable dependent on the company rating it). It could also be from your PCI-E speed being set too high in the BIOS (very unlikely). It's usually untouched (universally default on modern boards @ 100 MHz), but some people bump it up a few MHz claiming it helps them achieve better gfx card OCs.

[cablepair]

do you have your memory clocks turned down?

it will make a HUGE difference. Download MSI afterburner
before you run it, edit the msiafterburner.cfg
(in windows 7 you have to open your notepad or getdiz or whatever as administrator)

find

The ATIADLHAL section needs to be changed to this:

[ATIADLHAL]
EnableUnofficialOverclocking   = 1
UnofficialOverclockingEULA   = I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it
UnofficialOverclockingMode   = 2
AccessibilityCheckingPeriod   = 0

then you can downclock your memory clock
but you kind of have to trick it to go down low
just lower it the lowest it will go, and close msi afterburner
than open it again, lower it all the way
close and open again
eventually you will get it down to 300, which is where it should be
you dont really need memclock for mining and it makes the card run much cooler
(I have three video cards mining in one case at over 1 g/hash combined and I run at 67 celcius with 99% GPU load on all three! :> )

hope I could help
iMMUNE

181msjFgfXo1LwFk8S9BLRYETNqD72yHCL

[Kmitchell03]

You've got some serious airflow problems if your card is overheating and it's the only one in the case.

Download & run MSI Afterburner (found here) to check temps first.

If it's around or above 100*c, open up your case -- I imagine you must have a LOT of dust & whatnot clogging your intake vents to clean out. If there's still a problem, try keeping one side of the case completely open and buy some more case fans to mount inside it.

I have a temp program already - it's saying it goes between 88c and 92c on average. It's once it hits 99c it freezes. I just bought all new parts and a case which has 2 fans going and now i have the side open and it freezes less but i dont want it to freeze at all. I now have a fan blowing into the cpu externally but im still concerned at its average temp. Is that 88 - 92c average??

88-92c is adequate. It's possible (though unlikely) the card you're using kicks the itself off @ 100c for safety reasons -- that's usually considered when it becomes too hot for consumer electronics to operate, though many people run gfx cards up to 110c without problems.

Does the program you're using allow you to set (or at least monitor) the speed of your gfx card fan? Make sure it's at 100%. You could also try underclocking your mem clock speed to lower the temperature a few degrees.

I think you should explore other alternatives to the card shutting off than temperature. Perhaps the card is unstable at whatever clock speed it's at (though I'm assuming it's at default speeds) or the power supply is insufficient. PSUs output less watts the higher the temperature is which could explain the card shutting off (they're rated at "room temperature" - a variable dependent on the company rating it). It could also be from your PCI-E speed being set too high in the BIOS (very unlikely). It's usually untouched (universally default on modern boards @ 100 MHz), but some people bump it up a few MHz claiming it helps them achieve better gfx card OCs.

Currently it does not give me the option to run the fan 100%. ill get MSI afterburn

[Kluge]

Currently it does not give me the option to run the fan 100%. ill get MSI afterburn

Unless you're using your computer for other graphics-intensive stuff, def. consider doing what Immune posted, too. Lowering mem clock speed has no significant negative impact on hash rate and will lower your gpu temp and decrease power draw slightly which may solve the problem if it's the PSU overheating, too.

[Kmitchell03]

Thanks for the help everyone - MSI afterburner is way better than the one I got.

Immune - your a god sent! Thanks for that little technique! :-D

[cablepair]

n.p. glad I could help ;>

[compro01]

if you need further deheating, they added a -s flag to poclbm which will add a sleep period in the loop and reduce the workload on the GPU and should reduce temps.