Question RTX 4060 fans making loud rattling / rumbling sound & temperatures seem too high ?

[jbrighton]

PC Specs:
MBD: Asus B450 F Gaming II
CPU: Ryzen 3600
GPU: Gigabyte RTX 4060 Aero,
RAM: 2 x 16GB HyperX Fury RGB 3200MHz
AIO: DeepCool LT520

I recently relocated my PC into the ridiculously large Thermaltake Level 20 HT case (don't ask how I got it!) while I'm modding the case that it was in before (Fractal Design Meshify C) to make everything inside less fiddly and more accessible.

When my computer was in its previous case the GPU occasionally glitched out. Everything on the screen turned green, and sometimes the brighter colours turned pink before returning to normal a few minutes later. Earlier on I played Project Cars 2 for the first time since the computer has been in the Thermaltake case, and the same thing happened. So I decided to monitor the temperatures, and noticed that the GPU temperature was approaching 100°C before I quickly stopped the game and the temperature dropped back to below 30°C in its idle state.

I decided to set a custom fan curve using MSI Afterburner, and I realised that the GPU starts making a really loud rattling / rumbling sound when the fans spin at more than around 60%. It's difficult to describe, but it almost sounds as if the fans are somehow making the whole case shake, and it was so loud and weird-sounding that I thought at first there was something wrong with the radiator. Because I never heard that sound before, I'm not sure whether the fans were set to a lower speed out-of-the-box so that they never reached more than 60% of their maximum speed before, or whether it has something to do with the case.

I previously had the card mounted vertically in the Meshify case (after cutting out the dividers between the PCIe slots on the backplate to fit the mounting bracket), but because the motherboard is rotated by 90° in its current case the GPU is basically hanging from the top. Could this possibly be causing the case to resonate and make that rumbling sound, or could the card itself be vibrating so much that it becomes so noisy?

Some further infos: the GPU stays at around 80°C when I play PC2 with the fan speed set to 100%. Is this normal? At 90% fan speed the temperature rises to around 83-84°C, and when I lower it to 80% the temperatures are around 85-86°C. And at 70% - which is still unbearably loud - the GPU hits up to 88°C (unless the temperature sensor is somehow faulty?). When I remove the front glass panel the GPU temperaterature is lowered by around 3-4°C, but I still need to set a fan speed high enough to make that loud rumbling sound.

I'm happy to provide further information if that helps, like my fan configuration, or maybe a recording of the sound? Or is it a case for a RMA?

 

[Lutfij]

I would primarily look at the BIOS for your motherboard, see if that's pending an update. Following that, see if your OS is pending an update. Finally, use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(Intel, AMD and Nvidia) from your platform, then manually reinstall with the latest drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

You forgot to mention the make and model of the PSU and it's age.

 

[jbrighton]

I would primarily look at the BIOS for your motherboard, see if that's pending an update. Following that, see if your OS is pending an update. Finally, use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(Intel, AMD and Nvidia) from your platform, then manually reinstall with the latest drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

You forgot to mention the make and model of the PSU and it's age.

Thank you. BIOS & Win are two things that I always keep up-to-date, but you are right - I should also do a clean install of the GPU drivers.

Not quite sure what software is best for monitoring. I downloaded the trial version of Argus Monitor first, but then found out that MSI AB is a good tool for setting GPU fan curves. So I've got both running, but AM is telling me that AB might be interfering with its functioning. So is it safe to assume that Afterburner is a good all-round tool and I can skip AM? The overlay in AB has been really useful. In the past I've only used CPU-ID to get system info, and more recently GPU-Z.

Everything else aside, I actually managed to fix the problem myself. When I installed Steam a few years ago so I could play Project Cars 2 (more than 20 years after I lost my interest in gaming lol), I had very little idea what all the different graphics settings were for (and I still don't really understand a lot of it). So I just played with the default settings for the 1050 Ti that I had at the time. When I got the 4060 a few months ago I made a number of guesses for some of the settings. Yesterday I realised that I might be demanding more from my 4060 than it can handle. So I checked some guides that explained the best global settings, and adjusted them in the Nvidia Control Panel. The crazy thing is that I can still play in 1440p with no noticeable difference in image quality, but my temps are now around 30°C lower!

I seriously never thought that using the wrong settings could have such a huge impact on GPU temps. At the same time that the GPU die was frying, the CPU never went beyond 51°C. So it seemed unlikely that it was an airflow problem. Now I can run the card at much lower fan speeds, and most likely won't be needing higher fan speeds until I get around to picking up Blender again. But by then my computer will be in a different case anyway, so it might not even be an issue anymore.

I forgot to mention that the PSU is a 600W EVGA, with sleeved extensions for ATX, EPS & PCIe. Not sure about the exact model or how old, but I bought it quite a few years ago. The power supply is going to be my next upgrade, as I'm fed up with non-modular PSUs and never want to hook one up again. So I've currently got a RM850x in my shopping basket. That should be good enough even after I upgrade to a 5000-series CPU and a better motherboard.