Vortex III Elite - One GPU died; removed but fan makes a lot of noise

[Krayzi3Bon3]

Hello

I have an almost 5 years old Vortex III elite with crossfire 7907ms. One of them died (the one from the main slot) so I swapped the other one on the main slot. All good but the problem is that even if I'm not doing much, the fan from the empty slot kick is and just runs in loops (starts, stops, starts etc.; you can hear it). Also I have noticed that it mostly kicks in when I play a video or a movie and the GPU temp just locks in at 69 degrees for some reason, voltage at 1.0V from 0.82. (I'm not overclocking or anything).

Now I did try to disconnect the problematic fan but after doing that, the laptop shuts down by itself after a few minutes..

What should I do. Or at least, what seems to be the problem? I have tried with latest drivers as well, used DDU, same story. I just want it to not go to 1.00 V for no reason and start that annoying looping sound.

Thanks

 

[Krayzi3Bon3]

no one?

 

[Wozza63]

Yeah sounds like whenever the GPU is kicking into a high power mode. You can try using power saving mode in Windows which helped me a bit with this issue as the system will be a little more conservative when it comes to ramping up the clock speeds. It's recommended that you set it back to high performance for gaming or demanding tasks.

 

[Krayzi3Bon3]

I am running it on power saver with everything turned down manually including processor state.. If I put it on high performance it jumps to 79 degrees in idle :| And this is happening since I removed the dead card. The fan that is actually connected to the running GPU is blowing hot air but the other one that doesn't have the secondary GPU attached anymore is blowing cold air like crazy, and making a constant revving sound. Like I said, I tried to disconnect it since there are already two fans in there (cPU and main GPU) but the system shuts down after a few minutes as if it would get too hot. What the hell?! Than why is it blowing just cold air. I just can't make sens of it. If I could joke about it I would say the laptop is feeling phantom pain from losing one GPU

 

[Wozza63]

Then it sounds like there is a cooling issue. I assume you also removed the heatsink when you took out the dead card, did you apply new thermal paste and ensure the heatsink was properly aligned with the CPU and GPUs?

 

[Krayzi3Bon3]

I did remove the heatsink from the dead card and my thought was to disconnect the fan as well since it wasn't collecting hot air from it anymore but like I said, once I pull the cable and start the laptop without it, it gets too hot. I know it's a cooling issue but I just don't get why. Can it be that the bios is configured to see two cards or something, then I thought maybe the fans are dead but then why are they spinning? and shouldn't the system be cooler once it runs only one GPU and there is even more space in there? Nothing adds up.

I did repaste. With Kryonaut Thermal Grizzly actually. I'm baffled

 

[Wozza63]

As far as I know, GPUs don't run at the BIOS level so it should have no effect. A clean install of Windows may be a good shout though, as it will often expect 2 GPUs (even with driver reinstalls).

I'm out of ideas now, with laptops you are limited with how much control you can have over fans Might be worth making sure the heatsink is firmly against the CPU/GPU.

Would it be possible to get a photo of the layout of the bottom of the laptop, as it's slightly unclear how the cooling system is laid out.