# [SOLVED] Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?



## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

I got the Sapphire 6870 card and I want to get the fan to go up for lower temp. Im a real noobie and have no experience with this at all. Is it safe to put it up to 100%. At automatic it stands at around 23 min to 27 max. I really dont care if it will make any noise all. But I just want to make sure it keeps cool.
Thank you all!


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## makinu1der2 (Jan 1, 2008)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Usually leaving the fan at the default settings is sufficient provided that the case has 

adequate airflow. But to answer your question raising the fan speed won't damage the card.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Are you experiencing high GPU temps? Setting the fan to Auto is usually fine but manually setting the fan to high won't do any damage.


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

I was thinking on overclocking my card but I want better temps before I go to that step. But thanks everyone


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

What temperature is your card at idle and under stress?

How high does the automatic fan speed go when the card is being heavily used?

Let us know if you need any advice on overclocking the GPU. What framerates are you currently getting, and what kind of increase are you hoping to achieve?


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

i just overclocked it to 950 core clock and 1075 mem clock. I put the fan speed to 50. I ran furmark and it didnt go any higher that 68 degrees. That good right. I dont know what the max temps of my card is but I did some research and most people said that 90 degrees is the highest I can go to but rather not at that temp. I dont know if this info is correct or not. Thanks


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

If you're only reaching 68C in FurMark with the fan speed set to 50%, you've got nothing to worry about. Try it again for about 10 minutes with the fan speed set to automatic in the Catalyst Control Center, and post back with the maximum GPU temperature and maximum fan speed reached.

FurMark pushes the card harder than any game, so you would expect to see temperatures about 10C higher in FurMark than you would when playing a fullscreen game at high settings.

The card can run at 90C, but it will last longer and perform better if you keep it below 80C.


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Ok I just did it on automatic. Only I forgot to say I use trixx. Fan control went up to 33% when doing furmark. And the temps switched from 74c to 75. Although it said that the max degrees was 78 it only kept switching from these temps. Thanks for helping. 

(Btw I am doing this mainly to get higher fps on Flight Simulator on highest settings. Its a really heavy game and I am running at 20 fps and lower with these settings on flight simulator.)


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

What graphics settings are you using in Flight Sim? Check to see if any of them are conflicting with the Catalyst 'Forced/Override' settings.

Do you really need them all on max? For example, if you've got antialiasing set to x16, you could reduce it to x8 without any noticeable loss in image quality, but you'd get a big boost in fps. Max doesn't give the best image/performance ratio.

If you're using any mods, check the author's site for any optimization tips or info on conflicts.


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Flight Simulator is an old game. But very heavy for even modern computers. But because its an old game I cannot choose anti aliasing. All I can do is turn it on or off. There are no specific settings for it. I did look in a fsx.cfg file where all the settings are saved more specifically and i saw that anti aliasing was at 1. And yes I do have mods and add-ons. But without them Flight sim is really ugly. And at locations where I do not focus or look at the high quality scenery for example, the fps shoots up to 30. Thats what i want at the add-on scenery. Thanks


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Overclocking the graphics card is unlikely to give you a 50% framerates increase from 20 to 30.

If there are no advanced graphics options for the game, try reducing the screen resolution.

If you only get these fps drops when using mods or addons, check the specific forums or sites for these addons to see if anyone has any advice on modifying their config files. Things like antialiasing, draw distance, DirectX 8/9/10/11 mode, texture quality, etc can usally be edited to give better framerates.

You didn't say which version you're playing. If it's FSX, google for some online tweak guides:
Flight Simulator X: Performance tweaks
FSX-Tweak Collection
Setting Up FSX and How To Tune It - SimForums.com


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Its FSX. I got the i7-870 core and havent overclocked that. Is it possible that if I overclock both my cpu and gpu I can get it up to 30 FPS? Thanks


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Try it and see. Overclock in small steps, then test with FurMark and Prime95, and monitor the temps/volts at each stage.

You've got a high-end computer that should have no trouble running a game like FSX at decent framerates, so it could be a problem with the addons you're using that have been badly coded or optimized. If you're using more than one addon, they might be conflicting with other.

Does reducing the screen resolution make any difference to the fps?

If you're running the game in DX10 mode, have you tried DX9?


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Just found out that fsx doesnt work properly on my pc with dx9 but thanks. Im hesitating on overclocking my cpu though. Ill probably report back tommorow.


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

To run FSX (and some other old games) in Windows 7 using DirectX 9, you need to install DirectX 9.0c and reboot. This is different to the DX9 that comes as part of Win7's DX11.

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...-82AF-AD2AE20B6B14/directx_Jun2010_redist.exe


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Thanks. I still have another question. I think I want to overclock my pc but there are a few things that I still think I should tell. My pc is from Medion. Its some German company and I thought it was a good company. I know that from now on I wont but a pc from them. Why? Because they put a 450W PSU in my system. And everything was prebuilt. I think when I posted a thread about this you also responded cause I recognize your name. And than I bought the xfx PSU 650W. The guys at the store where I bought the PSU from asked if they could take a look in my pc and saw that it had little space for a good airflow. And people also saying that they dont know my motherboard confuses me. So I was thinking of maybe getting a new housing and motherboard. But I dont know really how that works. I dont know if the housing and motherboard should fit with each other or if it are all standard sizes. I also only have 4 psu slots and I would like more because I only have 1 left. But on the site I cant see how many PSU slots it has. You dont have to answer all of these questions cause my main question is, will my motherboard work fine when I overclock my cpu. I dont know if there is software to overclock it but do I need a good quality motherboard to overclock? Thanks


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## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Your MS7616 P55 motherboard is ok and shouldn't need to be replaced, but if your case doesn't have enough room for good airflow, you just need to replace it with a larger one. All your parts will fit into the new case.

To overclock the graphics card, the easiest way is to use the Catalyst Control Center. Open Catalyst and go to the AMD Overdrive section. Click 'Enable AMD Overdrive' and click the Apply button. Click the Defaults button and Apply to set the clock speeds back to default. Remove the checkmark from 'Enable Manual Fan Control' and click Apply so the fan speed is controlled automatically. Click the Auto-Tune button and leave it running for about an hour. This will find the best clock speeds that your card is safe to run at.

The HD6870 is a high-end card, and shouldn't need to be overclocked. You might get a few extra fps, but not the kind of increase you're looking for. I think your problem is being caused by either the FSX config or the addons.

I'm not sure what you mean by 4 PSU slots. The PSU is the power supply unit, so there are no slots.

To overclock the CPU, you can use software, but it's better to make the changes in BIOS. Start a new thread in the Overclocking forum for more detailed instructions.


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## keffoo432 (Mar 28, 2011)

*Re: Will increasing my fan speed break my card or anything?*

Ok. I meant PSI slots srry. Thanks allot. Im closing the thread.


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