SOLVED The guy I bought the GPU from didn't bother cleaning it once, the stupid problem all along was that dust has closed the openings on the heatsink, so the blower couldn't really "blow" the air through to cool it. I cleaned the dust out and it dropped temps from 70 at idle to 42 at idle. It still does go to 94 sometimes but it doesn't throttle as much. My Arctic MX4 should be arriving soon so that should knock temps even more. (The reason why I didn't want to open the GPU itself yet is because it still had warranty on it, but because I found the MX4 in stock and bought it, I had to open it.)
Hi there guys, I've got a Reference Sapphire R9 290, and I know it should hit the 95c thermal limit and work normally but, it hits it really easily, like in less than 2 minutes even in GPU-light games like CS: Source, and the clock drops from 947 to 400 or lower, causing a lot of frame drops and stuttering. While I was playing Counter Strike Source it dropped from constant 300 fps to 100 and caused stuttering of some kind due to frame dropping and going up in less than a second. I want to get an Arctic Accelero Extreme 3 for it but it's not avaivable in my country, and importing would inflate the price by 60% or more. I would want to put a new thermal paste but taking off the cooler will cause my warranty to go void. Any ideas how to fix this?
(I have tried forcing the fan to go 100% but it still throttles)
PC Specs:
AMD FX 6300 @4.0Ghz Sapphire R9 290 Reference 1 Dimm of Kingston CL11 8 Gb LC Power 600W PSU (This may be the cause, it says that it is 78% efficient but it has no 80 Plus certification) Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 (This is also cheap crap) I'm running Windows 10 Preview right now with the beta drivers, but the same problem occurs on Windows 8.1
nah its the psu cause i kinda had the same issue. I have a similar gpu to him and did not plug in the connectors properly and giving me crap frame rates.
its preferably optimal to get an 80 plus branded psu but if its from a decent company it should do fine and yes going for the 700w is fine. 650 is the bare minimum that you should get.
Well............ considering the motherboard and the fact you actually dared to overclock it ? Take off the overclock and find away to get more air moving around those vrms. That is so borderline. :) A better motherboard is in order. something with vrm cooling and strong power phases. The chipset on that mb is a bottleneck. A solid 970 mb is recommended. Your gonna want to get the right mb in order to make the most of your cpu/gpu. PSU wise 80+bronze is recommended. ATX Form factor is often cheaper than itx.
Back the overclock off and find some cheap or free case fans. Ghetto mount them somehow. Snooping around a pc/ electronic shop may grant you some working fans from stuff about to be thrown out. Be mindful of the connections, tho.
That is terrible advice, it is just the cooler that is the issue and they said they were working on fixing it, you would have them waste hundred of dollars just to fix a 50 dollar or less problem.