I have the Palit KalmX passive graphics card: http://www.palit.com/palit/vgapro.php?id=2823 which has a big heatsink but no fans. I bought it because I wanted a very quiet machine. I have a big case w/ 3 case fans which provide good airflow.
The machine is very quiet. But I am finding that the GPU quickly gets very hot under moderate load, and I'm seeing graphical artifacts (flashes, pixelization, random lines, etc.) These seem to occur mostly when the temp gets up around 70 C or higher. Sometimes it crashes the game. It's not generally causing lag or dropped frames, just the artifacts. I have buyer's regret, but too late to return it.
Based on articles like this http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html my hypothesis is that the GPU memory is overheating. This problem is mentioned in this review of the card too: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/passive-cooling-geforce-radeon-test,4960-5.html (which I hadn't seen before buying it)
What I've tried is adjusting the fan curves of my case fans to blow harder when CPU heats up. That helps a little. But since the CPU doesn't heat up nearly as quickly as the GPU, it doesn't help enough - it's not responsive enough to the GPU temp. And of course makes my machine less quiet, including at times when GPU isn't under load.
I could use advice on the best remedy here. Clearly I could buy a new GPU, but short of that the only thing I could think of would be to get one of these https://www.amazon.com/Nzxt-Channel-Digital-Controller-AC-GRDP3-M1/dp/B075BBJZG2 which I understand can throttle fans based on GPU temp. But it's one or the other, right? A single fan can't be responsive to both CPU and GPU temps? If that's true then I'd have some concern about overheating under CPU load.
If you have other ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks!
The machine is very quiet. But I am finding that the GPU quickly gets very hot under moderate load, and I'm seeing graphical artifacts (flashes, pixelization, random lines, etc.) These seem to occur mostly when the temp gets up around 70 C or higher. Sometimes it crashes the game. It's not generally causing lag or dropped frames, just the artifacts. I have buyer's regret, but too late to return it.
Based on articles like this http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html my hypothesis is that the GPU memory is overheating. This problem is mentioned in this review of the card too: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/passive-cooling-geforce-radeon-test,4960-5.html (which I hadn't seen before buying it)
What I've tried is adjusting the fan curves of my case fans to blow harder when CPU heats up. That helps a little. But since the CPU doesn't heat up nearly as quickly as the GPU, it doesn't help enough - it's not responsive enough to the GPU temp. And of course makes my machine less quiet, including at times when GPU isn't under load.
I could use advice on the best remedy here. Clearly I could buy a new GPU, but short of that the only thing I could think of would be to get one of these https://www.amazon.com/Nzxt-Channel-Digital-Controller-AC-GRDP3-M1/dp/B075BBJZG2 which I understand can throttle fans based on GPU temp. But it's one or the other, right? A single fan can't be responsive to both CPU and GPU temps? If that's true then I'd have some concern about overheating under CPU load.
If you have other ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks!
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