[SOLVED] Very high fan speed / loud fans for GeForce RTX 3070 TI under load - is this normal or should I RMA?

[mk53v3n]

Hi guys,

Any advice on the following would be greatly appreciated:

I recently bought a new ASUS TUF GeForce RTX 3070 TI to replace my old ASUS ROG STRIX Geforce RTX 2060.

My old graphics card was very quiet - you could barely hear the fans, even under heavy load (e.g. when playing games).

The fans of my new RTX 3070 TI however seems to run unusually fast & loud when under load.

I checked the fan speed and temps (with ASUS GPU Tweak II) and saw that under load (while playing a game) the card reaches a temperature of around 72 ° C and the fans are spinning at 95 % (which equals approx. 2400 RPM per fan) at this temp.
It so loud, it sounds like I have a little airplane under my desk.

If I adjust the fan curve and lower the fan speed to around 70 % max, it's all nicely quiet, but temperatures are rising significantly to 80 ° C and higher. (so this is probably not a reasonable solution)

I am wondering now if there could be something wrong with the card and if it would make sense to RMA it? Or is it really normal for an RTX 3070 TI to get that loud and its fans spinning so incredibly fast?

 

[ötzi]

If you did nothing to improve the airflow within your case, this is normal, the 2060 has a TDP of 160W while the 3070Ti has a TDP of 290W. So you will have to compensate for the extra heat that's being dissipated, try setting the fancurve of the (usually more quiet) casefans instead of the GPU fans, maybe that helps sound wise.

 

[Phaaze88]

To add to the above, consider moving the PC out from under your desk.
Depending on how cramped the space underneath your desk is, that extra heat - you did go up at least 100w between the 2 gpus, which isn't a small amount - is likely causing warmer under-desk and chassis ambient temperatures.

Also, floor PCs collect dust more easily - all that really means is a need to clean the PC more frequently.

 

[mk53v3n]

Thanks for the quick replies guys!

Dust shouldn't be an issue (yet) because the PC is quite new (only built it a couple of weeks ago), so there is no dust anywhere yet.
The placement should also be fine, because I have a very big desk and it has plenty of space underneath it - more than 1m to each side and 50cm upwards between case and desk.

And I intentionally used quite a good case (Fractal Design Define 7) in the hopes that it would already have a great airflow. It came pre-installed with 2 big fans in the front and 1 fan in the back.
I have no issues with other temperatures (e.g. CPU) at all. It's an Intel Core i7-12700K cooled by a Noctua NH-D15 and it stays absolutely cool under high load.
It's only the GPU that is causing me trouble here.

But I guess if that's indeed normal for these new graphic cards, I probably have to improve the airflow in the case somehow as you suggested.

Would you maybe have any tips for me how I could reasonably increase the airflow? I never had such an issue before yet, so I am quite lost here to be honest.
Would you suggest to install additional fans for example? Any advice on this would really be appreciated.

 

[Phaaze88]

Fractal Design Define 7

There may not be much that can be done here*
Gamers' Nexus video review
GN written review

In the gpu temperature tests, they note practically no changes to gpu temperatures using Fractal's stock fans:
-front door open
-front door open, filter removed
-default config of 2 140mm front and the 120mm rear fan
-default, but using the ventilated top

There's also the standardized fan test where the 2 front fans were replaced with NF-A14s, and the rear with a NF-F12... no practical change.
Steve notes that the gpu is getting most of its air through the horizontal and vertical PCIe slot guards at the rear; that's why the changes they made at the front didn't do anything. Looks like the cpu cooler gets most of that air from the front and a little bit through the top.

Steve also speculates that a lower front fan would help, but did not test it, so how effective one would be is up in the air.
I'd imagine even if one was there, it'd need to move enough air past the restriction consisting of psu cables and drive cage(if present) so the gpu fans can pull it up through the perforated psu shroud.

*Removing the PCIe slot guards would enhance that rear intake mentioned earlier.

 

[Amddefector]

Try it under load with the side panel removed and see what difference that makes. I have a 3070 non ti and it's not that noisy. Even when gaming the gpu fans never run more than 50% then I have quite a large case. Also a aio cooler for the cpu so it's heat isn't added to the gpu heat inside the case.

 

[mk53v3n]

Thanks for the links and the suggestions guys.

Removing the side panel did improve the temperatures but unfortunately it is no option to permanently keep it like that.

However, I did some more investigations and played around with my settings and fan curves a little bit this morning and was indeed able to improve the situation significantly with the following two steps:

(i) I noticed that I don't have this issue with all games. On most games, the card does not get hotter than 60 ° C and the fans stay at approximately 50 - 60 %. The affected games (where the card gets really loud and hot) do not seem to have an FPS cap, so the card runs at 100 % virtually all the time when playing those games. After noticing this, I simply set a frame rate limit of 144 in the NVIDIA settings (which equals the refresh rate of my monitor). Now, those games still run hat max FPS with significantly less stress on the GPU.

(i) Additionally, I adjusted the fan curves so that the GPU fans do not ramp up to almost 100 % any more when reaching 70 ° C. After some benchmarking I was able to find a sweet spot where the fans do not run faster than 75 - 80 % while the GPU temperature still stays below 74 ° C. I read that such temperatures are absolutely acceptable for an RTX 3070 TI, so probably I could even decrease the fan speed a little bit more.

Although I still need to get used to the significantly louder fans (because my old RTX 2060 was indeed much more quiet, so probably I'm just spoiled here ^^), I guess it's now acceptable to me.

 

[DRagor]

because my old RTX 2060 was indeed much more quiet, so probably I'm just spoiled here

Probably you are. It's not hard to imagine Strix cards have better fans then TUF cards. Parts designed as TUF are made with longevity in mind, not necessarily user comfort.
Another thing to consider is possibility of not-so-good thermal paste/pads positioning on your new card. That could easily mean the difference of few C and therefore need for higher fan speeds. But I would not consider this worthy of RMA. And if things get worse this is something that you can fix yourself (relatively) easy.