My 980 idles at 48-50c

[robthatguy]

Update:

             My new 980 came in today and it idles at 35-40c and the core clock drops to 350mhz but 51c and 1127mhz when browsing the internet so 100% positive now that its drivers. Thanks everyone who was here to help !

[vizzaroo]

Sorry to bump this old thread but was encountering the same issue today with my GTX 980 (Which in turn lead me to this thread, searching for answers)

GPU Idle temps were sitting between 55-60
Usually they sit around 35-40
I remembered I changed a few settings around in the NVIDIA CP to crank up some FPS in all my games... and after reverting the settings my temps went back to normal idle temps.

I isolated the setting that was causing this, in the NVIDIA Control Panel ensure the below is set to reduce idle temps.

> Manage 3d settings > Global Settings > Power Management Mode >  Optimal Power

You should only use Prefer Maximum Performance option for your individual programs/apps/games.

If Prefer Maximum Performance is set in the Global Settings Tab, then your GPU is being pushed at max freq 24/7.

Use the Program Settings tab to individually set Prefer Maximum Performance for your games and such.

So whilst you may assume it's down to Drivers, it's not, assuming you're doing a fresh install of drivers which removes the user profiles / settings so you're back to the default NVIDIA CP default settings and the Optimal Power mode setting is set as default.

Thus giving you the impression the fresh drivers fixed it, essentially they did but you're not localising the issue.