New Gigabyte Aorus 1080 Ti Xtreme issues? Very high temps at 100% usage & 4K

[Ransome]

Just got my brand new Gigabyte Aorus 1080 Ti Xtreme.
Had 2 GTX 980s before that.

Ran The Witcher 3 in either 1440p or 2160p to test it. Noticed that when MSI AFTERBURNER (which I use for monitoring FPS, Temps, clock speeds, etc) is turned on - the Core Clocks spike to a crazy 1961 and even 2000+Mhz sometimes. I didn't overclock this card

According to this review:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_aorus_gtx_1080_ti_xtreme_gaming_review,40.html
card should have boost clocks of:
Boost Clock: 1721 MHz
Memory Clock: 11232 MHz
When I turn on the Aorus Graphics Engine software (which I don't want to keep using) it reverts back to 1691 or 1721 depending if I'm on Game Mode or OC Mode on the software.

It's like the system, game or MSI is overclocking my GPU automatically even though I reset my AB to default and there's no OC.
The card that supposed to run at 70~ Celsius degrees, run close to 80 and probably more if I persist in 4K.
And has 100% GPU usage.
My GTX 980 SLI G1 Gaming were 2 cards, and they rarely crossed the 70 C mark, sometimes 72 in a hot day. Now I have a more power efficient card, more space in case, a card with better cooling, 1 card instead of 2 - and I still get such high temps?

Also while standing in some hill with a forest in Skellige, everything set to Ultra except Foliage Very High - I get roughly 60fps - I expected much more - because its almost same fps I was getting with my GTX 980 SLI
This entire behavior is strange.

 

[Ransome]

I will try to address your issues and provide solutions as far as possible.

The card runs about 200 MHz above the specified boost clock. This is Nvidia GPU Boost 3.0 in action. It boosts the GPU clock well above the mentioned boost clocks.

The GTX 1080Ti runs hotter than 2 GTX 980s in SLI. Maxwell cards have core clocks within 1200 MHz. But Pascal cards run at clock speeds greater than 1800 MHz (above 1900 MHz in your case). So Pascal cards must naturally run hotter than their Maxwell counterparts. They can run at 83°C without any issues.

Solution
Your temperatures and clocks speeds are nothing to be worried about. But if you don't want your temperatures to go that high, set the temperature limit to what you want in MSI Afterburner. The clock speeds will automatically throttle down once the set maximum is reached.

Frame rate remains at 60 despite the upgrade from 2×GTX 980 to GTX 1080Ti. This is because vsync is turned on. This helps to prevent any frame tearing that would occur when you frame rate exceeds your monitor's refresh rate. That is the maximum your monitor can display.

Thank you. I wasn't aware of the GPU Boost feature. Was it available with GTX 980 Maxwell?
Interesting, so the clock speeds donates to the cards increased heating. I haven't went into depth, but I remember reading how cards become more power efficient and I figured the new 1080/Ti would be less power hungry. Either way- I am pretty sure that a single 1080 Ti draws less power than dual GTX 980s, just because it's 1 vs 2. I also believed, and still kinda do, that a single GPU should create less heat relatively to GTX 980 SLI. It definitely takes less airspace and doesn't block airflow as much.
Well I am worried about temps because I keep reading how people reach absurdly low temperatures with this card. It makes little sense. I am starting to believe that: A: my card was defective in terms of cooling/pasting. B. My room temps and humidity is quite high due to my climate androom position. C. people reporting these temp live in cold countries and/or use cold AC more often. D. they have an open case system or tons of extra surplus fans or have an ridiculous water cooling system or play at lower resolutions in not so demanding games - probably everything combined.
I have come to the conclusion that the tech junky reviews such as Tom's Hardware, Guru 3D and so on - have much lower temps than others because they use open-air systems (motherboard on a desk in the open), they run short in-game benchmarks instead of actually playing for long periods and not necessarily in 100% load. They probably made the tests colder climate and weather too.

I'm going to use AC more often with my new GPU during hotter days from now on, especially in the summer (I live in Israel).

I've RMA'd my Aorus Xtreme. I wasn't happy with its instability and regular crashes to desktops. It's overheating. Artifacts and no oc potential due to the previously mentioned faults. I've paid a really small cancellation fee to the store in my country, which didn't want to RMA me at first, of less than 2% (after talking them down), but it was worth it.
I've ordered an Asus Rog Strix OC Edtion 1080 Ti from Amazon.com and I'm hoping for the best.


For now I've made a small but I believe very meaningful change to my case's cooling. This should hopefully upgrade the airflow. The idea was to boost up intake airflow of fresh cold air into the case. I am using the Corsair 600T Graphite White stock fans. Which has 1 200mm intake fan, 1 200 mm top exhaust fan and 1 120mm rear exhaust fan. meaning more exhaust than intake and negative pressure.
I've decided that boosted the exhaust further won't do my case much good and might be even worse.
Before I had a powerful Noctua NF-A14 industrial PPC-2000 rpm blowing cold air on my 2 GPUS, like this:

So, I have moved the 140mm black Noctua fan upwards into my empty optical drive tunnel, like this:

Took quite the work to fit it in there securely. It's a tight snug fit. The optical drive tunnel should be hot-air free, as there's no components producing heat up there. At first I wanted to place the fan closer to the front mesh, but it was impossible. Still rather happy about the result:

Now I have both a clean unblocked airflow & wind tunnel - on the bottom of the case. Having removed the HD/SSD cage entirely + removing the auxiliary fan blowing on the GPU (which may have caused air turbulence and recycled hot air). While having an extra 140mm intake power as well. So in total: 340mm worth of intake / 320mm exhaust. Slightly more intake than exhaust and all in a straight line, which according to my reading and understanding should help pushing hot air out and create a positive balanced air circulation and flow.

I really hope this helps my case and all of its component's cooling, and produce a positive colder impact. I mainly need the GPU and temps around the case to run cooler since my other components' temps were very cool and low before.

What do you guys think about this new setup?
Thanks