Has anyone else here have a problem with the fan speed on GeForce GTX 960s?

[RJARRRPCGP]

My PNY GeForce GTX 960 was notable for not raising the fan RPM until at least near 80 C!

(But mine was touted to be factory OC'ed, thus a combination of both is suspected of GTA V getting terminated unexpectedly)

I noticed that the fan RPM was too low when I queried the GPU fan RPM.

But I stopped using my GTX 960 not too long after I got an Asus Strix GeForce GTX 970 on May 29, 2019.

[BigTroll]

I dunno, my old pny 6800GT agp had an alluminum reference heatsink where all the other 6800gts had copper. it always ran over 80c till it cooked itself, had other friends with various dying PNY cards, they just seem to be a bad luck brand. I just noticed you changed your sig to represent team ryzen RIGHT ON!!!

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by BigTroll

I dunno, my old pny 6800GT agp had an alluminum reference heatsink where all the other 6800gts had copper. it always ran over 80c till it cooked itself, had other friends with various dying PNY cards, they just seem to be a bad luck brand. I just noticed you changed your sig to represent team ryzen RIGHT ON!!!

Which dying PNY cards? The GeForce 9800 GT seemed to be notable for failing, don't be surprised if it's suddenly never detected anymore, IIRC. They possibly are the most likely to fail without visible symptoms before it disappears.

And still working on the Ryzen 7 3700X project.
I of course, had to clean the case and prepare it for a cooling duct, as in the recent era, while CPUs can take high temps, caps and FETs can't!
This is why major league cooling is still required like in the socket 775 days!

[BigTroll]

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

Which dying PNY cards? The GeForce 9800 GT seemed to be notable for failing, don't be surprised if it's suddenly never detected anymore, IIRC. They possibly are the most likely to fail without visible symptoms before it disappears.

And still working on the Ryzen 7 3700X project.
I of course, had to clean the case and prepare it for a cooling duct, as in the recent era, while CPUs can take high temps, caps and FETs can't!
This is why major league cooling is still required like in the socket 775 days!

I think it was a 9800gt now that I think about it, which I think other brands and not just pny had issues with. I just have seemed to have bad luck but that PNY geforce 4 ti4200 i recappped still seems to be going strong 2 years later.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

nothing much to say about that. manufacturers have consistently put shitty coolers on their video cards over the years. or nubs would complain of noisy video card fans so manufacturers set the fan to spin up only when it gets toasty hot.

the gf4 ti series still uses the old wire-bond die type rather than the flip-chip die type, so it lasts longer because the design is more robust. the only issue is that the stock fan on the gf4 ti cards often die without warning, killing the nv25 or nv28 chip with heat that cant be cooled passively with no fan. so pay attention to the fan on your gf4 ti card regularly to make sure its still spinning and feel it for pushing air out of the heatsink.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by ChaosLegionnaire

nothing much to say about that. manufacturers have consistently put shitty coolers on their video cards over the years. or nubs would complain of noisy video card fans so manufacturers set the fan to spin up only when it gets toasty hot.

+10000

Don't believe the lies nVidia and AMD are spreading that it is OK for a GPU to run at such high temperature. It is NOT OK. Heat is still the #1 reason why GPUs fail nowadays and has been like that for many years now.

Also, remember this: if the GPU doesn't fail and/or lasts "forever", then that is more hardware to go on the used market and potentially less business for nVidia and ATI. Alternatively said, manufacturers no longer have interest in making reliable products that last much past the warranty or at least past the useful timeframe that an "average" user will use the hardware.

Most people upgrade on a regular basis every few years, so for them this is typically not a problem, because the HW is often replaced before it dies. But for people who don't care to upgrade too often, this can have rather adverse affects.

Therefore, don't trust the GPU manufacturer with the cooling solution - ever!

If the heatsink/cooler looks adequate, either flash the BIOS with a custom fan curve/profile to cool the GPU with a maximum target temperature of 60C. Or, if you don't want to flash the BIOS for warranty purposes, use MSI Afterburner or similar software to create a fan profile that will cool the GPU better than the stock profile.

However, if the stock cooler is not adequate for the TDP of the GPU chip, then an alternative/better cooler may need to be installed. You can test this by setting the GPU fan speed to 100% and put maximum load on the GPU. If the GPU temperature continues increasing past 60-65C after a long test session, then the cooler is not adequate for the GPU TDP.

In such case, a last alternative before changing the GPU cooler is to impose a frame-limit in your 3D applications, so that the GPU load is lower, resulting in lower heat output. In that regard, V-sync can sometimes also achieve this.

I usually go the frame-limiting route, along with MSI Afterburner, simply because I don't like to dabble too much with BIOS flashing (but I have done it on a few ATI/AMD cards that are easy to flash.) This is usually good enough for keeping most of my video cards running cool. On more recent GPUs, though, you can also impose a lower TDP limit in the BIOS. This, along with better fan profile, should also work nicely. But the end result will likely be worse/slower 3D performance.

Originally Posted by BigTroll

I dunno, my old pny 6800GT agp had an alluminum reference heatsink where all the other 6800gts had copper. it always ran over 80c till it cooked itself

Believe it or not, the copper 6800 GT cooler would not have saved that card.

Problem is cards back in those days regularly came with single-slot coolers and tiny fans that didn't move a whole lot of air. So the end result was always a cooked GPU.

I just finished cooler-modding an XFX GeForce 6800 XT earlier this week. The original cooler was all-aluminum too. I didn't wait to see if the card would go all the way up to 80C, but it did easily go up to 65C after 1 minute of load, with the temperature graph looking like it would still go higher. This was not surprising, of course, given that most 6800 cards dissipate at least 55-60 Watts or so. With my modded Xbox 360 rev2 CPU cooler (copper base with copper heatpipe and Al fins), it flat-lined at 57C after an hour of testing... and this was with 8C higher room temperatures. The downside to it is that the card now occupies 4 slots vertically.

Originally Posted by BigTroll

had other friends with various dying PNY cards, they just seem to be a bad luck brand.

In my experience, I haven't seen anything more wrong with them than with other brands. It just comes down to the cooler they use. If it's good, then they will last. If not, then they won't.

Take for example the GeForce 8800 GT and 9800 GT with single-slot coolers. I've seen those die all across the board irrespective of the brand. Ironically, I do have a dead PNY GF 8800 GT (bought it that way, though.) Then again, even more ironic is that I have a working PNY GF 7900 GS, while also having two other dead 7900 GS cards (one BFG and one EVGA.) They all used the same shitty single-slot coolers, so I think it was just a matter of usage.