980 ti Liquid Cooling a 980 Ti in 2018

[CiB0rG]

So, I have my (almost) 3 year old gaming build that was essentially a "wannabe high end" on a pretty low budget. Last winter I added a 2nd GTX 970 to it, but after a very disappointing lack of decent game performance, I bough an old reference 980 Ti on ebay. Although benchmarks are worse, I instantly saw a great increase in in-game performance over the 970s, but the one issue I have with the card are the thermals.

 

I have a fairly small case (specs below) and 2 Strix OC 970s ran at 75 & 80 degrees celsius under full load basically on top of each other. So I was actually surprised to see a single 980 Ti hit 85 degrees under a full load all alone in the case. Even more surprising is that it idles at 70 degrees and just sits there all the time. Considering the fact I have a random brand cheap case, I'll say here that my 4790k runs at 40-45 degrees at 10-15% load, clocked at 4.2-4.6 GHz and rocking the 212 EVO.

 

I stumbled upon a video today of somebody running the same CPU/GPU combo with a couple of pre-built water coolers (the EVGA 980 Ti kit and a NZXT cooler on the CPU) getting 37 degrees celsius on the 980 Ti under full load and got a little bit hyped. So now I'm thinking of getting a similar setup for myself. I'm willing to replace my case with something better if I have to and am looking for a couple 120mm AIOs or maybe a 240mm AIO for the CPU and a 980 Ti bracket.

I live in Eastern Europe, so availability is not too great, but what would you guys suggest is the best combo of AIOs, bracket and maybe even a (not overly expensive) case to breathe new life into my aging rig?

 

Specs:

PC Part Picker With Specs

I honestly don't know the vendor of the card, but it's a reference/founders edition.

My PC Case - Photos for reference, it's just a random Romanian brand

[Bcat00]

Did you try cleaning and redoing the thermal paste? 

 

Idling at 70 is just wrong, something is seriously wrong with that card

[CiB0rG]

1 minute ago, Bcat00 said:

Did you try cleaning and redoing the thermal paste? 

 

Idling at 70 is just wrong, something is seriously wrong with that card

To be honest, I've been very busy at work, finishing up a bunch of stuff at my old job and starting a new one. I plugged in the card when it arrived to test it and haven't really touched it since. I just recently started thinking about it and noticed that it has high idle temps. Redoing the thermal paste might actually be a good thing to do to maybe stabilize the temps for the time being.

[stealth80]

are fans running at idle on the gpu? 

[CiB0rG]

Just now, stealth80 said:

are fans running at idle on the gpu? 

They were running at about 1400 RPM, according to CAM.

[stealth80]

2 minutes ago, CiB0rG said:

They were running at about 1400 RPM, according to CAM.

something aint right, its either 50C in your room or that card is overvolting at idle

[Bcat00]

24 minutes ago, CiB0rG said:

To be honest, I've been very busy at work, finishing up a bunch of stuff at my old job and starting a new one. I plugged in the card when it arrived to test it and haven't really touched it since. I just recently started thinking about it and noticed that it has high idle temps. Redoing the thermal paste might actually be a good thing to do to maybe stabilize the temps for the time being.

I just thought of something, did you check your manager tab and see if a program is gobbling up your gpu usuage?

 

might even be a bitcoin virus using your gpu in the background

[CiB0rG]

51 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

I just thought of something, did you check your manager tab and see if a program is gobbling up your gpu usuage?

 

might even be a bitcoin virus using your gpu in the background

Very unlikely, GPU usage is below 10% even with wallpaper engine and a stream running on my PC, which is essentially its regular state.

[CiB0rG]

Okay, apparently, it has to do with my high refresh rate monitor. My GPU's memory clock is permanently maxed out at 3505 MHz. Turning that monitor off lead to temps quickly dropping close to 50 degrees. Replacing thermal paste got me about a couple degrees lower, but it was definitely not the problem. I'll see if running my desktop at 60 Hz changes anything, although I do enjoy the 240 Hz desktop experience.
I'm still looking for ideas to water cool my GPU and CPU if anyone knows what's good right now.

 

Edit:

It's definitely an issue with my monitor setup but I'm not 100% sure why does it happen. Unplugging one of my 60 Hz monitors also seems to fix the problem, so that's my temporary solution right now. I don't recall having the same problem when I was running my monitors off my GTX 970s, so it might be due to the fact that one of them is connected to an HDMI port and the other one to a DVI port, instead of both using DVI ports like they did on the 970. I guess the next thing is to get a couple of DVI to DP adapters and run all 3 monitors off the DP ports to see if that works.

Edited June 23, 2018 by CiB0rG