I have a HIS Radeon HD 6790 that I bought from a friend. I'm on a tight budget, so I can't really afford a new graphics card, but my 6790 is old and pretty loud. The card performs well on most games on medium settings, but the single fan has to run at 100% and rattles like crazy. i could try to replace the fan, but its still gonna run at 100%.
I need some advice about an aftermarket cooler. any suggestions?
I've looked at the Arctic Accelero Turbo iii and Turbo ii. the price is about the same right now, but I have a mini-itx setup; not sure if the backplate vram sink will interfere with some of the i/o components and my ram. are these coolers are good as they seem on the website? does a backplate heat sink even make sense? any better suggestions
100% sounds like its overheating, have you tried taking the cooler off, cleaning it and putting it back on with new TIM? The card is probably full of dust and the old TIM rock hard. Try monitoring the GPU temp with afterburner and chance the fan profile after that if its still too loud.
I wouldnt buy an aftermarket cooler for a card that is worth less than said aftermarked cooler, its just not worth it. The problem might also be poor case ventilation (does your pc feel like a mini bake oven?).
Those are good ideas. I'll try them and see how it goes.
good point about not investing money in something that wouldn't increase the value of the card. I didn't really look at it like that. Maybe I'll just hold out till I have the budget for a gtx 760 of something.
You could also try a repaste, you can get a tube for about 6-7USD. I did that to a 550 TI and made a -4c/-7c improvement. Do check to see if you machine has a good airflow you won't believe how much that improves cooling.
TIMs are usually withing a few degrees of each other depending on the reviewer, so not much of a discernable difference. Liquid Metal Pads tend to do like 2 °C better, but that not really worth it. Just use whatever youve got lying around or buy a small syringe of MX-2 or whatever.