GTX 780 Overheating!?

[Gypopotamus]

Hi guys!

So I recently invested in a 2nd GTX 780 because of the massive price drops here in the UK. I previously had an MSI Gaming card for about 1 year, and I bought a Zotac one as my 2nd.
Before I upgraded, I had the MSI 780 in my rig overclocked to 1137Mhz. It ran at about 85-90 degrees, but that was acceptable for me, especially considering the massive overclock!

When I put the second card in (below the old one) I put them both to stock and ran some benchmarks. Everything seemed to be working fine until I noticed a little bit of stutter. I opened MSI afterburner, and saw that my old MSI card was hitting 96 degrees and throttling down, even though it was at stock clocks, 100% power limit, and had a slot to spare between it and the 2nd card. I thought maybe it was because it was breathing in the exhaust from the 2nd card, so I swapped them over, putting the Zotac card at the top as my primary GPU. This, however solved nothing, and the MSI card (now GPU2 rather than GPU1) is still throttling down to about 500Mhz for a split second every few seconds due to it hitting it's thermal limit.

The card is not automatically overclocking itself, because when it isn't throttling it doesn't go over 901MHz. It isn't overvolted. The thermal limit is set to 95 degrees (as high as it will go) and the power limit is set to 100% (I have tried it at 106% and it makes no difference). When I put the new card in I fully cleaned out my entire case of dust, including the heat sink on the old graphics card. (A lot of dust came out of the old GPU but I made sure it was all gone). My case has good ventilation (Fractal Design Define R4 with 2 fans at the front and one at the back. The top and side fan slots are still closed with the covers that come with the case for noise dampening), and while my overclocked CPU does dump out a lot of heat, none of the other components get hot (CPU 75-80 degrees, new GPU 75-80 degrees, motherboard temps are all fine).

I have set a very aggressive fan curve for both GPUs to try and keep them cool, but the old MSI one still gets up to 96 and starts throttling. Nothing is blocking the fans, and I'm not even running them too hard with FurMark or anything. All of the mentioned temps were measured through MSI Afterburner and CPUID HWMonitor while running Crysis 3 maxed out for about 30 mins.

Do you think I will need to replace thermal compound or anything? Is doing so safe? Can I send it to MSI under warranty considering I had it overclocked before? Has anyone else experience similar cooling issues with the MSI Twin Frozr IV cooler?

HELP!?!

Thanks in advance,
Joe

[Rorgash]

run it and stick your hand in at the gpus and feel the air, since the coolers use the air around them to cool, depending on the front fans and how fast they spin and how good they are, simply feeling with your hand will tell you if its airflow or if its the card itself thats having issues, in which case you can move on to cleaning and termal paste(both of which you have either done or i think wont change anything)

[Fulgrim]

Clean any dustbunnies out of the MSI card, and replace the thermal paste.

[Gypopotamus]

Have you bothered to clean out the fans, and put new thermal paste on the MSI one?

I have cleaned the fans and heat sinks fully on the MSI one, but I haven't tried the Thermal paste.

 

run it and stick your hand in at the gpus and feel the air, since the coolers use the air around them to cool, depending on the front fans and how fast they spin and how good they are, simply feeling with your hand will tell you if its airflow or if its the card itself thats having issues, in which case you can move on to cleaning and termal paste(both of which you have either done or i think wont change anything)

The air flow feels fine to me, just a bit toasty coming of that card! Do you not think that changing thermal compound will do anything? I've never tried it, but I do have some Noctua stuff kicking around if that'd be appropriate?

[Rorgash]

I have cleaned the fans and heat sinks fully on the MSI one, but I haven't tried the Thermal paste.

 

The air flow feels fine to me, just a bit toasty coming of that card! Do you not think that changing thermal compound will do anything? I've never tried it, but I do have some Noctua stuff kicking around if that'd be appropriate?

 

its just, a card doesnt just get hot all of a sudden when putting in a second card

[Scouten]

if your single card was running around 85 to 90 degrees your case must not have the best exhaust

 

i have an evga acx and zotac amp in a 540 air 1 slot width spaced top card hits a limit of 85 degrees. in single card around 70-75

[Gypopotamus]

its just, a card doesnt just get hot all of a sudden when putting in a second card

That's what I would've thought! Later today I'm going to try taking out the 2nd card and seeing what temps I get with only the MSI card. Air flow really shouldn't be an issue, though! I'm currently testing with the side panel off, I have all fans at 12V and the GPU fans at 100%! It's really weird!

[Gypopotamus]

if your single card was running around 85 to 90 degrees your case must not have the best exhaust

 

i have an evga acx and zotac amp in a 540 air 1 slot width spaced top card hits a limit of 85 degrees. in single card around 70-75

My card was running at 85-90 degrees with a massive overclock. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's running ridiculously hot at STOCK now I have it in SLI. The other card is in that 70-75-80 degree range just fine, so the exhaust is fine.

[DirtySHISNO]

My card was running at 85-90 degrees with a massive overclock. That's not the issue. The issue is that it's running ridiculously hot at STOCK now I have it in SLI. The other card is in that 70-75-80 degree range just fine, so the exhaust is fine.

Even overclocked i think 85-90 is fairly hot for an nvidia card.

 

This is with an aggressive fan curve (around 70% at the 65c it got to) after ten minutes of valley 1080p/max settings

 

Maybe what the other guys say is correct, a mixture of airflow and old thermal paste is the problem - unless you just  run at a ridiculously higher resolution than me.