R9 290 Fan Speed Issue

[PowerPie5000]

Hi all,

Does anyone else here own a PowerColor R9 290 PCS+? I've noticed that the fans on my card are always stuck at 30% unless I install a utility to manually control them. I ran Furmark and the temp reached 92c and the fans still didn't speed up (I didn't let the temps get any higher). I tried flicking the bios switch which didn't actually do anything at all and I've also uninstalled and reinstalled the AMD drivers.... Still the same.

Does anyone know what could be happening? Surely PowerColor are not doing this on purpose with their default bios fan profile?

[watercooled]

Something doesn't sound right; I've read that's one of the better 290s available.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,10.html

It doesn't even pass 70C in that review.

Did you have another card installed previously, or was it a fresh OS install? You could try Driver Sweeper to ensure it's not some profile from the previous card left over interfering somehow.

[PowerPie5000]

Something doesn't sound right; I've read that's one of the better 290s available.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,10.html

It doesn't even pass 70C in that review.

Did you have another card installed previously, or was it a fresh OS install? You could try Driver Sweeper to ensure it's not some profile from the previous card left over interfering somehow.

Mine is not the 290X, but it does use the same cooler. I think it's down to PowerColor selling them with different bios versions, different brands of memory and even different PCB revisions... Mine has a later bios which might be a bit iffy.

[watercooled]

The 290 and 290X are based around the same platform so it shouldn't make much of a difference. They probably use the same PCBs too.

I'm not sure what PowerColour's support is like but it might be worth contacting them to see if they're aware of the issue.

[PowerPie5000]

I've decided to RMA this card. I've had no response from PowerColor and it's been a couple of days since I emailed them. I must admit i'm not too impressed with this card at the moment . The fans are stuck at 30% and I don't know why... This leads to overheating unless I install other software to manually control the fans. The card is advertised as being 1040MHz, but in reality it will spend 99% of the time running at around 950MHz. I upped the power limit by +20 and it managed to scrape 1000MHZ (it's always throttling for some reason even if I manually increase the fan speed to keep it cool).

[watercooled]

Yeah something isn't right, and if they can't be bothered getting back to you then RMAing is worth considering. However I'd want to be fairly sure it wasn't something in software causing it else you might get the same card back, along with a bill for return shipping/testing depending on where you bought it from.

[PowerPie5000]

Yeah something isn't right, and if they can't be bothered getting back to you then RMAing is worth considering. However I'd want to be fairly sure it wasn't something in software causing it else you might get the same card back, along with a bill for return shipping/testing depending on where you bought it from.

The only other GPU related software I had installed was OC Guru II as it was needed to manually boost the fans (I also completely uninstalled it to eliminate it as a problem). It's a newly built PC and had a fresh install of Win 8.1. I've tried reseating the card, removing and reinstalling drivers including the beta version and tried the BIOS switch which did nothing.

I'll most likely have to replace it with the same model card as I got rid of the free AMD RAM that came with it (had no use for it) and also claimed the free games from AMD using the gold reward thing. Otherwise i'd probably be tempted to get a GTX 780 instead.