Radeon HD 6870 loud for no reason

Hardware Hub GPU
1

Hey guys,

I have an issue with my Sapphire HD 6870 1GB with Sapphire's custom cooler. When starting my computer, even if it has been off for several hours or even days, the GPU's fan will go up to maximum speed and become loud, very loud. It nearly sounds like a vacuum cleaner, unbearable. I measured the noise with an sound meter app on my Nexus 7, I have no idea if it's even near accurate, but when holding the tablet against the side panel, it measures around 60-65dB.

I checked the temps and fan speeds with SpeedFan, and even though the card is at only 45-50°C, the fan is running at 3600rpm, AMD Catalyst says about 30% fan speed. I'm guessing that there is something wrong with the card regulating its fan, since it will just randomly go down to 900rpm, even tough the temps are exactly the same. I have tried several different VBIOS', but none of them delivered any improvement.

My PSU has 450 watts, which should be enough, especially when idling. The used processor is a first generation i5, so yeah, this build is quite old, but I don't really have enough money to upgrade and I'm still satisfied with the performance since I'm not a heavy gamer.

Greets, Niall

 

2

Have you tried using a program called msi afterburner to turn the fan speed down?

3

Its normal for gpu's fan to kick in on boot to 100% but only for a second or two, any longer than that something is screwed up. You say you've tried several BIOS's, that could be your problem right there. You first port of call should have been to take off the heatsink and clean everything, re-apply the TIM and do a clean install of drivers. As mentioned you can create a custom fan profile easy enough in MSI afterburner that only takes a minute or two. 

4

Have you tried cleaning your card's heat sink and fans? It could just need a long overdue cleaning.