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Well, it's all academic right now - The M550 has given up. I got a warning in Windows about something going wrong with the SMART status, but seconds later it blue screen and then this upon a re-boot:



Can't get it to respond in my older PC at all, so I assume it's toast for some reason? Time to test the robustness of Crucial's warranty processes...

Edit: Everything else seems ok. It's re-installing Windows to the mechanical RAID array that's in the system with no issues. All the other disks show up ok. Phew.

If you can get it to be read again through multiple reboots and stuff, perhaps a firmware upgrade is in order?

Well that sucks, do you think it had anything to do with your northbridge overclocking?

Flying Fox wrote:

If you can get it to be read again through multiple reboots and stuff, perhaps a firmware upgrade is in order?

I hope so, but not sure how to get it to recognise the drive to do that? When the SSD is connected to my other PC, POST never completes as it stalls trying to engage the disk. I found my SSD to USB adaptor, and it pops up in device manager using that momentarily. Crucial's SSD Toolkit try's to connect to the disk, but just reports that SMART status is FAIL, then the drive disappears.

CeeGee wrote:

Well that sucks, do you think it had anything to do with your northbridge overclocking?

Unlikely, as everything else is working fine. The storage controller also hasn't been touched - That's separate on these boards on the southbridge AMD SB850 chipset. I was making changes to the FX990 component.

I am not positive but i believe HT speeds are controlled by the northbridge chip...I could be totally wrong but it kinda makes sense since it it between the CPU and PCI lanes...the southbridge chip controls the sata etc. Again I could be wrong. But if i am not wrong with the AIO cooler your running it might be a good Idea to mount a killer delta fan to blow directly onto the northbridge chip heat sink to see if temps drop.

Also if I am correct you could possibly get a custom cooler for that NB chip with heatpipes or a home made AIO if you can fin a block for it. But ho,e made will be ugly but probably effective.

Everyone has permission to call me a idiot if you feel like it but I coulda swore the HT was northbridge controlled.

The last AMD system I owned was a water cooled 4800x2 on the best 939 pin DFI lan party board of its day.

Would this be of any help about HyperTransport?
http://www.hypertransport.org/default.cfm?page=Home

Edit:

That website is very technical - From what I can tell, it's single bandwidth link is split by varying amounts between whatever is attached to it (Graphics, RAM's, SouthBridge etc). Going to try and get my head around it while the system is poorly, seeing as the motherboard is also heading back with the poorly SSD (The board is NOT dead btw, but the store I order from recommends a different mobo for heavy OC with Piledriver, so I am changing it for an Asus Crosshair V Formula Z AMD 990FX) .

Edit: Never bothered with a new mobo, it's fine as it is.

My gaming beast is alive, courtesy of a shiny new SanDisk X300S 512GB SSD. It's not as speedy as the late M550, but was half the price and seems just as quick to my eye while I'm using it.

Had a very weird issue with Radeon drivers on a fresh install tho - They disabled all the screen outputs except for Display Port. Special Clap AMD, that's not useful with my Eyefinity screens...

It's a sad, sad day - The Piledriver Beast is being dis-assembled. I could write at length about the reasons why I no longer want to continue with this particular build, but in summary:

- R9 290X Heat / Clock throttling (even does it with just one card, Jeez...)
- AMD Chipset / Graphics drivers
- CPU bottleneck (It's huge, and noticeable with Crossfire)

I looked at addressing the heat issue with water cooling, but without any effort run up a provisional cost of £750 all in. It's not worth it, and have decided I will change everything (only the storage drives and PSU will survive) to an Intel / Nvidia solution.

I don't mind the heat, but the 290X is to quick to throttle down when running, and performance takes a HUGE impact. The CPU costs a further 20-30% performance drop on these same graphics cards too. It's negligible with one card, but at high res and multi-cards, the FX-8350 chokes.

As much as I love AMD, I had a "I knew it" moment.

Throwing away the 290X would be a waste, though, it's not that bad.

I can't even get one to run without throttling (I removed all the others). My case has plenty of ventilation. They are that bad...

How bad is the throttling?

Uhhh, with one card the core goes down from 980Mhz to 700-750Mhz under load.

When there's 2 or 3, the top card dials right back to 250-300Mhz. The middle one goes between 400-500Mhz. The bottom one seems to stay at 980, but it barely gets any utilisation.

Temps are 95C right across the board.

Ever hear anything about your M550 SSD?? I was wanting to get a 512GB one, probably an MX100, but seeing your M550 dying, so soon is giving me cold feet.

I wasn't told why it died, but it didn't seem very common at the time when I Googled it. The replacement come last week, but I threw it straight onto eBay as I had already replaced it with a Sandisk SSD.

Man that sucks, I hope you have a better time with your new build whatever that turns out to be.

I can't say I'm surprised that three way 290X's throttle down to some extent but I can't help thinking there's something else wrong when only one throttles.

Regardless of that though I should imagine a couple of 980's are looking pretty damn tempting about now!

CeeGee wrote:

Man that sucks, I hope you have a better time with your new build whatever that turns out to be.

I can't say I'm surprised that three way 290X's throttle down to some extent but I can't help thinking there's something else wrong when only one throttles.

Regardless of that though I should imagine a couple of 980's are looking pretty damn tempting about now!

Not sure what to do with it at the moment. I tried everything to get my head around why when there's only one card in there it still throttles. A quick Google of the problem reveals it's fairly common, and workarounds all involve water.

I don't like the price of the GTX 980 (£470 typically) - I was looking at either a GTX 970 or getting the last of the GTX 780Ti stock, now it's been discounted to £320-350?

I see what you mean about the 980 price, a couple of 970's with 980 style blower coolers would be much better value if you can find some.

Can I ask under what workloads and after how long running them did you get a single 290x to throttle?

Can't find any 970's listed that have the Titan style cooler on them yet, but I'm in no hurry...

...As for the throttling - I was just using my PC as normal. Gaming mostly, any game, at my native res of 5760 x 1080. Takes usually 1-2 minutes only, then MSI Afterburner starts showing core fluctuations.

After reading your misery im still wondering why NO ONE has recommended a better case the case is obviously not god for multi GPU setups heck even my massive xaser vi gets warm inside with just one r9 290 with 4 140mm and 4 120mm fans IDK why you keep throwing money on GPU upgrades when all they do is get overheated and throttled....

all your throttling problems will mostly go away with a bigger case and probably better to get something with a 200mm side fan to halp with GPU heat

Ohhh, I should have said - The case in the pictures (Zalman Z7 Plus) was retired. I transfer the entire system into a Corsair Obsidian 750D, It helped, but marginally.

I still have the parts, can an even better case pull this off without going the water cooling route - I can easily re-purpose the 750D, and I would rather buy a new case over much more expensive components.

Looks like the 290X is supposed to hit 95C under load, although I don't know if it normally throttles that much then. A case will not make a major difference if a single card is already at 95C and throttling. Adding fans will not help much either. The fundamental problem is the GPU cooler.

Personally I'd take apart the cooler, redo the thermal paste. That should be good for about 3C, which it'll eat up quickly and reach 95C again (but this time without throttling as much). Then I'd probably get unsatisfied and go for a proper cooler like Gelid's Icy Vision. Took my GTX470 from 95C load to 60C, no joke. The only problem is it takes up 3 slots.

But since you seem to have plenty of $$ at hand, why not go for the green team.

Side note: when I was young, screaming loud fans and lots of heat were tres cool, even if the computer itself wasn't that fast - now, I just see it as inefficiency. Perhaps those who obsess over American muscle cars are also immature in the same way...

geekl33tgamer wrote:

I can't even get one to run without throttling (I removed all the others). My case has plenty of ventilation. They are that bad...

This seems weird. A lone R9-290X with a custom cooler should not throttle. This was the conclusion here in Techreport, Anandtech etc (see for example http://techreport.com/review/26092/cust ... reviewed/3 and http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapp ... oled-290/4).

You have a very good case, but ventilation direction and overall pressure (positive, negative) can have a drastic effect. I would suggest first building a minimal system with 1 GPU and 1 case fan running a non-overclocked CPU then experimenting with adding different fans in different positions and directions until you get a good result. Simply changing the direction of one fan on my system (from intake to exhaust) brought down GPU temps by about 5C. When you have optimized case flow/ventilation you can add the second R9-290X and retest temps.

I can understand your disappointment with the FX8350. It was a good processor when I bought it 2 years ago, but it IS old today. However, I think the 290X could be made to work. It would be a shame not to keep it for your next build. Unless, of course, money is no object and you don't mind changing for the GTX 980 with whatever extra cost that may incur.

Crayon Shin Chan wrote:

Looks like the 290X is supposed to hit 95C under load, although I don't know if it normally throttles that much then. A case will not make a major difference if a single card is already at 95C and throttling. Adding fans will not help much either. The fundamental problem is the GPU cooler.

Custom-cooled 290X cards don't even go beyond 80 C according to tests (references above). I don't remember the exact model the poster got, but any NON-reference cooler should do the job.

Uhhhh, exhaust the fans over the graphics cards, rather than it blowing cold air in? Excuse me a second...

The Radeons used are these: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1752

ptsant wrote:

Custom-cooled 290X cards don't even go beyond 80 C according to tests (references above). I don't remember the exact model the poster got, but any NON-reference cooler should do the job.

Yeah, you're right. I assumed he was running stock 290Xs. So if it's really running at 95C with a custom cooler, either it wasn't installed properly at the factory or he's using Powertune +20%.

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Uhhhh, exhaust the fans over the graphics cards, rather than it blowing cold air in? Excuse me a second...

What do you mean "exhaust the fans over the graphics cards"?
I ran a 7970 mining for *coins a while back, hanging a 140mm fan blowing full tilt at it gave me a bit of headroom, but I'd say only about 7C worth of headroom, so maybe it won't throttle as much. It's not going to get him down to 80C.

This is going to be hard to explain, I'll get some pictures peeps...

geekl33tgamer wrote:

Uhhhh, exhaust the fans over the graphics cards, rather than it blowing cold air in? Excuse me a second...

The Radeons used are these: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1752

I was speaking of one of my case fans, not specifically about the GPU fan or any other fan in your setup. I would recommend starting with a SINGLE front intake fan and see what thermals you get. Then I'd probably add an exhaust fan in the back/top. Don't put intake and exhaust fans next to each other. You can try then either 2x intake and 1x exhaust or 1x intake and 1x exhaust.

Another way to see if you are limited by the ventilation of your case is to build the system OUTSIDE the case, on a desk and see what temps you get. If the difference is very big, your ventilation is not good. Properly ventilating ~1000W of heat is not an easy job, so it takes some experimentation.

I looked up your cards:
A lone XFX R9 290X got 72C max in hardocp and 69C max in techreport. Try first to get that kind of temperature with ONE card, the simplest possible setup, then add the others. If TR got 69C and you get 95C, something is wrong.

Thanks To clarify, I was talking about turning round the fans on the custom window panel (It has 2 120mm spinners over the GPU's), as well as the others. I'm getting some pics, will be easier with them and arrows!

okay now that's just weird my card wont even hit that temp even if i wanted it to kinda situation must be something wrong with the cards definitely or you might have something running in the BG changing Voltage on them recheck your software.

and i just noticed you have 5 PCI-E slots You Can easily space out your video cards there There is no rule as to keep them as close as possible so maybe first card in 1st slot next in 3rd even if the third one runs at 8x it probably wont be bandwidth limited for the card assuming they are PCI-E gen 2

and as other have suggested might as well re-seat the coolers and change the thermal pastes on them