Graphics Toasty 3070 Ti FE - is it safe to whack the fan speed up for gaming?

My graphics card is a toasty boi - this is what HWMonitor reports when running a combination of Cinebench R23 and Furmark



Obviously there are thermal throttling limits that'll kick in to protect the GPU silicon, but those hotspot and memory temps are looking a mite toasty for my liking. It makes no difference whether I have the case fans (3x120mm intake via a 360mm AIO rad, 3x120mm exhaust (2 top 1 rear)) running at full whack or not, it always settles around that sort of temperature - and yes, some games will push it that high, it's not just synthetic benchmarks.

Buuuuut.... left to its own devices, the fans never really get much above ~60% even when the GPU temp is way up there:



Obviously Afterburner, which produced that graph, can indeed adjust the fan speed curve. If I set it to the default curve



that will indeed knock the temperatures down a bit



It also reduces hotspot and RAM temps, but it's harder to show that difference on a graph.

I can very likely get a lot better cooling if I tweak the fan curve it so that the fans actually hit 100% at full GPU utilisation. Those fans are noisy af at 100% speed, but if it takes ~5C off all those temps then I might consider it worthwhile. My question is whether or not this is a safe thing to do, or whether I'm going to kill those fans by running them at 100% for extended periods of time?

I'd really like to replace the thermal compound on the card and look at getting some better thermal pads for the VRMs and memory chips, but I'm not really keen on the idea of voiding the warranty with the way the GPU market is right now.

 

Ta.

I went through and optimised my case fan speeds earlier today. I'd set them to quite an aggressive curve when I first built the system as I had no idea what to expect from both the CPU (R9 5900X) and my AIO (Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360). The AIO's actually doing quite a good job of keeping temperatures under control - although I haven't really done any overclocking or seriously heavy tweaking - so I can set my fans to quite a nice quiet profile.

It's just the GPU I need to worry about now!

 

The VRAM temps are an issue for 30 series. Even the later releases with "better" thermal pads get toasty.

It is absolutely worth replacing the pads, despite cost, effort and risk to warranty; not to mention the WTFness of it.

The best bang for buck replacement pads are the 12.8w/mk pads from Thermalright. You can get them on Amazon. You can get fujipoly pads rated at 17w/mk but they don't perform any better in my opinion, and they cost three times as much.

 

Aight, colour me convinced! I'll do some tweaking with the fan curve - cheers all

Bitfenix Nova Mesh, with the internal mesh removed. TBH though even with the side panel open I get pretty much the same temps!

Cheers for the recommendation - starting to sound like it's going to be a good idea to swap out the thermal pads and reapply thermal goo.

 

You'll probably find gaming won't get near those temps, furmark is a bit synthetic but yes you can up the fan curve, I did this with my OC-'ed 1080Ti when on air and my 3080Ti whilst lovely and quiet normally I whack it up to 100 for benching, keeps it around 50-60, these chips are bloody toasty, use a lot of juice too.

I will probably put mine on water but the block is £250 and at that price I might be better served selling my 3080Ti FE and getting a card with block prebuilt rather than ruin any warranty on this card, I was on the fence between the 3080Ti and 6900XT Zero WB, probably should have went for the AMD its faster and has a block on it, especially having played with the RT stuff now and just have a general meh feeling about it, just give me some hardcore render powah!

If you are considering a strip down for pads, then adding a block and WCing perhaps could be considered.

Nice quiet card when gaming on air though, the Ti FE cooler is superb especially compared to my old EVGA 1080Ti but the quietness no doubt comes at higher temps, they are designed for it though and it doesn't look like its knocking back clocks to control it so probably fine

 

Not many, I'll grant you. But Warzone, for example, constantly pegs GPU temperature at 82C and when I was playing Death Stranding that was hitting high 70s, sometimes 80.

 

Put it on water.

 

Unreal engine is the most punishing. Even more than 3dmark.

My vram temps on a 2080ti were hitting 106c. So it's not just gddr6 that runs hot.

I like to keep my cards under 80. Seems every card I've ever had live over that has died eventually.

 

If the temps don't change much when you increase the airflow into and out of the case, in my mind I would change the paste and pads first.

 

Just a follow up on the Thermalright pads - the accepted ideal thickness for the FE cooler cards is 1.5mm

 

'Proper' watercooling is actually going to be my next 'big' investment! Once I get a decent-sized case...

If anyone can find a waterblock for the 3070Ti then I'm all ears! Only thing I can find is that EKWB are "working on it"...

Ta - that saves me a rabbit-hole of research/trial-and-error. I did look up those Thermalright pads yesterday, and they're not obscene so I'll pick some up after the next payday I think.

 

Wait for EK or Water cool. DO NOT be tempted to order from the dude in France who is making water blocks for it. Worst experience and total waste of £130 I have ever had. Turned up nearly two months too late, and with no thermal pads. He ghosted me when I asked the sizes, so I was left with a £130 paper weight.

It was also **** quality.



Look at the area around the G 1/4 holes ffs. It's totally pissed.

 

https://hybridcooling-modding.fr/home/225-waterblock-rtx-3070-ti-founders-edition.html

It's that guy I am talking about. As say, wait for EK or Water cool. The latter would be my choice.

 

I used about two and a half 85x45x1.5mm packs on my first 3090, and two packs on the second one, but they have memory chips and VRMs on both sides of the PCB.

One pack should be enough for a single-sided card - there are barely any components on the rear side of the 3070Ti that require contact with the backplate. Also, it has a third of the VRAM and fewer VRMs than the 3090.

 

Set a custom fan curve and also look into undervolting. The 3000 series respond very nicely to a bit of undervolting (just like the 1000 and 2000 series before them).

Optimum tech has done a nice video on the process - really straight forward in MSI Afterburner.

 

That has little to no impact on memory temps, but undervolting is still worthwhile.

 

Yup, seeing it myself, these 3xxx are hot, mine is going on water, it drops a good ~250Mhz off the core with an extended play session, not really acceptable to me, sure 110 is the memory limit but it's not even that warm in the house today.

Guess if I put it on water I'll need to run a fan over the backplate which should help my SSD to as its hitting 80C next to the GPU.



Should come as no surprise really my 1080Ti wasn't a lot different on air and it drew less power.