MSI GTX 1060 Armor fans not working consistently

[deekster_caddy]

Hi all. I have a new MSI GTX 1060 6GB Armor OCV1 card I bought from Amazon. This card has two fans. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. As far as I can tell both fans should always spin at the same speed, and they should be spinning at 40% anytime the OS is running. When I turn the system on sometimes the fans are running, sometimes not. Sometimes just one fan is running (not consistent which one). If I give the non-running fan a little nudge it will then start and stay spinning. I can manually set the fans to run with Afterburner, but this doesn't seem to solve the problem that sometimes one (or both) fans hasn't started spinning.

I saw a few posts from others about similar issues, some that the card was returned to MSI and 'no problems were found', and their card returned to them. I contacted Amazon since it's only 3 weeks old - they are going to exchange it for me. I'm wondering how common of a problem this really is, or if the card is working as designed and I'm overthinking it. I figured if I am manually setting the fan speeds with afterburner that should be enough to keep it running.

I am having trouble finding decent documentation on this setup - is there any way to force the cards to load a fan speed profile without actually leaving afterburner open? I pretty much only use the system for gaming, so it's okay with me to have an always-on-minimum fan speed set.

Thanks!

Editing to add - I guess what I'm really asking is if I need to be concerned about this even with the replacement card. Is this card/model/fan a dud or is there a known bios issue with fans, or what? The one time I forgot to look to see if the fans were spinning neither fan came on and the GPU temp was up to 92c before I noticed.

 

[Sedivy]

I have a different card but also had an issue with fans where they would constantly start and stop spinning. Finally with an app like afterburner I realized that the startup temperature for them was right where its temperature was on idle and they kept starting and stopping as temperature would go down or up 1 degree. Sometimes all fans would start, sometime just one. This was very annoying as there was a very distinct sound when they would spin up.
Then I realized I had an app like afterburner and it is meant to be running all the time. You can minimize it so you don't see it at all but it's meant to sit in your tray and load these fan profiles and control the fan speed as you like. I created in the end my own profile where fans would stay firmly off on idle, but would switch to another profile when it was time to game. This was easier for me though you may set just one profile but with a better curve. In either case now they're silent and temps are great, often cooler than my cpu which is a real surprise, so I may adjust it for a little higher temps and lower rpm to spare the fans, but in either case, afterburner is there to run in the background constantly for the sake of your fine tuning.

 

[deekster_caddy]

I have a different card but also had an issue with fans where they would constantly start and stop spinning. Finally with an app like afterburner I realized that the startup temperature for them was right where its temperature was on idle and they kept starting and stopping as temperature would go down or up 1 degree. Sometimes all fans would start, sometime just one. This was very annoying as there was a very distinct sound when they would spin up.
Then I realized I had an app like afterburner and it is meant to be running all the time. You can minimize it so you don't see it at all but it's meant to sit in your tray and load these fan profiles and control the fan speed as you like. I created in the end my own profile where fans would stay firmly off on idle, but would switch to another profile when it was time to game. This was easier for me though you may set just one profile but with a better curve. In either case now they're silent and temps are great, often cooler than my cpu which is a real surprise, so I may adjust it for a little higher temps and lower rpm to spare the fans, but in either case, afterburner is there to run in the background constantly for the sake of your fine tuning.

Thanks! I am noticing now that launching Afterburner definitely starts up the fans, whereas they are off until I run afterburner. After some more reading I'm guessing that's because of the 'frozr' settings they use - basically an energy saving profile where the fans don't kick on until 60c, unless you run Afterburner. That explains the fans not running all the time, but It still doesn't address the issue I'm seeing where sometimes one or the other or both fans won't start running unless I give the fan a push start. Maybe it's just because they are new fans and a little tight?

Anyway, I will see if I have the same issue with my new card.

Any afterburner experts out there - can I change the default fan profile so that I don't need to run afterburner every time, knowing that I'm only using this computer for gaming anyway? Or is the best solution to just add afterburner to the startup items and let it run all the time?