Well I thought I cooked my RTX 3080 today...

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FlyingPenguin
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Well I thought I cooked my RTX 3080 today...

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I turned on the gaming PC and heard a strange rattling fan noise (turned out to be a loose clip on the CPU fan). But in the process, I noticed my RTX 3080's fans weren't spinning.

Out of curiosity, I ran Killing Floor 2 for a few minutes, and still nothing. I fire up EVGA's tuning app X1 Precision, check the fan curves, and sure enough the fans SHOULD be running at 40% even cold. At least that's what EVGA precision thinks.

I then push the manual fan speed override sliders to 100% in X1 Precision aaaand.... nothing. Nada. Zip.

I start getting nervous now. So I put the PC on the bench and pull the card, check the fan wires. Everything okay.

Fire it up again and I notice the fans DO run right after power up and until Windows loads. So I'm thinking it's X1 Precision overriding the fan. I uninstall it and.... nothing.

Re-install it (latest version now, mine was older) and it tells me there's a firmware upgrade for the card (AHA!). Install the firmware, and... still no fans.

Then I finally get smart and run a the Unigine Valley stress test benchmark. I'm watching the GPU temp monitor in Valley and the fans DID eventually kick on after several minutes, at a fairly low RPM, but only when the GPU temp gets above 60C. So I went back and checked the temps running Killing Floor 2, and sure enough, especially with the case panel off, it took a good 7 minutes of intense gameplay to get the temps over 60C.

Well that's good, fans work, but I wanted to know why the conservative fan curve. So I uninstalled X1 Precision and installed good old reliable MSI Afterburner, and BINGO! Afterburner tells me the scoop on what's really going on. Afterburner shows me the ACTUAL VBIOS fan curve (apparently X1 Precision wasn't). The default VBIOS fan curve on this card is set to 0 RPM until 60C, and then it ramps up sharply at 60C, just like it performed. That explains the lag in the fans spinning up. Obviously EVGA wants to keep the card fairly quiet, especially when idle, and the card does seem to run pretty cool even under load.

I personally prefer a bit more of an aggressive fan curve, and since this rig is only for gaming, I don't mind the fans running all the time at low RPM and then ramping up.

Now, the nteresting thing is that the 3080 supports a programmable VBIOS fan curve. I don't need to leave MSI Afterburner running in the taskbar to manage a custom fan curve like I had to do with the GTX 1080. You can load your custom curves into VBIOS, and the card remembers it until you change it. There's a special button for that in the fan curve settings in Afterburner.

Nerve wracking experience, thinking I was going to have to RMA this card, but I learned a few things. One of them is never use anything but MSI Afterburner. It's really ridiculous that EVGA's own tuner can't see the VBIOS fan curves, or even override them.
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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Executioner
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Re: Well I thought I cooked my RTX 3080 today...

Post by Executioner »

Maybe you should let EVGA know about the issue? Does their forum, if they have one, discuss the issue with their software?
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Re: Well I thought I cooked my RTX 3080 today...

Post by FlyingPenguin »

I did some Googling, and came across a lot of related posts. Mainly people complaining of the opposite: that he fans were running fast and noisy when they didn't want them to, and X1 Precision was of no help. All the unnofficial suggestions were "Use MSI Afterburner instead." :)
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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