[SOLVED] Experience with Asus 1660 ti OC temperature

[Mahisse]

Hi

So my recently newly bought card Asus 1660 ti OC dual is performing quite badly in terms of temperature. While playing I max my GPU at around 86 degrees. I've read around the internet and it seems like the card has general bad cooling design (how is that even possible today?). I see quite some few discussions about 85-86 degrees for this card.

So first of all. Since this is a OC edition I gues I have to assume that I will hit higher temp than stock version of 1660 ti, right?

I'm not sure if the card is throttling. Yesterday I played ESO and when the card is working a 90% (a small bottleneck due to i5-3570K CPU) I get 100 fps but yesterday I noticed that I dropped down to 30 fps and both the CPU and GPU were working around 50-60%

I'm worried about these high temperatures since there is not much head room left when operating around 85 degrees (I have even hit 88 degrees at some point).

My case is a midi tower and does have an extra fan on it to exhaust hot air out from the case in the back.

Do you think this card should be returned? Can I even return it.. I do seem to remember the guy at the store recommended me that I should buy the single fan version due to the poor cooling design in the dual version but I'd never imagined it would be this bad.

Any suggestions on this? I feel like I'm entitled to get my money back here.

 

[dotas1]

The fps drops you are seeing is most probably from thermal throttling.
A case with a single fan to exhaust air, is a very poor airflow case. Even the best cooling design of a card will run hotter than normal with poor airflow.

I would suggest to add at least 2 more intake fans (in the front of the case) if it's possible.

 

[Mahisse]

The fps drops you are seeing is most probably from thermal throttling.
A case with a single fan to exhaust air, is a very poor airflow case. Even the best cooling design of a card will run hotter than normal with poor airflow.

I would suggest to add at least 2 more intake fans (in the front of the case) if it's possible.

So, how does the GPU thermal throttling exactly work? I guess it's natural the card lowers the workload to hit some normal temperatures again but as far as I remember the card went below/around 70 degrees fairly quickly after reducing the GPU work. At what point will the card "reset" and go out of the throttling state again (equals 100% GPU load again)?

Yeah I know the airflow is bad. I also increased the fan speed a bit, but to be honest there's a limit to how loud I want a card to be... Even on 100% work load. I probably am going to add a fan more in the front for a bit of more fresh air but I have my doubts it's going to make a huge difference. I do believe it's a poor cooling design on the card itself. My old 7850hd never reached similar temperatures in the same case setup - and that was also overclocked quite a bit.

I'm just wondering if I should return the card. Could I claim the card is not working as suspected?

 

[dotas1]

First of all, not all games with every setting can make a GPU run at 100% or close to it. You might hit CPU bottleneck first.

The throttling works as you mentioned. GPU lowers clocks in order to stay cooler. Specific points are different for each and every GPU. You can try another thing before paying to buy more fans (which I highly suggest even if it's not the issue here). Open the side panel of your case for some time to see if the temperatures drop. If the temps are better airflow is most of the issue.

Another thing is to limit the fps of the card. If you are using a 60Hz monitor for example, you won't benefit if the FPS are 100 or 80. Turn Vsync on, or limit your fps to a number like 75. That way your GPU is not pushed to the limit and does not get too hot.

 

[Mahisse]

Installed a front fan for more fresh air and upped the PMW slope for both the back and front fan. Now I'm hitting max temperatures on 80 degrees and usually hangs around 76-78 degrees so that seems to have helped quite a bit and since the fans are Noctuas it's a much less noisy solution than turning up the fan speeds on the GPU. A little more tweaking to the airflow and I think I'm fine with this card.

Vsync enabled also took out some of the stress on the GPU so thanks for that.

 

[dotas1]

Glad I helped! Adding 1 more fan to the front will be even better.
In my setup I have 3 x 120mm fans in the front of the case as intake, 1 x 120mm in the back and 1 x 120mm in the top back as exhaust.

Cleaning regularly the system from dust and some cable management to help airflow will also help your system.