1080Ti Usage, temp & noise expectations

[hockayak]

Hi all,

 

Long time LTT viewer/forum reader, first time posting - apologies if i'm posting where i shouldn't be.

 

Okay, so i recently bought a second hand, but 1.5year old 1080Ti. Its not a super-dooper one, its the Gigabyte Gaming OC 11G. It seems to work really well, the visuals and FPS are just unbelievable compared to my old 660Ti. Its's still in an older system (i7 - 3770k) until the rest of the parts arrive. Of course i wanted to test it out right away, i couldn't help myself. I loaded up TimeSpy etc and the scores are fine.

 

But when i head into something like Borderlands 3 or The Witcher, the GPU heads directly to 80+ degrees C, sits there and the fans go wild. Are these games particularly demanding on GPUs and therefore the workload for the GPU is expected or are there problems here? Airflow in the case is pretty poor currently, that's why my new rig should suit it way better - better air, more space etc. I'm just trying to work out my expectations i guess, as reviews never ever mention that on mid-higher end cards that they basically take off under any kind of load. I feel like its pretty noisy, or at least a lot noisier than i'd expected. I know my 1080Ti isn't top spec at all - but jsut wondering about other peoples experiences with these issues. 

 

Is this why people with higher end cards end up custom water cooling? Is that a quieter/better solution?

[schwellmo92]

If you are maxing out the GPU and the case airflow is not very good 80c seems about standard. That graphics card is also a low-mid end model so it wont have as good cooling as higher end models. Graphics card normally target about 78-80c by default, if you want to run it cooler you can mess around with targets and fan curves in a program like MSI Afterburner.

[Promosss]

Graphics card are designed to run at around 80 degrees, especially if you said that you have a bad airflow. Your card is fine.

[hockayak]

Great, thanks guys, i really appreciate the feedback. Just wanting to check that this is all good for now, didnt want to find a problem later on when i buuld myt new setup and then it'd be too late to sort. Hopefully the airflow of the new system should at least try to lower the temps.

[hockayak]

Interestingly, even in my new case with a better fan arrangement, anything on High settings pushes this card right to the thermal limit. Does anyone have any experience in cooling a lower end 1080ti card in a more DIY style? Seems a shame to straight away rip off the shroud and heatsink, but i cant see any other solution as its so damn loud. I know there WAS an AIO Corsair kit and an NZXT kit for doing these things, but has anyone done it? Any ideas to try first?

 

I got in touch with Gigabyte and they said that i cant replace (or at least check) the thermal compound as i'd lose the warranty - even though it's a 2nd hand card, i'm not sure if it'd be honoured either way.

 

I'm not at all disappointed by the performance, like it can totally do the FPS etc but it's kinda not able to do that AND stay cool. I haven't overclocked it, and i don't even see how that'd be possible either way without better cooling?

[GoodEnough]

borderlands 3 is a chunky game, especially at higher resolutions.

[hockayak]

Hey GoodEnough, yeah i did suspect it might be, it seems to be one of those that because of its art style looks like way less rendering than it is. A lot of people seem to struggle with getting really high FPS. Thing is, something like hmm...Outer Worlds, i get the same. I'll think of a few other scenarios.

[hockayak]

Just to close out on this thread, i eventually ended up pulling the heatsink and fans off the card and replacing the thermal compound. It was pretty gummy and firm, so a really clean up and reapplication has reduced temps by 18C so thats a decent return on the time invested in doing it.

 

I noted that Gigabyte said i'd void the warranty, but i didnt have to pull off any security stickers or anything so i don't think they'd particularly know either way.