Earlier this month, AMD released a new graphics driver: the RADEON Software Adrenalin Edition 26.5.1. This new version supported new games and corrected a few minor problems with the RADEON RX 9000. However, this driver also introduced another major problem: the Zero RPM (semi-passive) operation of the fans was… Altered.
Zero RPM: impaired fan operation!
Fans that no longer start up when the screen comes out of standby!
Modern graphics cards feature a semi-passive operating mode for their fans. This means that, when the load is low, the fan stops working, guaranteeing silent operation while preserving ventilation. This mode is only activated when the GPU temperature is kept below a certain threshold. Once the limit has been reached, the fans switch on.
With version 26.5.1, this mode is altered. When the screen goes into idle mode ( more or less prolonged inactivity), the card’s semi-passive mode is activated as it should be. But when the screen comes back on, the Zero RPM mode remains “blocked”. As you can see, this is problematic, since when the PC is called upon again, there’s a ventilation fault on the graphics card.
The solution:
To correct the problem, you can reboot your PC, which will bring your graphics card out of this “forced” semi-passive model. Alternatively, you can completely and cleanly uninstall the graphics driver using DDU, for example, or AMD’s driver uninstaller. On the other hand, all saved profiles will be deleted and will have to be re-applied manually. These include overclocking and underclocking/undervolting profiles, custom fan profiles, etc.
Otherwise, some users have even gone so far as to disable semi-passive mode to avoid any problems. Finally, you can always go back to driver version 26.3.1 to avoid this problem.
