Radeon Video Cards Overheating with New Drivers: Act Fast
The Update to Drivers
AMD Adrenalin 26.5.1 WHQL, released on May 6, is causing significant issues among Radeon video card owners due to an anomaly involving the Zero RPM functionality—a technology designed to stop fans entirely during light loads or GPU idle phases.
This feature, present on most modern GPUs, allows the graphics card to rely solely on passive cooling when temperatures and consumption remain particularly low, with obvious benefits in terms of noise, dust accumulation, and fan lifespan. However, when the graphical load increases, the system should automatically reactivate active cooling.
Bug in Zero RPM Mode 26.5.1
We use the conditional because, according to various user reports, this switch does not occur with the Adrenalin drivers from the 26.5.1 release. The problem arises when the monitor enters standby or is turned off: during this phase, Zero RPM activates correctly, but when the display returns to operation, the system maintains passive mode even when it should deactivate it. In practice, the fans do not reactivate, and during heavy loads, the card risks overheating.
This scenario raises particular concern as it could lead to thermal throttling, reduced performance, and, in extreme cases, an increased risk of thermal stress on the hardware, especially during gaming or high graphic workloads initiated immediately after the monitor's reactivation.
At this time, users have identified several practices to work around the problem, but not true solutions. The quickest and easiest method is to restart the system, which restores correct behavior until the monitor goes into standby again.
Some Radeon GPU owners have instead decided to completely disable Zero RPM to avoid the problem, however sacrificing the benefits of silent mode. Certainly, this is not a solution to the issue, but at least it temporarily mitigates and avoids the risk of overheating.
To perform this operation, simply enter the AMD control panel, under the Performance tab and select the Optimization menu. From there, enable the Custom profile, and under the GPU Fan Optimization section, activate the option and deselect Zero RPM.
The most effective alternative is clearly a complete uninstallation of the drivers using tools like AMD Cleanup Utility or DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to eliminate old fan profiles and reinstall the drivers from scratch. Naturally, the advice is to roll back to a version of Adrenalin prior to 26.5.1.
In the meantime, AMD has released the Adrenalin 26.5.2 WHQL drivers, but currently, there are no specific fixes dedicated to this bug. Therefore, the only way to safeguard your GPU is to adopt one of the methods outlined above while waiting for a specific update.