GPU fans spin up randomly

[Tamar]

I’ve built myslef a new PC with a Gigabyte 3080 Gaming OC card for Christmas. All of the thermals and performance seems to bee in order, but the fans on the GPU seem to go a bit crazy sometimes. Under minimal load (like writing this post), they will spin up to what I assume is 100% (although Afterburner says it’s 46%, but it’s MUCH louder than the 46% it reports when I play CP77). They stay like that for about 5 seconds and then calm down.

I’ve noticed that this happens when the card OC’s from its idle downclock (240 MHz) to its working clock (1800 MHz I believe), but only most of the time. The temps are 40 to 50°C when this happens, so I don’t think this behaviour is thermal-bound. Under sustained load, the card settles at about 70°C with reasonable fan loudness so to say.

I tried Afterburner, but the fans don’t listen to it. I tried reseating the card, rolling back drivers, using studio drivers instead of game-ready, nothing helped. Please help before I lose my mind.

EDIT: Two more things that could be of note:
1) I have updated the MB’s BIOS for it to be able to use a Ryzen 5000 CPU
2) Upon first Windows boot, I had issues with the GPU not posting the right resolution and only posting on one monitor, while Windows kept reinstalling its drivers. This solved itself when I reseated the card.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Tamar
New information

[Xaring]

You could try contacting Gigabyte for a solution from their end.
In any case you can try re-flashing the GPUs BIOS 

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/225676/gigabyte-rtx3080-10240-200903-2 - https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/?did=10DE-2206-1458-403F

That might help fix it.

With regards to afterburner, make sure you're setting up the fan profile correctly and enabling hardware control and monitoring. Also, make sure you don't have other apps fiddling around with the GPU too (EVGA Precision, whatever GB's oc tool is, etc)...

[Mark Kaine]

sounds like faulty drivers / bios. contact the seller or gigabyte and see if you can RMA, the card obviously shouldn't do that. 

 

*Unless* you set it to prefer maximum performance "then that's on you. 

[Tamar]

1 hour ago, Xaring said:

You could try contacting Gigabyte for a solution from their end.
In any case you can try re-flashing the GPUs BIOS 

Thanks, I will try those both, but I’ll keep the BIOS flash as a last resort because I’m worried about the warranty in case the card was actually defective (which would break my heart after hunting for it for so long, but it’s better to RMA it than lose the money).

 

1 hour ago, Xaring said:

make sure you're setting up the fan profile correctly and enabling hardware control and monitoring.

I think I’m doing everything right, hardware control and monitoring is enabled. The GPU’s behavior doesn’t seem to be affected by temperatures though, so I think that the problem is elsewhere. I haven’t installed any other OC / control apps other than Afterburner so far. I might look for a Gigabyte thing though.

[Tamar]

48 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

sounds like faulty drivers / bios. contact the seller or gigabyte and see if you can RMA, the card obviously shouldn't do that. 

 

*Unless* you set it to prefer maximum performance "then that's on you. 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Where would a performance setting like that be? I haven’t changed anything AFAIK, but it would be nice to be able to check.

I don’t know what I’m going to do if the card is defective. The cards don’t even exist, I spent forever waiting for a 3080 to become available. I don’t want my money back, I just want a working card god damn it.

[Xaring]

4 minutes ago, Tamar said:

Shit. Shit. Shit. Where would a performance setting like that be? I haven’t changed anything AFAIK, but it would be nice to be able to check.

I don’t know what I’m going to do if the card is defective. The cards don’t even exist, I spent forever waiting for a 3080 to become available. I don’t want my money back, I just want a working card god damn it.

You shouldn't brick it if you follow the steps correctly, and they'll have no way of knowing if you bricked it flashing the bios - you just contact them and ask for an RMA going "fan started doing this weird thing, I used DDU to uninstall my drivers and then reinstalled them from scratch and while installing, the screen went black and never turned on again."
 

[Mark Kaine]

46 minutes ago, Tamar said:

Shit. Shit. Shit. Where would a performance setting like that be? I haven’t changed anything AFAIK, but it would be nice to be able to check.

if you didn't change anything it should be set to normal... so the reason might be something else... faulty drivers etc, I can't know... 

 

 

But you can try to use DDU (look it up) and reinstall drivers for the gpu... 

 

I wouldn't mess with BIOS... you don't want to brick your new card lol... 

[Tamar]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

But you can try to use DDU (look it up) and reinstall drivers for the gpu

Been there, done that. Tried installing GeForce Experience, uninstalling GeForce Experience, downloading the drivers from the Gigabyte site instead of the nVidia site, no luck with anything. 

I remembered two more things that could be of note though:
1) I have updated the MB’s BIOS for it to be able to use a Ryzen 5000 CPU
2) Upon first Windows boot, I had issues with the GPU not posting the right resolution and only posting on one monitor, while Windows kept reinstalling its drivers. This solved itself when I reseated the card.