Topic: Radeon HD 6950 Running Hot (Read 3519 times)

some good advice so far, here's a few more things that worked for me...

 - I pointed my air conditioner towards the tower, it's about 5 feet away but it seems to help a lot.

 - also I have the side fan blowing in against the cards (I haven't tried the exhast method yet, but it definitely sounds like it's worth a shot) and my case (antec 1200) has a tunnel thingy to help aim the air from the front right onto the cards as well.

 --- biggest difference I found was removing the dust filters from those 2 intake positions (other 2 intake fans still have the filters) yeah I might need to clean out the dust more often but that one change reduced the heat on the hottest card around 15 degrees

 - give those plastic heatsink shrouds a closer look. Not sure what kind of cards you got, but I have a pair of HIS 6950 and the plastic shroud is almost purely cosmetic and by removing it I was able to gain a few precious millimeters of space for the intake (no spacers needed)

 - also check if swapping positions might help, when I first started my top card (we'll call this card 1) was over 80 degrees C and the middle (we'll call this card 2) was less than 70. card 3 (bottom) is actually a 5850 and it will be staying at the bottom as it seems to be my strongest clocker and hashrates (Asus directCU TOP)

Once I swapped the 6950s, card 1 (now in the middle spot) is still hotter than card 2 (now at top position) but card 1 is only hitting 75 at the moment and card 2 is at 71, which I'm comfortable with - for the moment, when I get the urge to push these cards harder I will definitely be re-doing the thermal paste on both. 

Same here, excellent spacers for FREE!

I stand corrected, having seen only the closed box type myself.


Air ducting can still help, especially in directing cool air towards the fan. Just that redirecting exhaust is a lot harder!

underclock the memory can help

Most of the 6950s I've found are non-reference coolers, there's only one or two on newegg.com with the standard turbine fan/closed box design.

Most of the 6970s on the other hand are ref. designs, with only a handful of customized coolers.

My XFX ZDNC 6950s (blow-everywhere style) ran annoyingly hot (often 95C+) even with a case full of fans (7!), they're much happier blowing free in the wind.

Not in this case. Most of the 6950 in the market are standard AMD design. The fan is an intake with all the air exhausting through the back vent. Putting a case fan on side to exhaust will be fighting the GPU fan instead.

Make airducts to direct cooler air towards the fan and direct hot air away. I used just one to direct cool air towards mine and dropped temps by about 10C, but then the system locked up because all the hot air was hitting the mainboard chipset. Picking up more tubing later to do it properly

It isn't so much that, its finding something that would work - if a foam peanut works then I shall go hunt down some or something of similar size. 

Try the suggestions the other folks have given you.

If you're paranoid, try the spacers as a 'last resort'... I have spacers on all my 4x5830 rigs and it's been almost two months without issue.

You'd be surprised how much a few mm of extra spacing for the cards to 'breathe' drops the temperatures.  I was surprised myself.

Cheers,
Kermee

I'll try making the side fan an exhaust and see how that turns out.

Wouldn't using a spacer of sort kind of be a little dangerous? I mean I know these cards bend a bit but I'm paranoid of the very small-pci connector just going snap.

the fan on the side of the case would be best used as an exhaust fan to pull the hot air out since the coolers on these cards have a tendancy to blow the hot air everywhere and the fan on the front of the case used as an intake fan.

Use spacers on the 6950's.  It'll help a lot.  (I used Styrofoam peanuts)

Cheers,
Kermee

Like the title says, I have a Cooler Master HafX case which you would think would have good airflow but that isn't the case with 3 of these.  Having just running all 3 mining over night (at stock settings) I reached over 90C which is something I am not comfortable with.

Is there anything I can do to lower the temperatures on these other than not running the middle card?  I have thought that maybe removing the plastic cover on the heatsyncs might help since I have the little tunnel fans for the gpu installed and the one on the side of the case and since there is pretty much no room between the cards I think they aren't going that great of a job actually moving air in between them.  I'm not really sure what to do but I can't have it running at those temperatures all the time.