Request new BIOS for MSI R9 270 GAMING 2GB

Question

Hi there, I use W7SP1 with a Gigabyte GA-H87-HD3 mobo and the 13.12 drivers(14.4 suffer from very high OpenCL to Direct3D interop lag unfortunately, which is a showstopper with madVR) and I just bought this board with the exact same BIOS version number as on this link: techpowerup (.com)/vgabios/149707/msi-r9270-2048-131106.html
It's fairly silent under load and I'm happy with that, but when idle the fans seem hardlocked to 1040 rpm
Whatever fan percentage higher than 18% does increase the fan rpm speed, but anything lower still gives 1040 rpm.......what is the point to cool the GPU down to 28°C when its TJmax is 95°C? I would like to drop the fans speed when idle to maybe 700/800rpm and get the GPU to reach 40°C or so?
I run a SSD with a 350rpm oversized CPU fan, a passive PSU and several oversized case fans that also run very slowly, those 1040rpm are killing me....I used to own a VTX3D Vchamp HD7850 that allowed me to make my own custom fan speed curve in Afterburner: dead-silent when idle and slowly ramped up under load, perfect
Of course its cooler was a joke compared to your TF4 but you can see that Asus are now releasing graphic cards that are semi-passive with their fans shutting off until the GPU reaches 65°C, it makes no sense to me to use the TF4 at 1040 rpm when idle(and even more so on the 70W TDP GTX750Ti).
Long story short, I would really appreciate an unlocked BIOS please so I could build my own fan speed curve in Afterburner as I used to. I do plan on buying the future Maxwell's(a twice faster 750Ti would be awesome), I dearly hope that you will reevaluate your TF4 fan speed curves because otherwise I would more than likely buy a semi-passive Asus next time. Talk about wasted potential
I guess you hardlocked it so dumb ppl wouldn't set the fans to a fixed very low speed and toast the board, but posting an unlocked BIOS on your forum that's aimed at power users is just showing that you care. I know EVGA did post this kind of BIOS updates recently and you polished the TF4 cooler to such extents that it's truly a crying shame to be stuck at 1040 rpm and 28°C when idle
There is no question that TF4 is extremely effective under load with a 150W TDP GPU, but you can see that the 270X Powercolor board is quieter when idle in this comparison: tomshardware (.com)/reviews/radeon-r9-270-benchmark-review,3769-5.html
Hope you can help, I will gladly spread the word on HTPC forums because this board is close to perfection when using madVR.
Thank you very much in advance

Answer 1

OK thanks for the reply, but the 18% cap seems BIOS based...I have a hard time believing that they can't run any lower than 1040 rpm
Are you a mod? Working for MSI? This looks like a wild guess more than an official reply if you don't mind me saying.
For the record, that VTX3D board I mentioned in my previous PM was able to go down to 1%.
I would fix it myself but there are no BIOS editors for the R9 serie apparently....MSI simply capped the lowest PWM value: tpucdn dot com/rbe/RBE_Fan.png
Whatever way their speed's being throttled(PWM or voltage), they must be able to go slower than that. I could provide you links but EVGA did make clear that they capped the lowest speed of the fans on some of their boards so dumb users wouldn't fry them but they were entirely able to release unlocked BIOS binaries.
At this point I could either return it or unplug its fans and slap a 600rpm 140mm fan onto the board using zip ties.......it's just amazing that MSI managed to ultimately fail on such a detail. All the work put into the TF4 cooler goes down the drain
flobelix seems able to help, I hope he'll chime in: forum-en.msi dot com/index.php?topic=180521
Quote
Fan controller actually can control the fans, and the GPU gets less hot