Bought an Asus edition of Nvidia GT 730 card and installed the latest Nvidia drivers. Graphic Card is working fine but it is extremely loud. Searched in Nvidia Control Panel but no fan control there. Maybe it is Asus specific? Installed latest Asus GpuTweak, can see lots of parameters, can do GPU and memory overclocking, but no fan adjustment option. I agree it is a budget card but cannot imagine this noise will be acceptable for a desktop, let alone an HTPC! OS is Windows 8.1 and temperatures (as seen on GpuTweak) are below 40 C. any suggestion? TIA
Seems to be the 2GB version of one of these http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GT7301GD5BRK/ See this Thread
I've seen loads of low end cards without any form of fan control, they are a nightmare. If you can't go passive then spend a bit of time researching your preferred models. Quiet PC is a good place to get ideas from, whether or not you end up buying from there. Silent PC Review always used to be a good place to gather HTPC ideas from too.
thanks. TBH I read that thread before posting, but I still cannot figure out whether it is just another faulty Asus card or still a buggy software...
I have a PNY GT440 with the same problem, no speed control. When it was in my main PC, it was only being used to drive a secondary display so I just unplugged the fan and it sat around the 40 degree mark IIRC. It's now in a spare PC as the primary card with a £5 ebay heatsink on it and it's nearly silent.
Try Rivatuner and SpeedFan just to be sure, and consider trying to flash the BIOS but other than that it'll either be a return or a hardware solution
I'll take a deeper look at the weekend and if no software option is working, I may just RMA (Amazon strongest point). shame though.
rivatuner and speedfan didn't work. Apparently no BIOS available whatsoever (too new?). thing is it draws so little current I wonder if a fan is actually needed (ddr3 versions are fanless). 220 and 440 have twice the TDP of a 730...
To edit the BIOS, you should be able to pull it off the card with GPU-Z and then edit with something like Nibitor Hopefully you can then change the value for fan speed and reflash the BIOS back on. Full instructions here Sadly there's a good chance that if it doesn't report the value in software, it's not even reporting a value to the BIOS and the fan is just attached directly to one of the voltage rails on the GPU. Definitely worth a try though You could try running it fanless, I'd pull the fan plug with it running, so you can monitor the temperatures and switch the power off to the machine if it starts to spiral out of control. If you unplug and then startup, you've got to let it sit through startup with no idea of temperatures which could end badly. I'd also give it a little stress test (something middling and 3d, not FurMark) just to test that it can really manage)
thanks... just eradicated the fan from heatsink. DDR3 versions run happily with passive cooling so even with a smaller heatsink I doubt I'll get into trouble at startup (if not at all). it is a 38W TDP unit after all...
There are hidden options in GPU Tweak, if you go into the tune tab in options you can select what you want to appear on the main page and adjust.
I know, but GPU tweak is a common utility for all cards... some options are not available for basic models, not even dimmed. I'll take a deeper look though, also at the BIOS utility. the fan is a 2 pin one so I doubt the card will ever notice if it's attached or not.
done all the search to no avail... Nibitor is stil a couple of generations behind (No GT7xx) and GPU Tweak doesn't see anything like a fan among the various options... without fan, the temperature stays in the low 40s while web browsing and high 40s watching HD videos.
elise_s1, I was wondering a month on what higher temps you might have seen and under what conditions. And also whether you ever did pursue further tools/tactics, perhaps a BIOS mod, that allowed you to adjust the fan speed. I guess the reason that there are zero fanless GT 730 GDDR5 cards is that GDDR5, as opposed to DDR3, can run hot. But as you say, this is an extremely low-power card, so it's a bit puzzling. I suppose if you were using it to mine Bitcoins or something, but under normal usage?
QUick update on the matter. bought an uber cheap (£1 inc. shipping) fan off ebay, replaced the microturbine provided by Asus and everything works as it should: almost silent operation and temperature well under control.
GT 730 Fan Control missing the 2 yr warranty is up. I dld speedfan but I have to friggin idea how to control my fan speed with it. any tips?
