Can I make My blower GPU quieter?

[bnewlands32]

I have an ASUS GTX 960 blower style card and it is very loud. It's loud in games but also at idle and it bothers me a lot. It will only go down to using 40% fan speed minimum and I can't change it. Is there any easy way to make it quieter? I know there are aftermarket coolers but I don't know if those are worth it.

 

[chemmajorp53]

You can download MSI afterburner or something and manually change the fan curve, otherwise just make sure it's not full of dust and that the thermal paste is OK. I wouldn't bother upgrading anything on a GTX 960 because it will cost more than the card is worth.

 

[bnewlands32]

You can download MSI afterburner or something and manually change the fan curve, otherwise just make sure it's not full of dust and that the thermal paste is OK. I wouldn't bother upgrading anything on a GTX 960 because it will cost more than the card is worth.

I just dusted it along with my whole PC, but MSI afterburner will not run the fan speed below 40% even with it adjusted. The GPU came with a software called "ASUS GPU Tweak II" that will also not let me set it below 40% speed.

 

[hesimon1812]

I just dusted it along with my whole PC, but MSI afterburner will not run the fan speed below 40% even with it adjusted. The GPU came with a software called "ASUS GPU Tweak II" that will also not let me set it below 40% speed.

Got same Problem with Asus GTX 1060 Turbo. Can't set minimum speed below 27%, which is already noticably noisy.

 

[BFG-9000]

If you simply cut the power wire to the fan and plumb an inline resistor there, the fan RPM will drop everywhere on the curve from idle to max. Without the fan specs it's impossible to tell what value resistor to use but you can start trial-and-error with around 20-30 ohms and a goal of around 25% drop in idle RPM. Keep an eye on the temperatures esp under load because the max fan RPM will also be proportionately dropped.

More elegant and expensive would be to epoxy an NTC thermistor right onto the heatsink. With this as your inline resistor, the resistance will be high when cold and drop to near zero when hot.

Be sure to select components appropriate for the wattage of the fan, or they could eventually burn out to leave you with no RPM on the fan.

 

[Karadjgne]

The fan in a blower type gpu is analog, voltage controlled. It'll require a certain amount of voltage to turn the motor. Generally thats 5v-12v although some really cheap fans won't turn at less than 7v.

5v is 40% of 12v, 7v is 60% of 12v. Quality pwm fans can go down as low as @18% but analog usually bottom out at 40%.

 

[BFG-9000]

As many modern cards don't spin their fans at all until 60C or so, it's probably fine for the card if the fan won't start until things get warm--although sometimes a fan trying but failing to start makes some noise too.

Heck, my old HD4870 idled at 72C and never went above 85 with the factory-stock fan curve, and its blower idled at 24% (minimum on cold boot was 15% but not for long: idle power draw was 60 watts!). The curve was quite steep so launching any game sure caused a loud whoosh.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yeah, that's one of the drawbacks to the barrel fan designs vrs axial, they are louder generally. It's really unavoidable other than taking extraordinary measures, like using sound baffling etc inside the case to help absorb ambient sounds and harmonics