[SOLVED] GTX 1660 Super fans & temp question

[Sjouwerd]

Hi all,

After years of gaming on consoles I purchased my first medium end gaming PC this week. A second hand one but only 6 months old. This being my first PC, I have very little knowledge of PCs and specs in general. However I am pretty confident that I will be able to play my favorite games on 60 FPS 1080p (Battlefield games mainly).

What I noticed after playing Battlefield 3 on high settings for 1 hour is that the temperature of my GPU (Nvidia GTX 1660 Super) went up to ~83 degrees. I did not exceed the 83 degrees, however I was quite surprised that the temp was this high. However I read several other topics that I do not have to worry about 83 degrees? Anyway, the newbie in me just needs to know if this is correct. Is 83 degrees indeed not dangerous for this particular GPU? The PC case is dust free and has 3 fans in the front and 1 in the back.

My specs are: i7 10700F, 16 GB Ram and NVIDIA GTX 1660 Super GPU.

I read about MSI Afterburner, that I can set a custom fan curve. However I do not have any knowledge of this.

Hopefully any of you can help me out:

• is 83 degrees dangerous for this particular GPU when playing for a longer period of time (let's say 3 hours).
• would you already recommend to apply a custom fan curve in MSI AB?

Thank you very much and excuse my English please!

Kind regards, Sjouwerd

 

[rgd1101]

what the idle temp? what the room temp?
83c is high for that little gpu

 

[Sjouwerd]

Idle around 33/34 degrees. Room temperature around 25 degrees.

 

[--SID--]

What make and model GTX 1660 Super? Each brand (MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, PNY, Gainward, Palit etc.) have several models of the 1660 Super.
What make and model case, how many casefans and how is the airflow?
Make and model PSU?

 

[Sjouwerd]

GPU is PH-GTX1160S-O6G (single fan).

It is a Sharkoon TG6 RGB case with 3 fans in front and 1 in back. There are 2 intakes in front on the right and left side of the case, but seem quite small. These intakes are very close to the 3 fans however.
I am not sure about the pwer supply, I believe it is EVGA 600W. It is a second hand PC do not have all specs and cannot find more detail if I check in the case.

 

[propflux01]

Perhaps, with that many fans (meaning acceptable airflow)and yet still getting too hot, the thermal paste is not enough, or not even there on the GPU fan itself??

 

[Sjouwerd]

could that be after 6 months of usage?

Anyway, I think I found a direct relation between v sync and high temps. I was running the game at 130-140 FPS on a 60 hz monitor. So perhaps the GPU had to work really hard to process this? After turning on v sync the temp dropped by 15 degrees when playing Battlefield. Idle temp remains the same.

I am planning to buy a 144 hz monitor. Would the issue again occur if I then play on 130-140 FPS? Or could this issue only be related to v sync not turned on?

thanks

 

[Sjouwerd]

Good afternoon all,

So could my issue be related to v sync not being turned on, causing my GPU to work hard due to discrepancies between 140 fps in game and 60 hz monitor? Or do you think that my GPU will also get hot if I were to run 140 fps on a 144 hz monitor?

Thanks for your help so far.

 

[Phaaze88]

GPU is PH-GTX1160S-O6G (single fan).

This explains a lot.
What's under that shroud is pretty much the same flower type heatsink that you see on the Intel stock coolers, which were only really adequate for their 65w rated cpus.
The 1660 Super Phoenix has a total board power limit of 150w: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/214985/asus-gtx1660super-6144-190911
The gpu core can make up 3/4ths(+/-) of that BPL by itself - a bit much for that poor little heatsink.

The single fan can only do so much when the weakest link is the heatsink's low thermal capacity.

What you can do - without having to spend money - is to reduce, or keep power consumption down.
Make use of frame limiters. Higher frame rates increase power consumption, and trying to run frames over what your monitor can do is needlessly increasing power consumption further.
Msi Afterburner gives you the option to raise/lower the board power limit. Experiment, and find the happy medium - lower the power limit without sacrificing much performance.

 

[Sjouwerd]

This explains a lot.
What's under that shroud is pretty much the same flower type heatsink that you see on the Intel stock coolers, which were only really adequate for their 65w rated cpus.
The 1660 Super Phoenix has a total board power limit of 150w: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/214985/asus-gtx1660super-6144-190911
The gpu core can make up 3/4ths(+/-) of that BPL by itself - a bit much for that poor little heatsink.

The single fan can only do so much when the weakest link is the heatsink's low thermal capacity.

What you can do - without having to spend money - is to reduce, or keep power consumption down.
Make use of frame limiters. Higher frame rates increase power consumption, and trying to run frames over what your monitor can do is needlessly increasing power consumption further.
Msi Afterburner gives you the option to raise/lower the board power limit. Experiment, and find the happy medium - lower the power limit without sacrificing much performance.

thanks for your reply!

So basically setting custom fan curve will not help? Fan is probably doing the job (and so are the 3 intake fans). The GPU is just trying to keep up with high frame rates, which it can’t (not 140 fps at Battlefield game at least).

Or perhaps a combination of lowering power & fan curve adjustment?

 

[Phaaze88]

Fan curves are only going to do so much. As I said, the weakest link is the heatsink on the gpu.
What is a rather low power gpu should be easy to cool, but isn't, because the heatsink is crap. I take that back.
The heatsink isn't crap, it's just not adequate for the kind of power the gpu draws.

Get the power consumption down, and you will have more freedom with fan curves though.

 

[Sjouwerd]

Fan curves are only going to do so much. As I said, the weakest link is the heatsink on the gpu.
What is a rather low power gpu should be easy to cool, but isn't, because the heatsink is crap. I take that back.
The heatsink isn't crap, it's just not adequate for the kind of power the gpu draws.

Get the power consumption down, and you will have more freedom with fan curves though.

Thank you. We can conclude that perhaps this GPU is not designed so well 🤔

I will try playing around a bit with power consumption in MSI AB.

 

[Sjouwerd]

How to limit the power exactly? Is it core/memory clock in MSI AB main screen?
Or core voltage mV.

 

[Phaaze88]

How to limit the power exactly? Is it core/memory clock in MSI AB main screen?
Or core voltage mV.

On the main HUD, it's Power Limit(%) slider.

 

[Sjouwerd]

On the main HUD, it's Power Limit(%) slider.

Thanks! Couldn't find it, but I changed interface/skin and found it. Will try it later today.