Question GPU fans go to maximum when it's well below normal temperature limit ?

[BTAxis]

My graphics card is an Asus RTX 2080Ti. It's misbehaving slightly in that its fans start running at maximum speed as soon as the GPU temperature hits a certain value. This is the card itself overriding the software fan profile I've set. The fan will be reporting that the fans are still at 60% or so, but in fact they're running at full tilt, making a lot of noise. It otherwise functions fine. No graphical artifacts, no instability, nothing out of the ordinary. It's just being really really loud.

It's been doing this for a while. At first it happened at about 79C, but the threshold has dropped little by little and now the card panics at 75C. For reference, the default temperature limit is 84C for this card.

I've already tried replacing the thermal paste on the die several times. It hasn't helped. My best guess is that there's some other component that's overheating and triggering the fans, but I don't know what to do about it. As it stands, the only thing I can do to keep it under control is run the card at 70% power so it doesn't reach 75C.

Does anyone have any tips? Thanks!

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I would try and see if removing your GPU drivers from your platform using DDU and then manually reinstalling with the latest driver version in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator

You might want to also include the rest of your specs like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model.

 

[BTAxis]

Okay, here's the specs you mentioned:

CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz
CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120
Motherboard: NZXT N7 Z370
Ram: 2x16GB DDR4 Kingston Fury Renegade 3600
SSD/HDD: 1xSamsung 860 EVO 250GB, 1x Samsung 970 EVO 2TB, 1x WDC HDD 3TB 5400RPM
GPU: ASUS RTX 2080Ti
PSU: Corsair RM850, 3~4 years old
Chassis: NZXT H500W
OS: Windows 10 x64
Monitor: 1x ACER XB323QK-NV 4K@60Hz, 1x BenQ EL287OU 4K@60Hz

I also did a fresh driver install (safe mode -> DDU -> reboot -> driver install), so I'm on the latest driver, which at the time of this writing is 536.67. It had no effect on my symptoms.

 

[BTAxis]

After reading up a little more I found out that the issue, most likely, is that my card has a very hot hot spot.

As you can see from the max value, the hot spot exceeds 100C while the overall GPU temperature is still around 75C. It seems reasonable to assume that's what's triggering the fans.

I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about this though. I don't think this is a problem with the case's airflow, because my CPU has no heat issues and this still happens if I run with an open case. Also, as I mentioned, I've already tried changing the thermal paste several times in varying quantities and distribution methods. The paste I used was Noctua NT-H2, which is supposedly good quality.