Acer BiFrost A770 high temps/rpms

Hi,

Is it normal for this product to reach 3400RPM (nearly 100%) on fans with a temperature of 87-88C on stock power (210W) in a well ventilated case?

I have sent the GPU to official Acer technical support in my country (Poland) and after a month of waiting they have sent the card back stating that it operates within normal specs. If this is truly the case, I am not even sure what's the point of advertising it as OC GPU as it's running at the edge of allowed temperature even on stock settings. On Turbo mode it's even worse.

To be able to use the product I have to limit GPU Core Power to 180W so that it does not ramp up the fans to 100% all the time.

I am attaching screenshots of Intel Performance Telemetry when playing D2 Ressurected as well as my case. As you can, the only component heating up the case is GPU as CPU has AIO cooler, that pushes the air outside.

Best regards,

Wojciech

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chugzilla

looks like you can add 2 lower fans as intake to help cool the card, and what resolution are you running ? and what games have you tested it on? i have a 3070 but only run at 1080P so it never goes over 54C and it goes as low as 48C all depends on my room temps, with my main game, Days Gone on max settings, with NVidia game optimizing on and auto tuning enabled.

szadow

I actually had 2 fans on the bottom, but no matter whether they were intake or out, the thermal performance would be even a bit worse. I credit that to perhaps fans being to close to each other, causing some air turbulence. As a result of the testing I did, I have removed those fans. My resolution is 3440x1440@144Hz. I understand that if I dropped to 1080p or capped the frames, the temps would be lower, but 180W gives pretty much neglible performance difference over 210W. (~3-5%). The thing is however that I would have thought the card should be capable of running at 100% load and the cooling to be effective.

Games I have tested:
- D2 Ressurected
- Metro Exodus EE
- Dota 2 (here temps are low thanks to 144fps cap/vsync)
- Raise of the Tomb Raider

GotBanned

Gamers Nexus did a review of this card few months ago. If you haven't seen I think it is worth a watch. Tech Jesus had lower temps and a lot lower RPMs than you did, but most likely the tests were run at 1080p. Naturally ambient temp also matters - Steve and his team conducted tests at controlled 21C.

To me the GPU core temp and extremely high fan speed (I assume the reading is from the smaller Delta fan) point towards a bad contact between the GPU core and heatsink. There's only one way to fix it and that'd be to do a repaste. Thankfully it is easy to do according to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfdNHdfenus

szadow

I think the resolution doesn't matter as long as FPS is not being limited by either FPS cap, VSync or CPU. I saw his review and disassembly video, as well as other reviews claiming that load temp is somewhere between 72-76C and GPU being nearly silent, depending on whether it's open air or in case etc.

I was thinking this is poor contact as well but unfortunately Acer claims the product is ok and refused to do anything, despite me suggesting repaste. Not sure what else can I do.. I could do the repaste myself but that would void the warranty I presume?

GotBanned

I honestly do not know. Some manufacturers allow repasting and repadding, while others don't. Maybe ask Acer technician directly to have it in writing just in case?

Usually after any mods the card has to be returned into original configuration before sending it back for a possible RMA. So make sure not to lose any parts etc.

If you end up doing a repaste job, please report back about your experience and what happened to temps and RPM. Thanks!

Good luck!

billsey

Typically if Acer were doing the repair, they would just replace the card and debit the cost back to the card manufacturer. They only will do a repaste on something they did the original paste on, and they purchase the cards already assembled. Whether repasting yourself will void your warranty is very dependent on the warranty policies in your country, they differ locale to locale.

chugzilla

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1207542#Comment_1207542

well, im no expert, but it could be the case causing the higher temps, i know in the predator den there are a few members talking about that card, maybe ask them in there what temps they are getting and what kind of case they have, im sure the case size matters alot for cooling, and ive always been told, the higher the resolution of your monitor the higher the temps will be, there is a guy that has the same pc as me, with a 4k monitor and his temps on his card run 10 degrees hotter using the same exact settings playing the same exact game as i do @ 1080P.

szadow

Thanks, I will check the warranty terms and also predator den.

I guess depending on the game, I would imagine in a lot of cases modern mid/high cards in 1080p will be limited by CPU, not being utlized 100% thus having lower temps, so in that regards resolution matters.

As for the case, mine is quite small but I have also tried without the side glass but there was nearly no difference. Ambient temp is ~21C. Overall, in Cinebench R20 multicore after several passes max CPU temp is 76C, which is fairly good I think.

chugzilla

well, mines air cooled as you can see, and with cinebench r23 running the multicore 10 minute test, my cpu temps are 64C, and i have no issues with my cpu and gpu, both run at 100%, i checked the bottleneck calculator mines at 0.04%, now it could be your ambient room temps, im in a basement in ny, in the winter mine runs 46C-cpu and 54C-gpu and in the summer with central air going, they are 40C and 50C with side panel off 38C and 48C, in the winter my thermostat is set at 68 and 68 in summer lol, so yeah, a lot factors in with our internal temps, now i always run mine with all the fans 100% also when gaming for maximum cooling.

szadow

The thing though we have not shared what CPUs we have :) Mine is Ryzen 3900X, which is quite hot normally. 76C for that CPU in multicore test is good result (maybe would even pass prime95 torture test). 64C sounds better, but maybe for your CPU that is average. To be honest AIO cooling did not change that much when it comes to temps (maybe 5C less) but it is very quiet in contrast to stock AMD Wraith cooler on that CPU.

chugzilla

mines a 12700F that came with my predator 5000, and its a 2022 model, with the stock cooler i got 85C on that same test and when gaming i was at 63C, that's why i upgraded to the Noctua NH-U12A its amazing i love it !!@!! and of course, added 2 fans up top as exhaust and maxed out my ddr5@64gigs-crucial 4x16@4800mhz, removed the hdd caddy and cpu bracket that blocked air flow to the gpu and cpu, i think its all helped with the temps im getting, so after reading what you said, maybe its that small case limiting the cooling, mines a large case and the more i did, the better and cooler it has gotten, especially when ya see my temps changing significantly from the stock cooler to the Noctua, it was a 15-20C difference.

szadow

As Acer support has proven to be useless, I decided to do a repaste. I am pretty satisfied with the results. I have used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste and here are my results.

On default settings using Predator BiFrost normal mode, the temps stay in 76-77C and the RPMs rather not go above 3k, but the default fan curve is rather annoying, a lot of times it will go to 3k and then spin down to below 2k and again. Not sure if this was not caused by one of recent firmware updates, that broke the fan functioning on Acer cards.

I am using custom curve and RPMs are in 2000-2200 range when card is using 210W. In that range, the fan is almost unnoticable and temps are 83C.

With original paste, constantly above 3k RPMs and 87C.

If I put constant 3k RPMs now, it's 76C so difference comparing same RPMs is 11C.

If I limit core power to 160W (-10% performance for -25% less power, decent trade), the temps are 75C on 1600RPM which is silent (before repaste it was 82C on ~2400RPMs).

Shame on you, Acer. 2 defective cards and not willing to fix the problem for their customers.

chugzilla

well i assume that it's the fans in it. all the reviews i have seen say that acer Bifrost runs the hottest of all variants and they assume it's from the unusual choice of fans. and you also know ambient room temps' effect everything. i almost got the acer version to replace my 3070 because it's almost as good in numbers but not in temps. mines stays around 46-54C depending on my room temps. so I'm def not getting it. and i did experiment with turning the power down on my 3070 using MSI AB it can go as low as 45% and i didn't notice any game performance loss but in the synthetic benchmarks like time spy etc. the numbers were lower, but it was averaging 32C at 45% power ha-ha.