Hello all, just looking to get some help here regarding my R9 290. I've had it for around two months, and knowing it's a toasty card; I've been using afterburner to ramp the fans up a bit more to compensate compared to the card stock settings which would let the card get to 95 degrees and I wasn't comfy with that. Well, under 70% fan speed, the fans sound fine like no personal complaints on my end. However, recently a concern has started where if the fans go above 70% an extremely audible and annoying clicking noise would emanate from the card.
I removed the card from my system and manually spun each fan by hand just to kind of see if I could figure out whether it was something I could replicate in that way; and I believe it is the fan closest to the I/O for the card giving me issues. Upon spinning it, very faintly I could hear remnants of that clicking noise, as if possibly a fan bearing going bad or something. The other fan made no sound at all upon spinning it by hand. As suspected, Asus's only option for me is to RMA the card, which is not optimal for me considering this is my only video card and I must have this machine to complete my school work; and I have removed the stock cooler to apply a better dose of thermal compound rendering my warranty void anyways.
I was unable to find anyone selling the same cooler on Ebay, and currently I don't have the funds to custom liquid cool my card (the only block I could find that fits this card was from EK and was like 130 bucks); so I was wondering if anyone on here would be able to suggest a route to potentially fix my issue? I've looked at brackets such as the G10 but have been unable to determine if it would fit on my card. I greatly appreciate any ideas or thoughts though, kind of irritated at this because I've resorted to under-clocking the card to stock 290 settings in order to keep the fan speeds down as well as the temperature of the card.
Honestly there is only one thing to do, trust me I understand where you are at. You need to RMA the card, if your CPU has integrated graphics run that in the interim, if not pick up an inexpensive card to run in the interim. You should be able to pick up a card for less than $20USD used, if all else fails a HD5450 can be picked up new for $25-30USD and resold with a net loss of less than $10USD. Anything else will turn into a money pit trying to fix this thing and probably never be as good as the original.
I have both the stock R9 290 DCU2 Asus cooler. I can tell you that the G10 works fine on this model as I have it myself on one of my computers. I would suggest a G10 that really keeps the temps down, I might be willing to send you my DU2 cooler as I will never put it back on that card again.
To be honest I cut my losses and bought a 970. The drawbacks of the 290 just weren't justifying the performance for me. I'm probably going to attempt to sell the 290.
I don't honestly know if its a problem or not, but the fans are just noisier than I'd anticipated. But everyone seems to say the cooler is rather loud so I'm not entirely sure. If you don't set a custom fan curve the card WILL hit 90 degrees under load before it starts to seriously turn the fans up but as long as you have decent air flow in your case this card may run far cooler in your case. I had it in an H440 and that case just doesn't have good air flow since it's a silence optimized chassis. I'd realistically like to ask $220 for it since the cards only like 3 months old at this point.
@AlphaCougar fair enough. My buddy bought his at the same time as mine and hasnt had any complaints either so it leads me to believe my issues stem from my cases lack of air flow.
Yeah temp wise idling my card doesn't go much above 35 Degrees C and in game not much over 50. I have two 140's blowing air from the front of the case though. I guess it's just the Asus Quality control :)
@JoshyWahLoves Yeah might be worth getting some front intake fans to blow some air over your new card just to improve performance and longevity of the system.
@AlphaCougar ya know it's funny. The 970 Strix idles at like 30 degrees with the fans not even on. It's nuts. I also have my H440 outfitted with Corsair AF and SP series silent fans.